DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 8

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Woohoo! Here's hoping HH :j

Thank you. May of course amount to nothing but here's hoping!

HHx

Hopelessly_Hopeful

How are the newbies doing?

HHx

Alice_in_Welfareland

MrDJB192 wrote: »

It's been a few days since i posted here...my DMP is now confirmed, and he first payment is 1st Jan. I'm going to ring around ALL of my creditors and advise the first payment will be around mid-January but say I can do token £5-10 payments should they require.

I have no idea what is happening with the interest rates being frozen or not because the process is still taking place. My question is - with this still being sorted, why have StepChange set up the amounts for each creditor?

For example, I owe 875 to quick quid and my monhly payment to these is £275....what if they freeze interest and one of my other creditors doesn't....surley its best to pay more off of that one!?

This is typical of Stepchange's nonsense approach to debt payment distribution. They base their payment allocation on the minimum payment rather than the total debt so your pay day loan will benefit over any 'traditional' debt.

I have challenged Stepchange on this and they insist that their method is fair. I consider it fair to the creditors but not fair to us, the debtors. As the creditors pay for the service and Stepchange charge nothing to the debtor it's rather obvious whose side they are on.

My advice would not be in Stepchange's favour, other free debt services do not take the same payment approach and at least Payplan are honest and admit to be a business rather than a charity. I prefer care of my own debt in my own hands.

Alice

Alice_in_Welfareland

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

StepChange (ex CCCS) allocate their DMP payments based on your due minimum monthly payments to your debts, so the payments bear no comparison to the amount of money you owe in total. This particular debt is to a PDL so would have a very high minimum payment so they are getting the lion's share.

It's a big problem for us too as we hit minimum payments from the start of our DMP and hence creditors would not stop interest. M&S actually advised us to lower our payment but CCCS would not do this so we have paid, and looks like we will carry on paying, 24.9% interest throughout the DMP.

From a few comments on the Struggling with debt? Ask a debt advisor a question thread, it looks like CCCS are the only DMP company that allocates payments this way and we are not the only people with problems because of it. Alice in welfareland has posted about this several times recently and stated that she has been reading this thread. Hopefully she will answer you or you could send her a PM and ask her about it.

Thanks for the recommendation Time to face the music. If you need any advice just drop me a message or ask here. I will give you only factual information and no spin.

Time_to_face_the_music

Alice_in_Welfareland wrote: »

Thanks for the recommendation Time to face the music. If you need any advice just drop me a message or ask here. I will give you only factual information and no spin.

Thank you Alice. I have been giving a lot of thought to this and may come back to you for some advice but I do have one question now: Did you have any issues with your creditors when you swapped over from a managed DMP to going it alone?

TTFTM

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Thank you Alice. I have been giving a lot of thought to this and may come back to you for some advice but I do have one question now: Did you have any issues with your creditors when you swapped over from a managed DMP to going it alone?

TTFTM

Ohh Id like to know this very much too

HHx

Alice_in_Welfareland

It's too early to tell, I only took the DMP over from Stepchange this month. My new payments are very different to those administered by Stepchange and this concerns me as to how the creditors will react. Time will tell and I will report back.

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Alice_in_Welfareland wrote: »

It's too early to tell, I only took the DMP over from Stepchange this month. My new payments are very different to those administered by Stepchange and this concerns me as to how the creditors will react. Time will tell and I will report back.

Wishing you every success with it. How long were you with Stepchange? Did you use a CFS when you went it alone?

HHx

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Morning DaMPers

Hope everyone having a good weekend. I've been promoted to 4 star medals, yippee!

HHx

Time_to_face_the_music

Hopelessly_Hopeful wrote: »

Morning DaMPers

Hope everyone having a good weekend. I've been promoted to 4 star medals, yippee!

HHx

Get a big fur hat on and you'll be looking like a Russian general