DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 9

Hopelessly_Hopeful

kylie_smiley wrote: »

Hi all! Had a letter from Barclaycard who have said they will freeze all charges etc until they hear from SC - but they want to hear by 28.9.13...should be fine, I know SC have written to people.

Have also had a reply from Natwest saying they cannot action my letter as I have not signed it, and have sent a letter asking me to 'sign on the line below.' This rang alarm bells a bit, so I'm about to ring SC and get their advice :-/

Good news on the months grace with BC.

the only reason people say don't sign the letter is incase you want to go UE at some point. SC probably not open until Monday.

HHx

kylie_smiley

UE? (Sorry - being a bit dim!)

Puzzcat

kylie_smiley wrote: »

UE? (Sorry - being a bit dim!)

Unenforceable..

Puzzcat

As a complete newbie not yet started my dmp I do have one piece of advice to give to anyone considering or starting this journey...read the threads.. The information and advice is amazing and has really helped me to take this big step as prepared as I can be. I have read 9,8 and 7 and am now rereading 9 to refresh my memory on who is who!
Good luck to all and thank you to all the regular posters. Xxxxx

lizzy23

Mossop01 wrote: »

Hi all, 6 months into our dmp and I've just had to do a review due to increase in household bills. If there's one piece of advice I could give any newbies is don't scrimp on your budget, I panicked when setting up our dmp and tried to throw every spare penny at it, big mistake! If ur in this for the long haul like me then it has to be manageable, after 6 months of really struggling we have given in and increased our living expenses, decreasing our payments by £100 a month. I know this is going to add a lot more time to our dmp but it will hopefully let us eat better and live a little.
Has anyone had any experience of the repercussions of decreasing payments to creditors? I'm hoping the backlash isn't too bad, feel abit like we're back to square one today and really disappointed we've had to do this but we didn't have much choice it was too stressful for us living like that.

Think this should be pinned at the top of the thread, at the end of the day as soon as you enter a DMP your credit rating is trashed, so you may as well be as comfortable as possible

Still_skint

I got so much help and advice from people on here when I was thinking about entering into a DMP that I thought I would just write a few lines about my experience so far in the hope that it may help some people along the way.

I'm four months into my DMP now and things are going smoothly so far.
Since being contacted by payplan, not one of my creditors has called me. I have received a few letters telling me that payment is due but that's about it.
At first my balances increased as credit card companies piled on interest and charges for non payment etc and this was very worrying. However most companies have now frozen or seriously reduced their interest charges and I am now starting to see a decrease in the amount I owe.
It does take a while for things to settle down. Nat west have told me they will continue to charge interest for another month and then they will stop ? All seem to have very different approaches.
To sum up, I needn't have worried about entering into a DMP. So far anyway.
I make my money last and I don't feel too poor. It's such a good feeling to see that debt reduce.
The best advice offered on here is don't kill yourself trying to pay it back or you will fail. Claim for everything you can and make your payments realistic.
Good luck everyone !
Oh and one last thing. In my experience it is best not to ignore the letters your creditors send you and to deal with them your self rather than trust someone else to sort it out for you.

Larac

Totally agree that the budget you submit needs to be realistic when you are in a DMP. I missed off loads of essential spends from my budget and suffered a miserable first year. You need be very thorough and ensure you capture all your outgoings and when it comes to the review you can justify them. My advice is to allocate some money to each category even if you don't use it and this will give you some money to play around with, otherwise you will find any spare cash gets put into the DMP payment and you will be living on a thin line all month and there is no emergency funds and puts you in constant stress mode.

anywayout

So another day another default good news is I got an email from wonga saying thar they understand im going on a dmp and thet have frozen all interest for 30 days until.they hear from step change. Bad news is quick quid have sent me a cheeky email about my account being in default - I emailed back with the "im going into a dmp" letter and also referred them to my recorded delivery letter with token payment that they HAVE received. Nothing at all fro the cheque centre which I find worrying but hoping stepchange will start contacting everyone this week and it will settle down. I have printed out the only contact by letter not phone and will be posting them recorded Monday aswell as visiting barclays in person to open an account. Does anyone know if it matters than my driving licence is at a different address from where I live? I forgot to change it when I moved. So things are moving forward and feel good today :-) thanks to all the advice and support x

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Puzzcat wrote: »

As a complete newbie not yet started my dmp I do have one piece of advice to give to anyone considering or starting this journey...read the threads.. The information and advice is amazing and has really helped me to take this big step as prepared as I can be. I have read 9,8 and 7 and am now rereading 9 to refresh my memory on who is who!
Good luck to all and thank you to all the regular posters. Xxxxx

I did the same Puzzcat, sat with a pen and copied numbers of useful posts, really helped me to understand things best you can. The hardest thing to get my head around was that there are no hard rules because of the informal nature. It's more about a balance of probabilities so was really useful to hear from people and to get information that would equip me to get through.

HHx

fermi

kylie_smiley wrote: »

UE? (Sorry - being a bit dim!)

As said, UE=unenforceable.

Some older (before April 2007) credit agreements did not have the correct legal terms in them, or creditors failed to get a signature before advancing the credit. Without one or the other some of those older account may be "unenforceable" if it went to court. Hence, if you may be forced down that route is is sometime advisable to avoid providing a signature, as it is not unknown for creditors and debt collectors to "lift" them off letters and copy they onto what they claim were original agreements. A small small risk, but it has happened to some.

Accounts being UE can give you leverage over creditors when reaching settlements etc. Not always an easy path though.

However, if not considering that then there is not really a reason not to sign.