DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 10

Karen777

Hi Suseka - great news about your sister, you mist be relieved.

And Barclaycard sent me letters every month saying they had not received payment from payplan and in the end I just started ignoring them - it was to do with payment cycles and dates not matching up between BC and PP. They also set my minimum payment as the dmp amount and contonued to charge me reduced interest on that.

Santander also said I could not reduce my overdraft - only pay it off entirely - but have frozen interest, and the account and said basically I could pay of whatever I wanted each month and they may or may not sell the debt on.... so I am just paying a bit off every month.

Had a bit of a recalculation and whilst I would live to be DF by xmas 2015, I am not sure it's realistic. This sent me into a bit of a gloom funk (combined with it being a few days from pay day so things are scarily tight) and am trying to remind myself of the progress I have made and frankly the state I would be in by next xmas had I not started sorting all of this out!

Kate - well done on the bonus news but also agree that sorting out the right uni is an absolute investment. And good luck with the job opportunities!

Am also unsure about YNAB - have been using free trial and have found it unbelievably helpful but now cant decide whether to buy it or not when I should be putting as much as I can towards debt. I get excited by shiny new things and can't decide if that's what's happening - I am "legitimizing" a purchase - or whether it's an investment. Does anyone have a similar but free recommendation for budgeting?

ldhme

Kate_fixing_it wrote: »

Depending on how much you're paying BC in relation to the balance this could be a big fight. I pay £1 under 1% and I've had no issues at all. Tesco sent LOADS of letters. In the first month they reduced my credit limit, added one £12 late fee then issued a default and stopped all interest and charges. I get no bother at all from them now. HSBC have been nothing short of a pest. No action on the loan, CC stopped interest and charges in month 2 and not a clue what is going on with the overdraft! I get letters and emails on how to manage the account, last month they refunded one month of interest and they are ignoring my letter to the CEO. going to resend electronically today with more calm but angry statements

Personally I'd give them a month and allow yourself some breathing space. This is a settling in period. It's normal for debt to go up in the first month or two. Once they've had 2 or 3 payments and you've established a pattern of making payments you have solid ground to fight from. I suspect this is why they don't act too quickly on the charges/interest. From their point of view (and I don't wish to sound unsympathetic) they've seen it a million times where a debtor makes a payment plan, fails in the second or third month and costs them in chasing the debt. I guess they just want some proof of commitment to regularly paying it off before they jump into working with you.

Kate x

I pay £191 on just under £17k so it's 1.1% ish per month.
Your experience with Tesco is assuring as the exact same things have happened to me, only my default letter came first which I found strange, went in this order: Default letter saying they were passing it to collections, statement with £12 late fee, reducing limit, just seems backwards.

You are right though, I have made one payment to SC and know it hasn't been distributed yet. I'll try keep myself from fretting about charges and interest until I'm on holiday from work at the end of October and get my teeth into getting everyone to play ball.

On that note, is there any way to ask for charges (and interest?) incurred between now and then to be refunded once they accept my DMP?

Hopelessly_Hopeful

Good news re your Sister Suseka

Well wishes for Ms TTFTM too

HHx

Time_to_face_the_music

Thanks HH - I am alive and kicking but looking and feeling a bit rough!

Suseka - am so pleased to hear about your sister.

Back to bed now before I fall over

TTFTM x

Kate_fixing_it

ldhme wrote: »

I pay £191 on just under £17k so it's 1.1% ish per month.
Your experience with Tesco is assuring as the exact same things have happened to me, only my default letter came first which I found strange, went in this order: Default letter saying they were passing it to collections, statement with £12 late fee, reducing limit, just seems backwards.

You are right though, I have made one payment to SC and know it hasn't been distributed yet. I'll try keep myself from fretting about charges and interest until I'm on holiday from work at the end of October and get my teeth into getting everyone to play ball.

On that note, is there any way to ask for charges (and interest?) incurred between now and then to be refunded once they accept my DMP?

Can't hurt - if you don't ask you definitely won't get I'm at a point now where when faced with a decision I ask what's the worst that can happen and if I can live with it then I go for it.

Paying 1.1% to Barclaycard means you're going to have quite a fight to stop all interest. I'm having that same fight with creation at the moment as I pay slightly over the 1%. Nothing is impossible though and they seem to treat every debtor differently.

Kate x

katy_ann

Hi all, I havent been around much lately, but Im back with new determination to get this debt cleared as soon as possible! I started on a DMP with CCCS/Stepchange and now Im self managing my own DMP which seems to be going ok so far! Hope all you DMP'ers are ok and doing good!

Startingover14

I disappeared for a bit as things went a bit odd as my brother is unwell and needed to do stuff. But I now have 2 accounts - a basic account with debit card and a instant savings account. The intention is to transfer the left over money at the end of each month into savings. They have given me an atm card on the savings but will try to leave that at home. I have sent the letters to the creditors so its all starting. The first full payment was missed yesterday, I sent a token payment as all you have suggested as well as Stepchange. My salary has been paid into the old account as was too late to change it so now I will let HR know the new details for September onwards. I've made a list of direct debits that need to be moved across and am going to work down them as they are paid for the last time out of the account I have the overdraft with. I need to get the paperwork back to Stepchange but didn't want to send it back too soon as I want to be sure all has worked ok with the transfer of salary and direct debits especially for the priority things like mortgage and council tax.

Does anybody know when the paperwork needs to be with Stepchange for it to be started the following month?

Hope everyone is ok and doing well with their efforts to be DF

wannabedebtfree2016

Startingover14 wrote: »

I disappeared for a bit as things went a bit odd as my brother is unwell and needed to do stuff. But I now have 2 accounts - a basic account with debit card and a instant savings account. The intention is to transfer the left over money at the end of each month into savings. They have given me an atm card on the savings but will try to leave that at home. I have sent the letters to the creditors so its all starting. The first full payment was missed yesterday, I sent a token payment as all you have suggested as well as Stepchange. My salary has been paid into the old account as was too late to change it so now I will let HR know the new details for September onwards. I've made a list of direct debits that need to be moved across and am going to work down them as they are paid for the last time out of the account I have the overdraft with. I need to get the paperwork back to Stepchange but didn't want to send it back too soon as I want to be sure all has worked ok with the transfer of salary and direct debits especially for the priority things like mortgage and council tax.

Does anybody know when the paperwork needs to be with Stepchange for it to be started the following month?

Hope everyone is ok and doing well with their efforts to be DF

I sent mine off on Friday last week. Spoke to SC this morning to confirm receipt as I did it via email they gave me the option to start payments in September or defer the plan to start in October.

They just need some more info from me then good to go. So far it's been a rather effortless journey setting it up. The worst part was getting the relevant account numbers together.

Out of curiosity did you use the 7day switching service. Your guaranteed a refund or waive of charges if anything goes wrong and your also safe in regards to companies been able to debit your account using CPA (that's if any of them have your card details)

ghostmadlittlemiss

wannabedebtfree2016 wrote: »

Out of curiosity did you use the 7day switching service. Your guaranteed a refund or waive of charges if anything goes wrong and your also safe in regards to companies been able to debit your account using CPA (that's if any of them have your card details)

Just thought I'd point out that it might be better not to use the 7 day switching service if you're including your old bank's overdraft in your DMP as any payments made into your old account within a year of switching (I think) are automatically transferred to your new one. So the payments that StepChange would send to pay off your overdraft would just keep being redirected to your new account if you used that service so your overdraft wouldn't be paid off. Hope that helps someone.
Kayleigh

wannabedebtfree2016

ghostmadlittlemiss wrote: »

Just thought I'd point out that it might be better not to use the 7 day switching service if you're including your old bank's overdraft in your DMP as any payments made into your old account within a year of switching (I think) are automatically transferred to your new one. So the payments that StepChange would send to pay off your overdraft would just keep being redirected to your new account if you used that service so your overdraft wouldn't be paid off. Hope that helps someone.
Kayleigh

That's a good point, I didn't think of that, handy if you don't owe your old current account money though. I have just done the switch myself to avoid PDL companies taking their cut. Thankfully I have no overdraft facility so that was not a problem and I have to say it went seamlessly.