DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 11

sourcrates

I think people have two lightbulb moments.

One when they realise they can't pay there debts,

The other when they wise up to the corrupt system !!

sourcrates

Scottishmummy wrote: »

I seem to recall that there is no point asking for CCA's for bank accounts because we would never have signed one for them anyway or am I mixing them up with something else?

No that's correct.

Bank accounts are covered by different legislation !!

Scottishmummy

January2015 wrote: »

I've just gone self-managed - having been with SC for one year. SC sent me statements of who had been paid what, which account was with which DCA now. They did not send creditor/DCA addresses or bank sort code and account details to make payments. I did ask but they said the information they hold is different to that which would be used by individuals.

So I used the NEDCAB template letter to write to each creditor (I had all addresses except one) and in that letter I offered them an amount for my monthly DMP payment and I also asked them to send me bank account information to enable me to set up a standing order for regular monthly payments. You will have to write to creditors anyway and let them know you are going self-managed so it's no problem to ask for the bank details.

I took the opportunity to take two months of £1 token payments again (as our emergency fund had been depleted) and also changed our payment date from 1st to mid month. This suits us better and I figure they never got the payment until mid month anyway by the time it had gone from me to SC and then on the the creditors.

It really is easy to do, and so much less hassle. I have already made our first F&F offer to one of our smaller creditors. I couldn't have done this with SC.

We are also due a fairly significant sum soon which we plan to use to make more F&Fs. SC would have wanted this spread across predators and it would just have evenly reduced our debt balance. But we are hoping to reduce it by almost 40% through F&Fs. That's massive for us.

It's actually various posts of yours that I have read January that has given me the final push to persuade my DH that we should go self-managed. I think we should let our DD to SC go out on the 1st March since we are halfway there anyway then take over from there.

Scottishmummy

sourcrates wrote: »

No that's correct.

Bank accounts are covered by different legislation !!

That's what I thought - is there something else we should ask for there or just go with F&F's once we can afford to - 3 are with Cabot and one is still with inhouse debt collectors Blair Oliver and Scott.

January2015

Scottishmummy wrote: »

It's actually various posts of yours that I have read January that has given me the final push to persuade my DH that we should go self-managed. I think we should let our DD to SC go out on the 1st March since we are halfway there anyway then take over from there.

I'm glad to have inspired you.

I cannot believe how easy the whole process has been. Our first token £1 payments went out of our bank this week. It's nice to have a bit of emergency fund building up again.

Good luck with your change to self-managed and with any CCAs you do.

We've had a bit of unexpected luck come our way but I honestly think we can be debt free towards the end of 2017 now - which sounds so much nicer that 2023 or 2024

If you want to let your March SC payment go through then fine - but you have got time to sort it now if you want to. If you are going to be paying the same anyway you might as well let it go through.

sourcrates

Scottishmummy wrote: »

That's what I thought - is there something else we should ask for there or just go with F&F's once we can afford to - 3 are with Cabot and one is still with inhouse debt collectors Blair Oliver and Scott.

Always ask for proof first.

Weather it be statements or whatever.

If they can't produce them, they can't take you to court.

As previously mentioned, lots of debts are sold on without the slightest bit of evidence the debtor is liable for them.

Sometimes people just accept what DCA's tell them without question, it's akin to a total stranger walking up to you in the street and demanding money for something you know nothing about.

Always demand proof before offering anything.

Time_to_face_the_music

Scottishmummy wrote: »

This was our thoughts too - we borrowed - we need to pay back. We did not ask for CCA's or F&F's either however we have now got to a stage where out of our original 13 debts, one is clear and six have had the original debt paid back and what we are still paying them is what they added in charges and interest after we went on the dmp - they all took months to finally stop interest and charges. SC don't seem to agree with us now asking them for CCA's or offering F&F's so we are considering going self-managed so we can do this. We also have an insurance payout due next year and SC want us to spread it out between everyone whereas we would rather use it for F&F's. If we tell SC we are going to change to self-managed will they give us all our creditors payment details or will we need to start from scratch and request them direct from the creditor?

I just need clarification on bank accounts and CCA's - they don't have them do they?

Stepchange will give you all the details you need for each creditor but I rechecked all the balances before I started my spreadsheets.

Post DMP start did you challenge the interest/charges paid with each individual creditor, making a complaint and then taking it to the FOS if/when you did not get a satisfactory conclusion?

We were paying interest on several accounts at start of DMP, one creditor M&S told us if we lowered our payment they would stop interest but Stepchange wouldn't alter the payment. We took the case to the FOS and they said M&S had offered us a solution so they couldn't award the case against them. Went back to Stepchange and they still wouldn't alter the payment, so this (amongst other things) was the trigger to go self managed.

We made token payments to all creditors for 3 months and saved every penny of normal DMP payments. Once all interest had stopped, we recommenced normal payments and used the saved DMP funds to pay off a couple of smaller accounts fully.

Stepchange have an odd way of distributing payments, so we reverted to "normal" distribution when we changed to self managed and all creditors were perfectly happy with it.

Good luck and remember it's still not too late to do those complaints now and you may have the chance to get some interest/charges refunded.

TTFTM x

bsclp118

I think StepChange must be really busy as I filled out there online forms on thursday and haven't heard anything from them.

But from everything I have read on here I have decided I should probably go self managed, for the sake of printing out some letters and sending them off, it doesn't seem like too much work. Plus I like the idea of being more in control of my payments.

Eek, ok fingers crossed!

phoenixx

Quick update - have been following everyone's progress via my phone's tiny screen as laptop has been playing up. Hopefully I have managed to change my signature. We have now paid back more than 60k which is good - two thirds there.
BC - still no default after 5 months of token payments (self managing now). Wrote to them again last week and got prompt 'we will not be defaulting you' reply. Any advice on what more we can do would be gratefully received.
DH has new job - slight drop in pay but less stressful and tax will help level it off a bit
HMRC - thanks for everyone's advice on this, especially January2015. They have agreed to interest free payments and blamed my employers so best result I could have hoped for.
Work - have become very good at dodging cheque signing requests...it turns out my boss is not to be trusted and I am on the hunt for a new job.

Self managed really is the way forward (just wish BC would play ball) M&S dropped interest as soon as payment reduced and were quite happy. All others are ticking along nicely plus one PPI request going in to Natwest.

zenshi

Phoenix, I've been making token payments on self managed DMP to bcard since Nov 2013 and they STILL haven't defaulted me!