Provident I just Can't Afford To Pay

Cumbrian_Male

First things first, do as advised and post on debt free wannabee board.

Did the CAB write to Provident or did you do it yourself, from a self help template letter?

If self help then it will go to the local office to be handled, and how depends on the local area manager.

If CAB then it will be handled by customer services at head office.

If you can't get help from CAB then contact CCCS who's link was in an above post. Again this will be dealt with by customer services at head office and your agent will stop calling.

I work for Provident so if you want to be more specific feel free to PM me.

freejack2k

to anyone with provident and in this situation speak to your local manager, agents get paid on a commission basis so if you make them an offer try and make it weekly they dont like offers at £20 a month they would be more likely to accept £5 per week, reason being if you pay £20 a month the agent loses money on you for 3 weeks out of 4 (they actually deduct commission for you not paying), if you pay £5 per week the agent wont get commission deducted. You are better off speaking to the local manager than anyone else, if you put it in writing letters have been known to go missing then the account is sent to the head office in bradford. if they debt is under £300 they sell it on to westcot services (debt collection company) and they are far less sympathetic than your local office. Main thing is get your agent on side, tell them you are sorry but are genuinly struggling, if you make an agreed rate with the agent KEEP TO IT, if they decide to "forget" to call on you then the account will be passed on, make sure if you are not in when they call you leave the money with someone so they dont have to mess round calling back.
How do i know all this? Im one of the local managers

alwaysonthego_2

you need to get back to the cab and ask them if they will refer you to a debt adviser. As someone said before rent and c tax are priority debts whereas provident loans aren't. They can only send balliffs round once it has gone to court, but if you get it sorted through cab and once your monthly expenditure has been worked out and what you have left over, you can offer to pay off your loan. If it goes to court and you have offered to pay this sum (you must pay it regulary) then it's more then likely it will be thrown out of court. The cab will arrange for the creditors to freeze any interest

adea

I am an agent with provident and as freejack points out, my wages are on a commission basis, so for any none payers, i lose money.
Please do speak to your agent and then the manager as i'm sure something will be able to be arranged, we are human and often as agents, we ourselves have loans so know what it's like.I have often been told by my manager, that it's better to for both parties to come to an arrangement between themselves rather than it go to court.
I have some customers on my round who i don't see and are paying through debt management companies, so the company will certainly do there best to help you.
The last thing you should do is to fall behind on your priority payments such as rent and council tax.Provident are nowhere near as vital as your home payments.
I hope you can get something worked out.

nomoneytoday

Don't worry about the agents commission. Sort a solution that is suitable for you and approved by HQ.

I'm sure they would rather have £20 a month with £1 commission, then £5 odd a week and pay £4 a month off your loan...

freejack2k

nomoneytoday wrote: »

Don't worry about the agents commission. Sort a solution that is suitable for you and approved by HQ.

I'm sure they would rather have £20 a month with £1 commission, then £5 odd a week and pay £4 a month off your loan...

you'd be surprised, i myself have sent accounts off for action who point blank refuse to co-operate, at the end of the day agents work hard for what they earn and it wouldnt kill the customer to pay a vastly reduced amount weekly. All the money the customer pays goes off their account so it makes no difference to them wether it is paid monthly or weekly.
And if you think comanys like provident rip people off you should see how much third parties like eurodebt charge to act as a third party, if they take £100 off the customer a month to pay off their debts they take at least £30 of that for themselves thus meaning the customer is actually taking years more to clear their debts. Funny thing is no one ever seems to say much against them.

SarahNeedle1872

Definately get urself over to Debt Free Wannabee, even if u don't intially get ur SOA in, just post the smae as ur first post here....

Sarah x

nomoneytoday

freejack2k wrote: »

you'd be surprised, i myself have sent accounts off for action who point blank refuse to co-operate, at the end of the day agents work hard for what they earn and it wouldnt kill the customer to pay a vastly reduced amount weekly. All the money the customer pays goes off their account so it makes no difference to them wether it is paid monthly or weekly.
And if you think comanys like provident rip people off you should see how much third parties like eurodebt charge to act as a third party, if they take £100 off the customer a month to pay off their debts they take at least £30 of that for themselves thus meaning the customer is actually taking years more to clear their debts. Funny thing is no one ever seems to say much against them.

Since it was an agent who lent money 4 weeks ago to someone who couldn't pay, why should they gain sympathy or commission out of this scenario?

cattie1

just wanted to give you my view-(I have worked for provi and have loans with them)
I was struggling with provi repayments (for me and OH)and tlod my agent that I was going to go through a debt management company, she told me not to-and that we could come to an arrangement together-I agreed to pay half of what I was paying each week (but only cos I could afford this amount) and she was, and still is very happy with that.
as long as you are making a payment of ANY amount EVERY week provi can not and will not do anthing except accept the payments.
The other thing my agent did was pay off one loan at a time which means I sometime get a rebate too-worth asking if yours will do that.

Silvafox

When myself and my partner had loans with these people we paid whatever we could in the end which was wasy under half what we were menat to be paying.

The woman who came round said as long as we paid something then they'd be fine. So some weeks we only gave her a tenner and then we asked her to come once a fortnight and just gave her lower amounts. At least they don't add charges to the loan account and as long as they are receiving something then they aren't gonna bother taking any further action as it won't be worth it to them.

Just offer what you can and increase it whenever you can. I was upfront with our agent and she was fine....