DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 10

loobylou2

Morning everyone. Hope you are all having a good day. I loved the picture of Puzzcat with her Birthday cake mb!!!!! Please excuse any typos you may spot in this post. Am using the battered old desktop computer belonging to the kids as I have just spoken to Acer about my laptop and they want me to send it in for repair. Just hoping that as its still under warranty and I paid extra for a service and repair contract for it, they will fix it without charging me anything!!!! Am very tempted to just buy a new one particularly because Dell have a cheap one on offer on the HDUK site but am going to try and restrain myself and also keep away from the Wonga site as well. It would be a false economy to take out a payday loan to buy a new laptop when I may be able to get my existing one fixed for less!!!!


I'm still debating about whether or not to go with Stepchange or Payplan or to self manage my DMP. I've looked at both options and my feeling at the moment is that Stepchange may be the best option for me as I think that in self managing I could actually end up increasing my stress levels which is something I definitely do not want to do. I got very upset with myself yesterday and ended up leaving home to get away from everyone for a couple of hours. It was beneficial in a way though because I ended up bumping into and going for a coffee with a friend who also did a DMP a couple of years ago with Stepchange so was able to ask them for advice.


My only query with Stepchange is that they take payments on either the 1st or the 10th of the month and I get paid on the 15th, also having spoken to them I would have to include the loan which I was hoping to clear by the end of this year. I think I would need to open a new bank account for myself and have the Stepchange payment paid directly into it when I get paid and then not touch it so they could then take the payment on the 1st. That way I could just cancel all the direct debits on my current account and use that for everything else. Stepchange also have said to contact everyone and let them know I am entering into DMP and just to make token payments for this month so think this is what I am going to do. I'm behind on just 2 payments at the moment but can't afford to keep paying the amounts I have been paying so am hoping that creditors will either reduce or freeze interest.


Have a good day everyone

GrinC

What are the differences between stepchange and payplan? I've gone with payplan.

I am actually worried about it because it's a massive learning curve realising i wont be able to juggle credit anymore. Yikes!!!

racht

Hi
I followed advice from here and I have set up my DMP with Stepchange. I just have a couple more questions- Nationwide have accepted fine, Next have accepted but say 1st payment is due by the 17th of the month even though they are aware that Stepchange make the payment on the 25th and a late payment may jeopardize the payment plan- is there anything I can do to prevent this?
My main question is concerning Very/Shop Direct, surprise surprise they haven't agreed with reduced payments and have sent my 1st notice of default sums and added a £12 default charge and added interest- I just wondered if anyone had any advice of how to deal with Shop Direct and if anyone had been successful in freezing interest with them- would like to try and sort this one asap as I know what they are like for adding charges at every opportunity. TIA

City1

Hi,


We have sent letters with our SOA's to all our creditors. However, we have just received a letter from a DCA regarding my wife's old mobile phone contract for payment of £300, which includes "there 10% commission", on our part a clerical that it wasn't included in our original SOA. What would be our best of course in tackling this, should we just send information with regards our SOA and then come to an arrangement.


Regards.

thebeaver

Early days of my DMP but ~£20k to 2 creditors, not sure of my debt free date as they are still negotiating.

Still cacking myself about how it will all pan out & charges still being added by one creditor. One accepted the first offer almost immediately. Hoping it will be sorted soon.

Student loan deductions should end in December so that another couple of hundred quid a month spare to pay them back. Also looking at moving to a cheaper part of the country so fingers crossed it will be under 5 years.

Kate_fixing_it

HSBC s*d off letter has arrived. I actually have an even lower opinion of them now. Aside from two sentences on the first page it's all pathetic waffle! Advising me that they'll help me when DMP is over and to contact stepchange...erm that's who's paying you now! Then it goes on the prattle on about how to manage the account better and all the super-duper methods of communication that I can use. So 3 working days to allegedly fully investigate, make a decision and get a response out to me!

It's got me really riled up! It's obviously gone nowhere further than the letter opening department so have a slightly tweaked generic response sent out.

So next up it's decision time... do I write an angry letter to the CEO about the pathetic response or push it straight to the FOS? I'm leaning towards the angry letter route at the moment, simply to be difficult and create more work for them. The thing is, if they'd just said sorry and worded the letter a little more sympathetically I'd have probably dropped it but this excuse for a response isn't good enough.

It's made me a little angrier that this has come back so quickly yet they haven't even acknowledged the PPI complaint letter!

And on top of that the college course DCA have called again to ask me for payment! A different snotty little swine refused to listen to me saying I'd spoken to his colleague yesterday until I'd passed security. He quickly realised his error, another mumbled apology and he hung up on me! I'm so desperate to get rid of them now, going to have another eBay listing session and try to get shot of them a month earlier if possible.

Kate x

Puzzcat

City1 wrote: »

Hi,


We have sent letters with our SOA's to all our creditors. However, we have just received a letter from a DCA regarding my wife's old mobile phone contract for payment of £300, which includes "there 10% commission", on our part a clerical that it wasn't included in our original SOA. What would be our best of course in tackling this, should we just send information with regards our SOA and then come to an arrangement.


Regards.

I am assuming your are self managing your dmp City? If so then have you room in your budget to squeeze this one in without reducing the offered payments to the others?

Puzzcat

thebeaver wrote: »

Early days of my DMP but ~£20k to 2 creditors, not sure of my debt free date as they are still negotiating.

Still cacking myself about how it will all pan out & charges still being added by one creditor. One accepted the first offer almost immediately. Hoping it will be sorted soon.

Student loan deductions should end in December so that another couple of hundred quid a month spare to pay them back. Also looking at moving to a cheaper part of the country so fingers crossed it will be under 5 years.

Well done on getting going thebeaver, don't forget that if they continue to add interest and charges there is a template floating around on here kindly posted by TTFTM that you can send, ensuring you use the word COMPLAINT and then if that fails to stop them, after 8 weeks you can complain to the FOS and hopefully be successful.
Good Luck
Puzz.

Puzzcat

racht wrote: »

Hi
I followed advice from here and I have set up my DMP with Stepchange. I just have a couple more questions- Nationwide have accepted fine, Next have accepted but say 1st payment is due by the 17th of the month even though they are aware that Stepchange make the payment on the 25th and a late payment may jeopardize the payment plan- is there anything I can do to prevent this?
My main question is concerning Very/Shop Direct, surprise surprise they haven't agreed with reduced payments and have sent my 1st notice of default sums and added a £12 default charge and added interest- I just wondered if anyone had any advice of how to deal with Shop Direct and if anyone had been successful in freezing interest with them- would like to try and sort this one asap as I know what they are like for adding charges at every opportunity. TIA

Hi rach,


I personally would be tempted to ring Next and explain to them how the system works... alternatively jot them a line advising of the dates.. One of mine, think it was Barclays wrote a similar letter and changed the payment date for me so it would fall into line..


No dealings with Shop Direct, but I would assume the TTFTM letter floating around on here would be sufficient to send to them and then follow up with the FOS if you don't have success.


Good Luck.
Puzz

City1

Puzzcat wrote: »

I am assuming your are self managing your dmp City? If so then have you room in your budget to squeeze this one in without reducing the offered payments to the others?

Yes we are and we do. So would you send a letter within an soa, making an offer of payment worked out with soa calculator we used on the National debtline.


Regs.


Damian