Anyone with experience of freezing interest with LLoyds?

abundant1972

I think you just have to persist... writing letters saying how you are trying to be responsible and repay your debt - but that by continued interest payments you will never succeed in doing that, and in fact your debt will increase. You could say that as you are still getting more in debt you will have no choice but to rethink your DMP, and possible consider other ways of managing your debt. Say the DMP was your first choice as you wanted to pay back the money you had borrowed - but if the bank is insistent on not aiding you in that you may have to consider bankruptcy (even if that is not your intention). I think most banks would rather have some payment than a loan written off. Warning - you may get your interest frozen - but will likely be served a default notice and your debt would be passed to a debt collection agency. In my case - they have been happy to accept what I can afford. I get letters every now and then but I just resend a letter saying I am with CCCS and this is all I can currently afford. I have 13k debt and most are interest free now.

Bettingmad

Unfortunately it does look as if the predators that are Lloyds have to be taken on aggressively. If with CCCS or Payplan you are unlikely(Not impossible) to get anywhere as they don't want to rock the boat and won't put enough pressure on Lloyds to drop their interest.
If in a self managed DMP you can take them head on and drop their payments to a token of £1 with a letter of complaint quoting the relevant sections of the Banking Code and OFT guidance. At the moment people are seen as cash cows by the greedy banking system(Lloyds & Halifax) and will make as much money as they can from peoples misery. By only making token payments you will force their hand and will look to pass the debt on sooner rather than later.

artyfartyem

Hi Magi,

We too have a DMP with CCCS and a loan with Lloyds too. We found they charged over £1000 interest in only a few months which made the balance go up dramatically. We too were harassed over the phone and in writing, and we kept persisting with them about the interest and charges we were getting. Long story short, someone in their overseas call centre agreed to accept the plan and freeze the interest, and we even got a letter through the post confirming the agreement, only to be charged even more interest after and not be put on a plan at all! My OH decided to fight it, and we wrote a very strongly worded letter to the complaints department, saying that the calls, empty promises, lies etc had caused us much distress and that they were aware of the situation we were in and that we couldn't afford to pay more, and certainly couldn't afford to pay their extortionate amount of interest, and if they couldn't resolve the issue within 14 days we would go to the Ombudsman. They contacted us within a couple of days and paid back the interest and now it is frozen, and also frozen on a cc with have with them!

Write to complaints, they won't do anything in the overseas call centre, in my experience they don;t even have a clue what I'm talking about anyway!

Hope this helps, and good luck!

pure_dead_dopey

complain complain complain
write to Lloyds complaints, put COMPLAINT in big red letters at the top of the letter
if they don't do something
phone FOS, its one phonecall and this is one area where they appear to have some teeth
it DID work for us, we got all the interest back and even some compensation
if you don't complain, they'll just rip you off
its against OFT guidelines to make your situation worse.
and take responsibility yourself for your debt, don't expect Payplan or CCCS to do your fighting for you, you have to do it yourself

Allypops

I was promised a call back within 24 hours as I raised a telephone complaint yesterday but nothing as yet. I think I will just go straight in now with a written complaint. Given that this is Lloyds general practice I can't see me getting anywhere by phone anyway.

After my call to Lloyds TSB yesterday I have been alternating between feeling completely defeated and demoralised to incredulous at the line they are taking :mad:. However, after another sleepless night I think I have decided to channel my anger into a big, long complaint letter with plenty of quotes from the lending code. I may also tell them that if they really are advising me to pay less they can have 50p a month if they like (okay so I wont really do that but I'd like to I'd also like to phone them again and blow a giant raspberry down the phone but will resist the temptation to do that as well ).

Perhaps, the only choice for everyone affeted in this way is to make a written complaint and then if no progress, follow it up with a complaint to the financial ombudsman. If they are being unfair then presumably the FOS will tell them so - particularly if the number of upheld complaints increases (weren't Lloyds TSB the most complained about bank anyway?)

Magi74 - Have you any thoughts on what you might do next?

Allypops

Thanks PDD and betting mad! Good succinct advice methinks

Time to fight back

pure_dead_dopey

consumer helpline

Monday to Friday – 8am to 6pm
Saturday – 9am to 1pm

• 0800 023 4567
  free for people phoning from a "fixed line" (for example, a landline at home)
• 0300 123 9 123
  free for mobile-phone users who pay a monthly charge for calls to numbers starting 01 or 02

we'll be happy to phone you back, if you're worried about the cost of calling us


these are the FOS complaint lines, I've lost count of the times I've posted them on here, please use them guys, that's what they are for!!!

Magi74

Allypops wrote: »

Magi74 - Have you any thoughts on what you might do next?

The complaints department are getting a full on pull-no-punches letter - having read the relevant bits of the lending code, along with some useful bits from a letter on National Debtline as well I've got a good letter coming together.

If that doesn't budge them then FOS here we come!

Some brilliant advice and support (thank you!) - hopefully everyone else gets a good result!

Allypops

Go Magi 74 - sock it to them!

...and I'll be doing the same!

Magi74

Go get 'em Ally! We're all rooting for ya!