DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 9

Hopelessly_Hopeful

rokat wrote: »

Thanks Hopelessly Hopeful!

Another fan of milestones I see.

Great weight loss! Well done x

HHx

Hopelessly_Hopeful

alyxzandra wrote: »

Our DMP has been going on well for the past year.

Lovely post

Glad things are coming good for you. Fingers crossed the rotter builder gets the justice he deserves!

HHx

alyxzandra

Hopelessly_Hopeful wrote: »

Lovely post

Glad things are coming good for you. Fingers crossed the rotter builder gets the justice he deserves!

HHx

HH, I actually forgot to mention you in my post! I always read your posts with awe and see just how much you have gotten paid off.

As for the builder, he is a lowlife of the highest order. Someone has started a Facebook page about him!

We have been lucky. A friend of mine paid off one credit card and we still owe her £1900. She has refused to allow me pay her back as she said we are family and she knows I would have helped her out the same way. However, after a year, I strong armed her into giving me her bank details and will start paying it back. It would have been impossible for me not to pay her back. She tried to get out of it by saying when I retire in 20 years and get my pension lump sum to think about it then! But, I told her if she did not accept my payments then I would save it up and shove it in her handbag when we met up.

Time_to_face_the_music

Great to hear things are going well alyxzandra :j


I hope that cowboy builder gets his comeuppance some day soon :mad:

jubilee14

well done Alyxzandra thats a great amount paid off. I have been on DMP for just a little longer than you and wish i was making as much head way - keeps me motivated reading everyones posts of progress tho.

jubilee14

Hi all - i did a seperate post on the forum but didnt get many replies apart from Puzcat - thanks

Just wanting views on whether i should contact hfx on repaying the credit card - they have been threatening to default me for the past few months and got a letter saying i had no arrangement although they are still charging me the reduced 11% pa. i had contested this to freeze interest way back and missed the 6 month window to complain to FOS.

So while i am still paying money via DMP each month its only taking just over £20 off a $10k + debt a month so ideally want to be defaulted.

Concern is if i do contact them i go continue with this which keeps pushing my DFD right out. But if i dont they try and take legal action and put something like a charging order on me.

any views would help thanks all.

Time_to_face_the_music

jubilee14 wrote: »

Hi all - i did a seperate post on the forum but didnt get many replies apart from Puzcat - thanks

Just wanting views on whether i should contact hfx on repaying the credit card - they have been threatening to default me for the past few months and got a letter saying i had no arrangement although they are still charging me the reduced 11% pa. i had contested this to freeze interest way back and missed the 6 month window to complain to FOS.

So while i am still paying money via DMP each month its only taking just over £20 off a $10k + debt a month so ideally want to be defaulted.

Concern is if i do contact them i go continue with this which keeps pushing my DFD right out. But if i dont they try and take legal action and put something like a charging order on me.

any views would help thanks all.

You really need to get this interest stopped ASAP and preferably refunded. I have managed this with most of our creditors but don't have any experience with Halifax. Have you spoken to the FOS since you missed their deadline and asked them if they would consider action if start over and you raise a new complaint?

What do Stepchange have to say? Are your other debts defaulted? Is anyone else still charging interest?

It takes a lot of nerve to do but I would be tempted to drop my payments to token £1 for 3 months or so. I wish I had done this right at the start of our DMP and am sure it would have done wonders for the number of defaults and reduced the number of AP markers.

I actually asked Lloyds TSB to default me and they co-operated on one account but have been waiting 15 months since their "promise" on the other. They will probably default me the month before I pay it off!

Sorry I can't be much more help but hopefully someone with experience of Halifax will come along soon.

TTFTM x

Powered_By_Pies

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

Hi Powered_By_Pies and welcome :hello:

OK everyone else has been nice, I'm not going to be, I really need to be straight about this!

You owe approximately £7000 and your DFD is estimated as August 2016. Is that with or without Gregory Pennington's fees?

Over that 2 years and 4 months, you will pay them a minimum of £38.50 a month, which adds up to £1078. This is around 15.5% of your debt! Why are you throwing that money away, it should be coming off your debt not lining their fat pockets.

Gregory Pennington say they have a 98% success rate? Guess what, I have a 100% success rate and I do it on my own and have paid off £58,474 in 26 months. Dump them and stick around here and we will show you how it's done.

I'll even ask nicely ..... please dump them

TTFTM x

Hey TTFTM,

Firstly apologies for the loooong delay in my reply. Been rushed at work and not had a chance or continually forgot to log on!

You are of course totally right about fee-based DMP's and I know that it's a large factor of why mine doesn't look so appealing. My problem has mainly been Natwest and their abysmal incompetence at listening to anything I tell them, constantly 'mislaying' letters I send them, sending me letters and calling me on very frequent occasions to tell me I wasn't paying enough back etc and to 'revise your repayment structure with us' (I'd spent 6 months paying them back almost double what my original minimum repayments were on the credit card, which is part of the reason I started using mass-interest credit from payday companies which started the spiral), and yet they still don't listen. I've gone through the FOS with them on two occasions for separate complaints, both times they've left it right up to the end of the time limit then come out with the bare minimum for the FOS to admit there's nothing else they can do.

So to me, having someone else stand in my corner and possibly have a bit more clout is appealing for now.

Not trying to justify my choices by any stretch of the imagination and I fully suspect that within the next couple of months once the dust has settled I'll look into options and how I can switch to a free DMP provider or even go it alone again, although the latter thought scares me a little. GP have confirmed that offer letters have been sent out to my creditors and all's quiet on the western seaboard although I reckon that's more to do with the bank holiday.

Once I'm more confident in where I stand with each creditor and that repayments are agreed/negotiated, I'll sit back and take another look at it all and see what I can do to cut this debt even further. One of the things that may work to my advantage is that the remaining creditors are all relatively low debts, there's just a few that all total to the overall amount. If I can manage it, I'll likely be able to spend the next few months saving lumps at each time and making F&F's and picking them off one by one until I'm left with Natwest - at which point I'll definitely switch to a free DMP, and dump them in that and leave them to rot until it's paid.

Time_to_face_the_music

Powered_By_Pies wrote: »

Hey TTFTM,

Firstly apologies for the loooong delay in my reply. Been rushed at work and not had a chance or continually forgot to log on!

You are of course totally right about fee-based DMP's and I know that it's a large factor of why mine doesn't look so appealing. My problem has mainly been Natwest and their abysmal incompetence at listening to anything I tell them, constantly 'mislaying' letters I send them, sending me letters and calling me on very frequent occasions to tell me I wasn't paying enough back etc and to 'revise your repayment structure with us' (I'd spent 6 months paying them back almost double what my original minimum repayments were on the credit card, which is part of the reason I started using mass-interest credit from payday companies which started the spiral), and yet they still don't listen. I've gone through the FOS with them on two occasions for separate complaints, both times they've left it right up to the end of the time limit then come out with the bare minimum for the FOS to admit there's nothing else they can do.

So to me, having someone else stand in my corner and possibly have a bit more clout is appealing for now.

Not trying to justify my choices by any stretch of the imagination and I fully suspect that within the next couple of months once the dust has settled I'll look into options and how I can switch to a free DMP provider or even go it alone again, although the latter thought scares me a little. GP have confirmed that offer letters have been sent out to my creditors and all's quiet on the western seaboard although I reckon that's more to do with the bank holiday.

Once I'm more confident in where I stand with each creditor and that repayments are agreed/negotiated, I'll sit back and take another look at it all and see what I can do to cut this debt even further. One of the things that may work to my advantage is that the remaining creditors are all relatively low debts, there's just a few that all total to the overall amount. If I can manage it, I'll likely be able to spend the next few months saving lumps at each time and making F&F's and picking them off one by one until I'm left with Natwest - at which point I'll definitely switch to a free DMP, and dump them in that and leave them to rot until it's paid.

When NatWest ignored me, I dropped their payment to £1 a month until they decided to play ball and default my OH. I think it took 4 months but we got the default, interest stopped and all previous interest/charges etc refunded.

We struggled with NatWest and the FOS but after a lot of hassle and fighting eventually won the case on the grounds that NatWest were treating two accounts differently. What is the FOS's justification for rejecting your complaint? And how do you think GP will get interest stopped if the FOS have said they can't do anything?

Sorry if I came across as bossy but I hate to see anyone wasting money on something they can get for free or easily do themselves

jubilee14

Time_to_face_the_music wrote: »

You really need to get this interest stopped ASAP and preferably refunded. I have managed this with most of our creditors but don't have any experience with Halifax. Have you spoken to the FOS since you missed their deadline and asked them if they would consider action if start over and you raise a new complaint?

What do Stepchange have to say? Are your other debts defaulted? Is anyone else still charging interest?

It takes a lot of nerve to do but I would be tempted to drop my payments to token £1 for 3 months or so. I wish I had done this right at the start of our DMP and am sure it would have done wonders for the number of defaults and reduced the number of AP markers.

I actually asked Lloyds TSB to default me and they co-operated on one account but have been waiting 15 months since their "promise" on the other. They will probably default me the month before I pay it off!

Sorry I can't be much more help but hopefully someone with experience of Halifax will come along soon.

TTFTM x

thanks TTFM appreciate it. Yes its been the bugbear of my life. Did speak to FOS and didnt get anywhere re claim because of the timeline.

I wasnt sure about challenging interest again as they had written to me to say if i hadnt addressed outstanding payments by 12th March they would default me. Then got another letter from 24th April saying i wasnt treating the debt seriously and there was no arrangement in place ( despite charging me a lower APR than originally - and they havent rejected any payments as yet.

i thought if i did contact them then i would risk being put back on the AP green box scenario and would still be paying the interest forever. but was trying to 'force' them into defaulting me ( because i am not paying the full amount.

Bcard arent applying any interest at the moment on the cc and HBOS loan defaulted me last year but leading up to that they wouldnt accept payments then out of the blue sent it to a DCA.

i have an O'D with HBOS but they again say no arrangements.

i wasnt sure if i should speak to SC incase they made me do the 'right thing' and speak with the creditors since they dont really deal with interest freezes etc.

Might give them a call tomorrow and see how the ground lies.


thanks