Still paying off debts through CCCS

Simon1976

Hello,
I wonder if anyone has had the same issue as I am having and if there is something that I can do about it. Here goes:

A few years ago I was made redundant and at the time I had a credit card and a bank loan. Me and my partner had just had a baby so times were tough. I called my bank to tell them that I couldn't make the payments on my loan (both my current account and the loan were through them) and was advised that they could stop the payments or put them on hold, so my bank account became more and more overdrawn due to the loan payments being taken every month. Soon after (3-4 months perhaps) I contacted the CCCS and was set up on payment plan with them. My partner and I broke up soon afterwards and that meant finding a place to live on my own, with the added cost.
I had worked out that by the time I was 34 I would have cleared all the debts. I'm now 36 and these debts are still not paid off. Last year I called CCCS to question the numbers (I seem to have paid FAR more to CCCS than my debts where to start off with) and was told that "Debters can add fees to the debts if they wish, there is nothing we can do about this". In the time since I started paying these the bank loan and current account debt seem to have moved to a debt collection agency and then bank to Nat West again. Each time this has happened the amount owed seems to have increased. I have looked at my latest statement and a balance that was £0 in december is now reading £500+ in January. Whilst I have been with CCCS I have had no communication with any off the debt collection agencies.
The credit card debt seems to have stayed stable through out the process.
Sorry for the 'war and peace' type thread but I suppose my question is: Am I getting ripped off by the CCCS and if I can prove I have paid MORE to date than my debts were to start with, is there anything I can do about it?

Thanks!!!

artyfartyem

Hi Simon,

Have you been updating the account balances on your CCCS debt sheet each month? I find this helpful because most of my creditors are annoyingly still charging interest and CCCS don't take this into account on your monthly statement unless you are regularly updating the balances. If you have been charged interest then you will probably have paid more than your debts were initially, and CCCS don't seem to negotiate this with the creditors. If you don't have much left to pay you could contact CCCS/creditors and see if there is any way of writing off the outstanding amount (long shot) or writing to your creditors and ask if they have been charging interest while you have been on your DMP, and if they can reduce/stop/refund.

We were charged over £700 interest on an account that we had paid £1000 into, and until we wrote to them (lloyds) they had no intention of helping. But they did stop charging interest and refunded them money after our complaint, so its defo worth a try!

Hope this helps.

arty

eyeopener2

Write to all your creditors and ask for statements, which they should send you anyway.

That way you know exactly where you stand.

E2

Tixy

CCCS are not ripping you off.

But you need to keep checking your actual balances on your accounts via statements or letters from your creditors or debt collectors.

It sounds like some of your creditors are charging you interest still.

As suggested above you need to contact each creditor to find out how much you owe, and if you don't have all the statements then ask them for a full transaction history of the account, giving a breakdown of the current balance.

If they are still charging interest its worth trying to write to them to ask if the will reconsider freezing it. They don't have to but its worth trying.

pure_dead_dopey

and if they won't stop complain to the FOS, its what they are for and it works.

sickasachip13

Hi,

As the others have said, it looks like your creditors have continued charging % and the CCCS system does not automatically capture this. It's down the the holder of the DMP to manually adjust this. I do it once a month with ours. It's also worth checking your statements from your creditors regularly, to see what they are up to and, for those you don't get statements from, ring them and ask for balances - again I do this monthly, which is a lot more often than many people, but I like to know what they're doing! For those that have continued charging %, as the others have said, write to them and ask them to stop - there are template letters on the National Debtline website.
SAAC