DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 10

melysion

You would think hat BC would want to get a DMPer off their books as soon as possible ...but apparently not!

One of my creditors is BC -so looking forward to dealing with them. lol

sourcrates

Barclaycard are fairly unique within the credit card industry.
They recognise that people have money problems sometimes, it's part of life, they see these problems as "temporary glitches", where another lender may default you fairly quickly, they won't, they mark your file "arrangement to pay", this we all know, but it's not because they have suddenly gone all mushy.

Oh no, it's Because, once your money troubles are over, they want to keep you as a customer, they still see you as been potentially profitable in the future, hence why you guys have all the problems with regard to getting interest stopped, and AP markers instead of defaults.

In the past BC made up to 45% of its profits from default charges, back when they charged you £35 a time for missed payments etc, now this is limited to £12, so they have quiet a large shortfall in profits to make up, one way of addressing this problem is keeping as many customers as possible, regardless of how they run there accounts.

Sazzie23

sourcrates wrote: »

Barclaycard are fairly unique within the credit card industry.
They recognise that people have money problems sometimes, it's part of life, they see these problems as "temporary glitches", where another lender may default you fairly quickly, they won't, they mark your file "arrangement to pay", this we all know, but it's not because they have suddenly gone all mushy.

Oh no, it's Because, once your money troubles are over, they want to keep you as a customer, they still see you as been potentially profitable in the future, hence why you guys have all the problems with regard to getting interest stopped, and AP markers instead of defaults.

In the past BC made up to 45% of its profits from default charges, back when they charged you £35 a time for missed payments etc, now this is limited to £12, so they have quiet a large shortfall in profits to make up, one way of addressing this problem is keeping as many customers as possible, regardless of how they run there accounts.

Great post Sourcrates, & Cynically I think that DMPers might be seen as potentially profitable in the account mis-management arena, since we clearly can't manage our affairs :mad:
.....however I will not be sharing my custom with BC , when its gone its gone !!!!

spot3

Feel better soon Phoenixx, that sounds very painful

Time_to_face_the_music

phoenixx wrote: »

Evening all - still off work - diagnosed with inflammation of pericardium - very painful but not life threatening :j in most cases

Am full of codeine and naproxen so forgive wooziness in posting activity!

Well - after a two month wait we got a reply from BC regarding our complaint about: lying, increasing interest and one dept not knowing what the other is doing. As our DMP payment goes up, so does our BC interest...Anyway, letter said sorry for mixed messages and wasting our time; here is £50 for inconvenience but we are charging interest by the rules and will continue to do so. A bit of a mixed bag there! They apparently 'value our custom' (really?!) and hope we will continue to use their services (well not much choice in that BC! :rotfl:) Just imagine! Still waiting for FOS response so will let you know outcome of that too!

Hope you are better soon phoenix. Please take care xx

blisteringblue

With all this talk of our friends at BC has anybody had any success getting them to default? If you went self managed and sent them a token £1 until they passed to a DCA how long did it take?

Karen777

hello phoenixx - hoping you feel better soon.

About BC - they did reduced interest for me and have indeed put AP markers on my file. I didn't really think about why but that makes sense!

On the subject of interest payments, I feel like I have been single handedly keeping hellifax in business for years now - they are the only creditor who has steadfastly refused to help me out in any way. I daren't event think about how much interest I have paid them all in, it would drive me bonkers. I'd be debt free and loaded I think! I have been to FOS with them once already but they refuse to accept hardship. So after much umming and aahing I am trying again with them today. I have sent them an up to date I and E form, having used the NEDcab site to produce it, and also realised that they have been treating me inconsistently because I have an OD with them which they froze interest and charges on right from the start - as a recognition of my financial difficulties. So once that penny dropped from someone's post on here that they had been treating two accounts differently, I thought it was worth another shot. So now it's winging it's way to them. Fingers crossed! I have nothing to lose and quite a lot to gain!!

Time_to_face_the_music

melysion wrote: »

I haven't had an overdraft since my student days. Not that its anything to boast about considering my loan and credit card debt mountain ... anyway. I guess its all progreaaing in the right direction.

I have always had an overdraft too and I think it was the most difficult thing to recognise as debt. It was there, it was available and so I thought of it as my money

TTFTM x

jools35

Hi - wanted to update and share what's happened with us over the last month. I also want to try and offer some hope and reassurance to all the newbies like me who think there's no way out.

I've posted a few times and read most days. This time last month I'd just watched my wages get eaten up by direct debits, been to the cash machine to withdraw money from credit cards to make sure every single penny was paid and that included putting money from credit cards into my current account...also used some cash for school lunches etc. I'd been doing this for months thinking something would happen to change our situation and finally it reached crunch time where 6 credit cards were maxed out and I didn't know how we were going to eat. I've never, ever missed a payment for anything at all and could not contemplate doing this. I wasn't sleeping, was miserable and felt like I just could not go on. I had tried for a consolidated loan with our bank and refused. Tried to up our overdraft by about £30 to cover a dd for 2 days and was refused. It was then that I realised that actually my bank weren't there to help me at all and that I felt no sense of loyalty to them either. I spent hours on the web and found this part of the forum and took the plunge and contacted stepchange.

With their advice I set up a new bank account, cancelled dd's for the creditors with exception of essential ones and spoke to some creditors to give them my stepchange ref number. All have been very nice. I've not gone out of my way to call them, but if they call me I just tell them we're with stepchange and as soon as they hear this they just take the details.

Last Friday my wage was paid into my old current account for the last time and I had an agonising few days making sure all the dd's that need to be paid were. This included me cancelling a dd for our bank loan with the same bank. I then moved all our left over cash to my new bank account using the transfer facility in internet banking. I felt sure that someone from the bank would be sitting watching what was going on, figure it out and zap all our money away.....well a week later i've not even had a letter from them......

For the first time in over a year I actually have money in my purse just after pay day - also have a small amount of savings/emergency cash and I'm so glad we did as we've just had a problem with our car and need 200.00 to fix it. If we hadn't done this we would have tried to up credit card limit to pay it.

Anyway, sorry for the long post. I just really want to drum home the point that whilst you may owe banks/credit card companies etc, they're not going to suffer if you pay a smaller amount to them. It's you who will suffer. I was on the edge and with 3 kids who were getting to the stage that they didn't want to speak to me, I have to say it's not a nice place to be. I feel like myself again. The change has been so dramatic that I actually wonder why more people don't do this to improve their lives. Yes, the consequence is that your credit rating will be trashed, but I don't see that as a bad thing. For us if it was there we'd spend it and I know that many others do the same.

Good luck people, and thank you for all the regular posters on here. I know I don't always post/comment on here but I do read every day and you have changed my and my families lives. Thank you. :A

Meatloaf1981

blisteringblue wrote: »

With all this talk of our friends at BC has anybody had any success getting them to default? If you went self managed and sent them a token £1 until they passed to a DCA how long did it take?

I had two letters from BC today about my two frozen cards. A formal demand to pay and if I don't, they'll apparently default me. I almost wanted to ring them and say "YES! BLOODY DEFAULT ME! RATHER THAT THAN HAVE THOSE HORRID AR MARKERS!" but I resisted the urge. I will wait until the end of the month as the letters say and then hopefully they'll default me. Lord knows I want them to!