Creation being a pain with interest.

Iwanttobefree

I think I'm going to take the plunge and do it all myself.

I should tell you a little more about DMP and Creation

I was with Payplan and wan't happy with them and their continual trying to sell me stuff, plus I found I spent every month still having to contact creditors anyway, I was advised to do it myself, but heard good things about Step change and thought I'd give them a go.

Creation did the same thing with Payplan, reduced it so that I was hardly paying anything off at all. I wrote to the FSA, they then wrote to Creation, creation wouldn't uphold the complaint but agreed to lower the interest, part of their reply is

have investigated your complaint and I confirm that creditors are under no obligation to set
up temporary repayment arrangements or indeed reduce interest, however, at Sygma, we
recognise that customers may require our help and we try to support them. This is to help
customers whilst they assess their financial situation with their creditors and put in place
plans to resume full responsibility for their debts. However, I have arranged for the
temporary payment arrangement to be amended so that the APR is reduced to 3% which is
a further reduction on the 15% l had previously been reduced to.

That agreement was on the basis we pay them £104.26

Two months later we go with stepchange, and because we are offering them less money (we originally worked out my wifes self employed earnings wrong) we get the following

I am pleased to confirm a temporary payment plan of £40.00 per month. Your interest rate hos been reduced to
0.490% for a period of 12 months after which time your account will revert back to your standard account terms and
conditions. The interest rote hos been set in line with our company policy and will only be reviewed should there be a
change to your circumstances. However, whilst in a reduced payment arrangement, all late payment and over limit
charges are frozen.

I point out to them how little I am actually paying back over a year and receive the following.

As you are aware we have recently agreed a reduced payment arrangement for £40 per month. We have reduced the contractual APR of 32.9% to 6% while the temporary arrangement is in place and the monthly interest rate will be 0.49%. The interest has been set in line with our company policy to assist customers who are experiencing financial difficulties.

So for my three accounts, every time I have to change payments or every year, I have to write to the Financial Ombudsman and then wait about 2 months while everything filters through and my complaint is not upheld at the same time Creation reduce the interest rate.

This seems a complete waste of the financial ombudsman's time.

I think I will take the advice of some on this forum of simply stopping all payments to my three creation accounts until it's passed over to debt collectors, then this stress will be sorted (I hope).

On a separate note, I am not trying to get out of paying, we borrowed the money, we need to pay it back.

But I would strongly argue that while we did ask for it (although each time it was only one of us, who was suffering depression at the time and not thinking straight), they should not have allowed us to borrow the money at all.

My wife had an account for a couple of years, always up to the limit, always making just the minimum payment. While I was depressed, trying to sort out our finances a while back, I tried to get 0% balance transfers for our other credit cards, no one would give us them. I tried creation thinking it would be a complete waste of time as she already had one up to the limit.

I applied for one in my name, putting my correct income of under £5k a year and other household income as my wife's earnings and child benefit etc. I simply entered a few things on a web form, clicked a few things and that was it, accepted. I then did the same thing straight away in my wifes name and again got accepted.

A week odd later 2 cards drop through the letterbox with about 5K credit on each.

And you've probably hear this 1000 times, we thought "this time we will be careful", we transferred balances but put the other cards away just for emergencies.

At the time of applying for these cards we had Capital one cards maxed out, Barclays maxed out, a 10K credit limit with Littlewoods etc etc etc and my wife earns under £20k a year.

I'm not trying to make excuses, I am simply saying that reading through this forum, seeing the many many other people going through exactly what I'm going through, the ease of getting credit is simply wrong in my opinion,.

There are not enough checks in place, when a balance transfer is done there is nothing to check you have closed the other account etc.

At one point we couldn't pay bills and my wife phoned up Creation out of desperation and asked if they could up her limit, We were already maxed out in ALL our cards. They still upped it by £1000.

We now owe that one company £19356

I appreciate there are many people out there that can manage finances sensibly, I and my wife do not fall into this category and when my health is bad, I need protecting from myself, and if it wasn't this easy, I wouldn't be on this thread right now.

(note spelling errors in the quotes are due to copying and pasting scanned PDF's, not Creation, I've corrected all I can find)

Iwanttobefree

Well that was a pleasant surprise.

Thought I'd try talking to them rather than writing to them. Phoned the number on the letter and he wouldn't budge.

I politely said "have I really got to write to the Financial Ombudsman to get the rate lowered, seems like a waste of their, your and my time?"

he responded

"You don't have to write to them, phone our complaints dept on 0800 012 1173 and speak directly to them they will probably be able to help"

So I phoned them, very polite lady, she understood what I was saying and basically implied the other department is limited by what the computer says (my words but was sort of what she said) and that her dept can see what things are actually like and act accordingly.

She has reduced all 3 accounts to 3% apr

So while not perfect, my account I owe £6840 I am now being charged £17.10 interest per month and repaying £40,

That's better than the £33 interest I was paying last month. So instead of paying off just £7 a month, I am now paying off £22.90 a month.

Was petrified of actually speaking to them but it was a very pleasant conversation.