Immediate Financial - have i done the right thing?

tmcg147

Hi all.

I had a dmp with payplan for almost 2 years on debts totalling about 11k, that was until march this year when i stopped paying into it and changed to Immediate Financial. The reason i did so was the phone call i received from IF (no idea where they got my number but thats another story!) - in the phone call they said that rather than paying what i was paying for the next 4 years why not change to them, pay less, and be totally debt free within 3 years!! Of course this to me sounded great and i accepted.

7 months later - i have no paid almost 1500 quid to IF and i was looking on the internet to see if there were many successful reviews of people becoming debt free quicker like they promise! You can imagine my shock when i discovered sites like this one with negative reviews and advice!!

To be fair to IF they have just settled my first debt - which was 330quid, they got it settled for 260quid, saving me 70quid. I thought, well thats good isnt it, if they do that with the remaining creditors then that will be great.

But looking at it a different way, have i really saved that money, with their fees each month?? And how realistic is it that this will continue and the other debts will be settled as they say.

Im not caught in two minds, as to what to do, continue with IF, go back to payplan, or do something else?? If i do leave IF, what happens to my money, have i lost it?? Reading this forum it seems that i could negotiate full and final settlement figures myself, is that correct and if so, is it straightforward?? Can you also run a dmp yourself?? How does this work if you do negotiate a F&F figure??

Any advice greatly received.

thanks

nfollows1982

tmcg147 wrote: »

7 months later - i have no paid almost 1500 quid to IF

Think that line sums it up really, £1500 that could and should have been paid onto your debt already.

If you say your total debt at the start was £10k then you've paid 15% of that to a company who you owe no money to.

CCCS are there to help you, all fee paying companies are there to help themselves.

tallyhoh

just found this
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3138682

fatbelly

Do a Statement of affairs and we'll try to point you in the right direction.

It sounds like either a dmp with cCCS/Payplan or a self-managed one but maybe there's something else.

daveyboy439

Hi there,
I use IF for my DMP and they managed to get one of my loans down from 11K to 3K to settle over a 12 month period. ( i had confirmation from the loan company and IF to confirm this )
I have nothing but good things to say about this company and they have helped me get back on track after i was made redundant 2 years ago.

Thrifty_Pixie

strange that the person above was a new user with only one post..not that i'm cynical or anything.... Immediate Financial having a bad time of it?

purp751

help, am really worried now, we went with IF as it linked up to them from this forum for them to help when put in our details so I took it to be a reputable moneysavingexpert approved company, why does it do this if they aren't recommended by people on this forum, now found this post saying what a rip off they are, they've already had £450 off it and we can't afford to be losing that and not getting it back, we ONLY considered them on the basis was linked from the main page here on the debt advice part!!

Can you change DMC's or are we now stuck with them as signed up, one debt has already gone to a collector, they're paying each one £1 a month and still getting charged interest though in fairness they did warn us that the interest would still be applied until the companies fessed up to an agreement, one of which has admitted they have been in contact with, we went with them to try to help with the stress not exaggerate it even further as we'd tried to negotiate payments without success with the companies involved?

Natwest in particular were horrendous and still are being

tallyhoh

Where did you get the link from on here?

fatbelly

This is 'Martin's list' and IF are not there!!!

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/debt-help-plan#help

purp751

whoops, apologies, my mistake sorry, the OH just corrected me, the link was off moneysupermarket.com not moneysavingexpert.com, still a company that's supposed to be offering reputable advice and links which is a tad disappointing they're basically approving these firms for a few quid!

Any answers on the question of can you change from a fee based one to a non-fee one like payplan or are we now stuck with IF and tough, I have contacted payplan as it did say on their site to do so if you're with a fee based company but this time would like to be forearmed of any issues that may come up?!!