DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 9

Time_to_face_the_music

Julie67 wrote: »

Morning all,

I wonder if I could get some advice. All of our creditors have frozen interest and at the moment (until mortgage arrears paid) we are paying very small amounts. However Creation, which is Asda Credit Card will not play ball. They have reduced the interest to 0.25 % which sounds reasonable however as I'm only paying £5 a month at the moment this means that we are paying the grand total of 13p:eek: each month.

sharpeyes66 wrote: »

Halifax and Barclaycard have accepted the planned payemnts but are still charging interest, BC have reducede it to 6.9% and Hx still at std 19.5%. On that basis my £8800 debt to Halifax will reduce at just about £15 per month(48 years!!) and the £12k with Barclaycard at £140 pm. Is there any benefit in writing to these creditors to ask them to reconsider or do I just bite the bullet and hope that they sell the debt onto a DC agency who will be more likely to freeze interest. SC advised that their suggested payment to Halifax falls within the minimum repayment figure so that is why they won't stop the interest. In fact the guy from HX that I spoke to said if I was paying less per month via Step Change then there would be more chance of a reduction. Seems total nonsense.

OK before I say anything, please don't shoot me down in flames because I know StepChange offer a brilliant free service and we were extremely grateful for their help when we didn't even know such a thing as a DMP existed.

I know they are a real solution to thousands of people but these 2 messages show the exact reason why when we had the confidence and the knowledge, we left them and went alone.

I know we are told we have to treat all creditors fairly but (1) StepChange distribute their payments differently to any other DMP and (2) when did our creditors treat us fairly.

Julie - Paying a company £5 a month and seeing your debt reduce by 13p is not a debt solution. This debt really needs to default and personally I would be doing anything I could to get this to happen. Probably not paying them anything would be the best solution because £5 isn't really much worse than the token £1 per month. You don't have this option with StepChange, you could take it to the FOS but because Creation have reduced the interest, you probably won't win the case.

This is outside the rules but the only current suggestion I have is to pay any amount you have, no matter how small, as extra payments to this debt so you can see some reduction and hence reduce the interest each month. The other option is to wait until your mortgage arrears are paid off and not immediately declare this to StepChange and use the extra money to pay against this only interest charging debt.

Sharpeyes - Your Halifax issue is an identical problem we had with M&S and because we were within the minimum payment, we paid full interest until the debt was paid off. M&S told us the same thing, pay us less and we will stop the interest, StepChange said they couldn't pay less. We took the case to the FOS and lost so I can't even recommend that. This again is down to the way that StepChange distribute their payments, i.e. proportioned against your normal minimum payment v against your total debt.

We threw every spare penny we had at the M&S debt and paid it off in 14 months, rather than the predicted 4 years and 1 month. We did this by selling whatever we could and making every extra penny possible, overtime for me and exam marking for OH. I know this isn't possible for everyone and there are other solutions, again outside the rules but we need to ask ourselves who benefits from these rules and remember that a DMP is an informal arrangement and when we signed ours, it only made us promise not to take on any more debt and did not mention a word about extra payments to any creditor.

(1) You could look again at your I&E and see if there is any way you can increase your expenditure to allow you to pay less on your DMP. You then use the extra money freed up to make additional payments to interest charging creditors.

(2) You could check out other DMP arrangements and work out how these would effect your payments to Halifax. We use the NED CAB self managed DMP but Payplan calculate allocated payments in a different way to StepChange so if you prefer the security and back up of a managed plan, you could take a look at that.

If Barclaycard is not within the minimum payment, make a complaint to them and then follow it us with the FOS. Please let me know if you need any help/template letters for doing this.

Good luck both.

Time_to_face_the_music

BevieB wrote: »

Hello all, Had a cra--y day today. Someone has driven into the side of our car and driven off. The back wing, bumper and passenger door are all dented. This was the icing on the cake, we had only just got the car back from the garage where needed 2 new tyres, service and a list an arm long.Our excess is £350 plus all the other costs!!!!!
Does any one know if Stepchange can return any of the payments that have been just sent as I know they don't pay them out until after the 25th. If they can could get us out o a hole

Ugh BevieB - I am so sorry

What a scumbag trick to do that and then drive off :mad:

As HH had already said, yes StepChange can fully or partially reverse your payment so get on to them ASAP.

zenshi

Reading on here, it's generally said that you don't ring DCA's however I'm thinking at the mo I have no choice!

One of my credit cards have passed the debt over and although I am paying a token payment, I am getting letters, phone calls etc from the DCA about calling them to arrange payment or they will take it further

I'm getting quite worried as to what will happen. It seems they don't know I am paying a token amount. The CC by the way, have not accepted this and will not reduce of freeze interest

What should I do?

Julie67

Morning all,

Thanks for the advice HH and TTFTM. I think you right and I'm going to throw anything extra I can at it.
I agree about SC. they have been good for us getting us started but I feel I would have much more control and would make more headway managing it myself.
What was the process you went through. Did you just let SC know and then contact each creditor to explain what was happening with new budgets etc? I'm pretty sure we can increase the payments to everyone in August, but am concerned they won't accept the DMP when its self managed. Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks.

Find_The_Real

zenshi wrote: »

Reading on here, it's generally said that you don't ring DCA's however I'm thinking at the mo I have no choice!

One of my credit cards have passed the debt over and although I am paying a token payment, I am getting letters, phone calls etc from the DCA about calling them to arrange payment or they will take it further

I'm getting quite worried as to what will happen. It seems they don't know I am paying a token amount. The CC by the way, have not accepted this and will not reduce of freeze interest

What should I do?

Hello Zenshi

Who are you making the token payment to, the CC or the DCA?

It's kind of a personal choice really as to how well you can cope with them, I ring mine and then follow up with a letter but I see it as a personal point scoring exercise. I basically don't commit to anything even though they try.

I laughed at the last one when he asked if I was going pay off the £30k in one go. However if you don't feel you can cope then just send another letter to the DCA explaining the situation and continue to pay the token amount as they like to threaten as much as they can to get you to pay more and they play on this fear.

zenshi

Find_The_Real wrote: »

Hello Zenshi

Who are you making the token payment to, the CC or the DCA?

It's kind of a personal choice really as to how well you can cope with them, I ring mine and then follow up with a letter but I see it as a personal point scoring exercise. I basically don't commit to anything even though they try.

I laughed at the last one when he asked if I was going pay off the £30k in one go. However if you don't feel you can cope then just send another letter to the DCA explaining the situation and continue to pay the token amount as they like to threaten as much as they can to get you to pay more and they play on this fear.

At the moment, the token payment is being paid to the CC. It's as if they don't speak to each other!

Find_The_Real

As 2 of mine have been assigned to DCA's it is them I am paying the amounts to under a different reference number rather than the original creditor. It really needs a letter to go to the DCA as the creditor is probably not going to call off the rottwielers just because you are still making a token payment to them. It is also very obvious they rarely speak to each other!

Just out of interest who is the DCA as I think I have had the pleasure of quite a few of them in my time.

zenshi

The CC is Post Office- Bank of Ireland. The DCA is Red Castle, part of BCW group

The last letter I had stated that if I hadn't contacted them by the 6th then they would quote....consider CCJ or sending an agent to my house

I don't mind ringing them when I'm in the right frame of mind as long as I know what my rights are etc

Find_The_Real

Ah my favourites although still miffed I never got the Xmas party invite as promised . I only ever had a problem with one female there who was as nice as anything once I had snapped back at her.

They wanted an I&E - never got, they wanted payment - never got - threatened home visit - never happened and finally gave up and sent it back to FP.

I found them to be ok as far as DCA's were but that maybe just me. Then again I have always refused to make a payment by card, refused to do their I&E as my solicitor told me only a court can order you to provide one, and kept strong on my stance of not paying what I can't afford.

So it's now past the 6th, has anything happened?? Probably not.

zenshi

LOL, no nothing's happened! But I'm terrified it will. I am single, self employed and own my own house. Have no idea what the repucussions could be!

Would you carry on paying the CC and write too inform the DCA of this?