The best and worst creditors, your experiance

Mrs_Ryan

Only company I've really had trouble with is Reliable Collections. When I was off work sick they somehow got my work number and blocked the lines (bear in mind I work in a hospital) not long after I had fraud on my bank account. Only people who have my work number is my bank. I had a long email conversation with them in which I repeatedly asked where they had obtained my work number and they repeatedly skirted the topic. I finally told them to issue a final response and said if they still refused to give me an answer I would have no option but to report them to the Police for fraud as it seemed to me that it was too coincidental. They finally issued a response about 2 months later blaming some third party company saying it was them who had called and all numbers were now removed. The initial person who rang got it in the neck from me and they bleated 'oh but you would have given it and given us permission to ring it when you opened the account' to which I bluntly told them that was complete carp as I opened the account 7 months before I even started my current job and if they didnt believe me I would send them a copy of my contract! To which they just went silent... no answer there!!

svenls

MorningAll,
Thought I would share my experiences too.

On a DMP with CCCS since August 2011 and not had many problems really allaccepted straight away;

Barclaycard (was Egg) £3500 0% no charges
Capital One £8000 0% no charges but defaulted in Oct 2011
First Direct £450 OD 5.9% no charges
MBNA £6000 0% no charges
Virgin (MBNA) £2000 2.9% no charges
Santander £2400 0% no charges
LTSB CC £2000 5.9% no charges (reviewed after 6 months - no problems)

... except;

LTSB OD £900 Initially rejected DMP offer and continued to add interest and bank charges. Eventually after a couple of months and several phone calls, including one of over an hour, agreed to freeze interest and charges and review in 6 months. I rang them on the renewal date and spoke to someone who was just reading from a script and did not listen to anything I was telling her. Said my situation had not changed and could we keep the same agreement. After having to explain why I was calling 3 times, she said she could not do that on the same agreement, but if I reduced my offer from £28 to £15 per month she could renew it!!!
I agreed (although payments have remained the same) and she said that the charges and interest would remain frozen - I was not convinced and the charges and interest duly appeared on my next statement.
Called Customer Services and was put through to Collections where I spoke with the most obnoxious person I have ever dealt with!! I know Collections are used to listening to sob stories and their job is to get money out of people, but this guy was just plain rude and when I had explained the situation (agreement made on the phone but charges still in place) his attitude was "what do you expect me to do about it? I didn't agree that with you??" and if I wasn't happy why didn't I write in and complain!! Not in the slightest bit interested in helping me, just wanted to get me off the phone - then said that he couldn't talk to ME about it about MY account as it was being dealt with through CCCS and if I was unhappy I should speak to them!!! I was getting a little frustrated by this point and explained to him that the agreement was now and always would be between ME and LTSB (including the DMP)and CCCS were merely an intermediary. He then lost patience and said he would refund the charges that had been added and said he was going to terminate the call!!! I thanked him for that but said that I wanted the agreement that had been made previously to be honoured. His response wasn't word for word "OK yes, whatever..." but that was the impression I got. I await the next statement...

Fortunately this is a relatively small drop in my ocean of debt, but having banked with Lloyds for almost 20 years (paying £000's in charges and interest!!!) I don't want to pay them a penny more than I have to and when they are paid off I will never have anything to do with them ever again!!

moohound

Just rang Halifax, paid token payment, lady was really nice and polite. So far so good.

Have 4 debts will Lloyds TSB not looking forward to dealing with them.

silvervan

Been on DMP 3 months.
Barclaycard accepted straight away & froze interest
Tesco Loans the same
Capitol One the same
Intelligent Finance CC the same
Littlewoods Home Shopping the same.

The only one who will not accept the DMP is GE Money who I Borrowed £2100 from via having some windows from Safestyle windows.
I had kept up my normal payments for 4 years and never missed a payment, so had more than paid off the £2100 I borrowed but because of the way their loans work I have never actally paid off anything so still owe the same amount.
They keep on adding interest and charges and phoning numerous times a day from 8am in the morning. Payplan have asked them to stop and they say the will (for 7 days) and have said they will pass me onto a Collection agency if I wont pay them more than I was paying them before I lost my business and couldnt afford to pay them??
They are no better than loan sharks in my opinion and I hope they go bust.

bakerfa

Barclaycard took over my Egg loan and very fair, no interest no charges just reducing balance.

My Cahoot loan and overdraft total nightmare!

Have been on DMP with Payplan 6 years, still supposed to run for 4 more years. My first defaults are supposed to fall off in September and December and I don't really know what to do after that.

Cahoot added interest and charges of 30 pound plus per month so I now owe them thousands more than when I started.

La Redoute didn't default my account but left it as in arrears for 6 years, on a monthly basis so they will be affecting my credit rating for about 14 years at this rate...

rdchick

I'm about to start my DMP next month (fingers crossed) and my creditors are:

Halifax (overdraft, loan and credit card) roughly £7000
Vanquis - £450
Aqua - £250
Capital One - £200
Quickquid - £720
Wonga - £90
PDUK - £129

So let's see how that goes!

Mrs_Arcanum

Another thumbs up for MBNA who have been fine right from the start.

Also Egg/Barclaycard have been fine too after the first couple of months.

GE Money/Link took a year and many letters before they removed & backdated interest charged.

Nationwide Overdraft has just passed this to KPR after two years.

Nationwide CC went the whole hog with CCJs and a restriction on the mortgage. Now they get the CCJ amount & no more, even though other creditors get a bit more each month as finances improved.