DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 8

sickasachip13

Growurown wrote: »

From what I have read on this forum previously I think most banks lay on the charges thick and fast at the beginning of a DMP. Most seem to stop after a couple of months once everything is set up. Some people in the past have posted that it took 6 months before they started to see their debt finally come down, instead of going up each month. Hopefully it won't take that long.

Absolutely right, they do. It would be rare for it to take that long though. Ours went up only for the first couple of months I'd say, if that. The climb in the amount owed is to be expected initially - it is annoying and frustrating, but look forward to when the debt is going down instead.

BevieB

ravens72 wrote: »

Hi,
About a month ago my wife gave me the shock of my life and told me she was 25k in debt, she even took out a couple of credit cards in my name. How the banks allowed this to happen I will never know.

At first I was very angry and upset not too mention deeply hurt and upset my wife could do this to me.

Anyway I have 2 young kids and love my wife so walking away was not an option. My wife is now seeking proffesional medical help for her spending addiction and hopefully things are on the mend.


Im now on a dmp and starting to repay this debt via h the cccs.
The problem im having is that two of the creditors· ironically the ones that are in my name refuse to stop the interest. I feel at this rate i never get out of debt as the monthy payments are more than what i owe. This is made me even more angry as i didnt spend a single penny on the cards in the first place.

There collections department is in india so i end up speaking to someone who doesnt understand nor give two monkeys of my prediciment.

I feel nothing but pure hate towards halifax and bank of scotland.

Ive been told by the dmp that there is nothing i can do as they are not obliged to stop the imterest. I was just wondering if anyone has been in a simalar situation or can offer any advice.[Hi, We also have 2 ccs with the Halifax and started our DMP in September. Hate to say it but out of our 10 creditors the Halifax have been the worst to deal with. To begin on my husbands cc with they refused our DMP twice then added charges and higher interest rate to our debt. Then after making a complaint they refunded said charges and interest and froze interest for 2 months then re commenced interest charges at 12% which was higher than pre DMP as we had part of a special rate. I wrote to complain again and received the reply a few days ago stating that they have not made an error. I am now in the process of writing to the FOS for them to look at it as currently out of a payment of approx £140per month I am only paying back about £15.00per month and it would take about 100 years to repay. I also have a cc wit them and had the said problems as my husband. I have not had reply re second complaint although when they wrote to inform me they were looking at complaint they stated that it was regrding ppi so they had not even sent me the right letter back. Anyway i will look forward to the FSO decision.

BevieB

ravens72 wrote: »

Hi,
About a month ago my wife gave me the shock of my life and told me she was 25k in debt, she even took out a couple of credit cards in my name. How the banks allowed this to happen I will never know.

At first I was very angry and upset not too mention deeply hurt and upset my wife could do this to me.

Anyway I have 2 young kids and love my wife so walking away was not an option. My wife is now seeking proffesional medical help for her spending addiction and hopefully things are on the mend.


Im now on a dmp and starting to repay this debt via h the cccs.
The problem im having is that two of the creditors· ironically the ones that are in my name refuse to stop the interest. I feel at this rate i never get out of debt as the monthy payments are more than what i owe. This is made me even more angry as i didnt spend a single penny on the cards in the first place.

There collections department is in india so i end up speaking to someone who doesnt understand nor give two monkeys of my prediciment.

I feel nothing but pure hate towards halifax and bank of scotland.

Ive been told by the dmp that there is nothing i can do as they are not obliged to stop the imterest. I was just wondering if anyone has been in a simalar situation or can offer any advice.

Sorry messed last reply up.....................

Hi, We also have 2 ccs with the Halifax and started our DMP in September. Hate to say it but out of our 10 creditors the Halifax have been the worst to deal with. To begin on my husbands cc with they refused our DMP twice then added charges and higher interest rate to our debt. Then after making a complaint they refunded said charges and interest and froze interest for 2 months then re commenced interest charges at 12% which was higher than pre DMP as we had part of a special rate. I wrote to complain again and received the reply a few days ago stating that they have not made an error. I am now in the process of writing to the FOS for them to look at it as currently out of a payment of approx £140per month I am only paying back about £15.00per month and it would take about 100 years to repay. I also have a cc wit them and had the said problems as my husband. I have not had reply re second complaint although when they wrote to inform me they were looking at complaint they stated that it was regrding ppi so they had not even sent me the right letter back. Anyway i will look forward to the FSO decision.

greebouk

Hi everyone. I am just on the edge of starting up a DMP with CCCS. I can't decide if I am scared or hopeful!:o
Took the first step today of opening a new basic account as our debts are with our bank and offsetting is not a good thing. Was quite proud of myself because I was offered a current account AND an overdraft AND a credit card and i said no to all! Once I have changed all my dd's then I have to let Lloyds and Halifax know. I must admit I am not looking forward to the first part of this. But having read lots of your posts, it seems that once the initial part is over, it gets easier.
My oh will be able to have a weeks holiday at home for the first time in 4years! So although money will still be tight, hopefully less stress.
Freaking out a bit about not having a od or CC to fall back on. But as someone said on here, it is changing your mindset!

Reducemydebt

Just wanted to share, I've finally taken hold of my debts and applied to start a DMP with CCCS tonight. I'm around £37,000 in debt, unsecured debt, and struggling to meet the minimum payments monthly but I definitely want to pay back the money so nonesense talk of IVA's dont appeal to me I want to pay back every penny I've borrowed.

The debt issues have got me very depressed and are affecting my general day-to-day life with work and my family; hopefully this is the start of my recovery!

Sadly, I'm a bit panicky after reading the comments on here though as most of my debt is with Lloyds/Halifax which look to be a problem based on feedback.

I'm about a apply for a new basic current account to move my essential DD's too.

greebouk

Reducemydebt wrote: »

The debt issues have got me very depressed and are affecting my general day-to-day life with work and my family; hopefully this is the start of my recovery!

Sadly, I'm a bit panicky after reading the comments on here though as most of my debt is with Lloyds/Halifax which look to be a problem based on feedback.
.

My debts are with Halifax and Lloyds too. Some people seemed to have not had any trouble, but I am not too confident about that. I suffer from depression anyway and I hope this DMP will enable me to sleep at night. Good luck with yours

Time_to_face_the_music

sickasachip13 wrote: »

Absolutely right, they do. It would be rare for it to take that long though. Ours went up only for the first couple of months I'd say, if that. The climb in the amount owed is to be expected initially - it is annoying and frustrating, but look forward to when the debt is going down instead.

Thanks SAAC, your post has made me feel a little more optimistic :T

AmyV_2

Hi all

I can see there are quite a lot of you talking about interest on your credit cards increasing. For those of you where interest hasn't increased yet (ie you are fighting to get it frozen), then I don't think it will be useful.

However for those who, like us, have had their rates increased when we increased DMP payments (so they obviously thought we had more spare cash to throw at them!), the following article could be of use.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/credit-card-interest-rate-increases

In Step 3 it states " in late 2008, the Government held a credit card summit, and warned lenders it'd ask for an OFT investigation if it didn't commit to treating customers fairly. On the back of this a set of principles came into force on 1 Jan 2009, which were slightly amended at the start of 2011 by further government input."

There is an explanation of the code. The bit which might be relevant to some of you is :-
No increases for those with debt problems

"We will not increase interest rates in the following circumstances. Where a customer has failed to make the minimum contractual payment requested on the last two or more consecutive monthly statements; or Where an agreed repayment plan is in place in respect of the account; or Where we have been formally notified by a not-for-profit debt advice agency that the customer is in serious discussion with it."

Translation: They won't increase your rate if you've fallen behind on payments by two months or more, or those who have sought help from a debt advice agency. So the crucial message is...

If you're in trouble, seek help from a non-profit debt counselling agency immediately to prevent the rate rising.

Now, we quoted this to one of our lovely creditors who increased interest when we increased our payment at the annual DMP review, and even though they signed up to the code of practice, they refused to adhere to it.

It is only code of practice and not law, however, what this has enable us to do is to go to the Financial Ombudsman, quoting this code of practice, to see if they think its unfair to increase interest when on a DMP. Its early days in the process, but I'll let you know how we get on.

AmyV_2

ravens72 wrote: »

Hi,
About a month ago my wife gave me the shock of my life and told me she was 25k in debt

Hi ravens

I think you'll find quite a few of us in this boat. My hubby kept his debt a secret for several years by which time it spiralled out of control (robbing Peter to pay Paul and all that) and eventually he had to tell me because he was nearing that point of having no more credit options available to pay off the spiralling debt.

I knew something wasn't quite right for a long time but could never put my finger on it. We used to keep all our finances separate and I am glad we did now!

Despite being horrified by the size of it by the time he confessed (ours was equivalent to the debt of a small nation I think), I was just relieved that finally I knew what was going on and could help dig him out of it - with massive help from this site and this Support thread.

When I write on here I refer to it as "our" debt, , just because it feels like that, particularly as I tend to do most of the writing to creditors etc and researching on this website.

There are times when I am really angry about the whole thing because I have been through the sleepless nights worrying about letters from creditors and the various stupid threats they come up with and the hours I have spent writing letters. I don't think he'll ever rack up debt again when this is over (though his credit rating is shot to ribbons anyway )

He is still a lovely person - just a bit rubbish with money :-)

mr777_2

Hi all, don't lose hope with interest etc!
Long story (look at my previous posts and you can read it!),
Basically i had three accounts with NatWest, 2 x overdrafts, and 1 x loan account. When i started my DMP through Payplan all interest had been frozen (or so i thought). The only one what was actually frozen was the loan account. So after 4 years of making regular payments through DMP, NatWest decided to send me a letter last year saying i owed them £5500 on one overdraft (originally £1500)! and £2500 on the other (originally £1000!). I argued and argued and got nowhere. eventually they passed my debts on to CapQuest. By this time i lodged a complaint with the Financial Ombudsman and got the ball rolling. Here's the result........
Quote:
Hi all, i need help!! Been paying into a DMP from Payplan now since August 2007. Never missed a payment, paying 3 different creditors for various things. Nat West are one of the creditors to which i am paying 2 account overdrafts and one personal loan. I recently recieved a letter from Payplan saying that they had recieved a letter from NW regarding the overdraft accounts. Payplan had the balances at (1) £1,400ish and (2) £430ish but NW had the balances at (1) £5,500ish and (2) £2,700ish :mad:!!!!!!!! I spoke to NW and they said that it would be down to interest and charges etc etc and i need to get a statement from my local branch to confirm this. Then if i am unhappy i have to write a letter of complaint to them. Obviously i am unhappy! and does anyone have an experience of this or similar?? what are my options??? If they continue adding this interest / charges i will be falling deeper into debt and not coming out of debt like i assumed i was!!!! Please help.............

Update - Yesterday i had an email from the Financial Ombudsman, who i made an official complaint about Nat West too, basically saying that as a gesture of goodwill NW are going to write off the debt completely on both overdraft accounts! Not only that but they are going to reduce my loan account by £5,074.40, because had i not accrued interest on my overdrafts i would have paid them earlier, hence this amount would have been paid off my loan!! RESULT!! WAHOO!!! Over the moon is an understatement!!!!