DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 9

Suseka

Strange. I received a response from the FOS re my complaint about Hfx charging interest and they have sent all my papers back saying that I have to give Hfx opportunity to resolve the issue and provide me with their final answer. They say they have contacted them to let them know I've raised a complaint and Hfx now have 8 weeks in which to respond.

The reason I find it strange is because in the paperwork I sent FOS I included the last letter I received from Hfx setting out what I perceived was their final answer although admittedly this was not explicitly stated.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait another two months before I can reinstate my complaint... and so it goes on

Just need to keep an eye on the two barclaycard accounts which are showing as 'up to date' on Noddle. Have again checked the last statement and it doesn't appear that they charged interest in February, although had been doing previous to that.

Anyway - its Friday and I'm very much looking forward to the weekend even though the weather's turned back to more seasonal temperatures.

Fed_up_and_forty

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone on this forum and especially to the first person who posted the template letter to send to creditors who don't stop interest.
After years and years of over spending on credit I hit a brick wall at 80mph, suddenly realizing i couldn't keep up with the minimum payments, scared to answer the constant phone calls, telling the kids not to answer the phone.. i eventually got the courage to start my DMP in December 2013. My debt totalled a massive £63500.. initially the DMP was great mainly because all the phonecalls stopped, no one was hassling me for money, it was like a huge weight was lifted and i wanted to wake up in the morning. After month 2 i started to check the balances and realised that most of the creditors had stopped the majority of the interest that was being added to my account, EXCEPT, halifax and Tesco's... so i found the template letter on the forum and sent it off to both creditors. To my surprise, after only 6 weeks, Tesco's stopped all my interest and credited my account with a £30 goodwill gesture. Yesterday i got a letter from Halifax stating that they did nothing wrong by charging interest but as a goodwill gesture and to assist me paying off my debt they will credit my account with £937.00 (which is all the over limit charges and additioanal interest). They haven't stopped my interest but they have lowered it.So i have now paid off 5% of my debt and am feeling hopeful that i can pay the rest off.
Thank you for all the help and support.

If you are still be charging interest then send the template letter and see what happens, its worth a try.

Constantinople

Hi,

I made my first payment to Payplan last month which has now been distributed to my creditors. Looking in my PayplanPlus creditor section, it looks like the plan has been 'accepted' for all but one of my accounts.

My question is, if the plan has been 'accepted', does this mean interest/charges will be frozen? I checked a couple of my accounts today and I can see that I'm still being charged interest/charges which are more than my 'accepted' payment. For example, Santander accepted a payment of around £18 a month which I can see on my account, but then two weeks later they have charged £100 in charges. I'll never clear my debt if this happens.. or does it just take a while for them to freeze charges?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Suseka

Hi and welcome Constantinople,

It a bit of both really. It will take a little while for your accounts to settle and in that time its not unusual to see balances increase. Mine did for the first couple of months and since then I've seen a steady decline. However, just because creditors have accepted the arrangement puts them under no 'legal' obligation to freeze interest charges.

Most of mine have, some did it straight away, others after a few months and Halifax are still charging me the full rate (something I am currently dealing with).

So I would give it a little while longer and see what happens and then, if needs be, come back on the boards and then someone will provide you with various template letters that you can send to creditors to encourage them to stop charges.

Puzzcat

Constantinople wrote: »

Hi,

I made my first payment to Payplan last month which has now been distributed to my creditors. Looking in my PayplanPlus creditor section, it looks like the plan has been 'accepted' for all but one of my accounts.

My question is, if the plan has been 'accepted', does this mean interest/charges will be frozen? I checked a couple of my accounts today and I can see that I'm still being charged interest/charges which are more than my 'accepted' payment. For example, Santander accepted a payment of around £18 a month which I can see on my account, but then two weeks later they have charged £100 in charges. I'll never clear my debt if this happens.. or does it just take a while for them to freeze charges?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Hi Constantinople,


I echo what Suseka says. My debt went up about 1% in the setting up/start of my dmp.. that was about £600:eek:.


All settled down now, and all but 1 of my 9 debts are on 0%. However I did use the 'please stop charging' letter with one of them. They are refunding some interest charges and have reduced interest rate but not frozen it. The letter I used was TTFTM's letter and if you want to find it, it was reposted recently or check out page 115 of this thread, post 2285.


Good Luck and come back and see us soon..
Puzz.

Meatloaf1981

I’m hoping that my own DMP will improve substantially as and when I can afford to increase my payments. My DMP is somewhat different to most in that it is not centrally managed. I am not making a single DMP payment but have had individual payments negotiated and agreed with 5 out of 6 of my creditors. The 6th is a credit union and I have negotiated down a payment to them from £213 to £150 a month, leaving me a mere £75 more to spread across my other creditors. Until that loan is paid off in 4 years time, my current repayment schedule means I’ll be paying my DMP for 40 years unless I can spread any extra money I earn across the other creditors to bring that down! Needless to say, I am relying on pay rises and being able to pay off my credit union loan faster than 4 years to ensure I can then commit myself to higher repayments on my remaining creditors. Any chance I get, I’ll be dropping in lump sums from overtime and increased payments from pay rises to make sure it comes down a hell of a lot quicker than 40 years!

fermi

Worth reading for anyone who has years of AP markers that should have been defaults that would be off your credit report or not long to go.

---> barcleycard AP removal

Successfully removed there.

Growurown

NewcastlePaul wrote: »

Am so glad I joined this forum in January. The support and info is invaluable. Was wary of joining at first as my debt was caused by me being stupid and irresponsible and was worried that I might get shot down in flames.

Ah well if we shot you down in flames then we would all have to have the same treatment. I for one would like to keep my eyebrows:D

NewcastlePaul wrote: »

I want to pay back every penny (subject to F&F offers) but £50k paid back so far and hopefully the rest goes down in time.

Thank you guys, Thank you MSE and thank you Martin Lewis :beer:

I admire your determination and that is a tremendous amount to have paid back and yes cheers to MSE:beer:

Growurown

Suseka wrote: »

Strange. I received a response from the FOS re my complaint about Hfx charging interest and they have sent all my papers back saying that I have to give Hfx opportunity to resolve the issue and provide me with their final answer. They say they have contacted them to let them know I've raised a complaint and Hfx now have 8 weeks in which to respond.

The reason I find it strange is because in the paperwork I sent FOS I included the last letter I received from Hfx setting out what I perceived was their final answer although admittedly this was not explicitly stated.

This happened to us too. We complained to the Halifax and they sent us a letter back saying to telephone them so in fact it wasn't a final answer. I suspect they do this on purpose to muddy the waters.

When we didn't get a satisfactory reply to our complaint we complained to the FOS and they asked for a final answer too, which of course we couldn't give them, but in the meantime Halifax got back to us and refunded the money anyway.

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Fed_up_and_forty wrote: »

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone on this forum and especially to the first person who posted the template letter to send to creditors who don't stop interest.
After years and years of over spending on credit I hit a brick wall at 80mph, suddenly realizing i couldn't keep up with the minimum payments, scared to answer the constant phone calls, telling the kids not to answer the phone.. i eventually got the courage to start my DMP in December 2013. My debt totalled a massive £63500.. initially the DMP was great mainly because all the phonecalls stopped, no one was hassling me for money, it was like a huge weight was lifted and i wanted to wake up in the morning. After month 2 i started to check the balances and realised that most of the creditors had stopped the majority of the interest that was being added to my account, EXCEPT, halifax and Tesco's... so i found the template letter on the forum and sent it off to both creditors. To my surprise, after only 6 weeks, Tesco's stopped all my interest and credited my account with a £30 goodwill gesture. Yesterday i got a letter from Halifax stating that they did nothing wrong by charging interest but as a goodwill gesture and to assist me paying off my debt they will credit my account with £937.00 (which is all the over limit charges and additioanal interest). They haven't stopped my interest but they have lowered it.So i have now paid off 5% of my debt and am feeling hopeful that i can pay the rest off.
Thank you for all the help and support.

If you are still be charging interest then send the template letter and see what happens, its worth a try.

Fantastic news. Well done


HHx