DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 11

Puzzcat

muppetscotland wrote: »

Hi hope someone can help.

RBOS is our main creditor and the banking side have agreed to freeze interest and charges on 3 bank loans and an overdraft. However the credit card side of the business has written saying they will not freeze interest but are cancelling charges.
As this is a £19,000 debt the interest is racking up at around £400 per month so obviously we are never going to see anything but a hugely increasing number.

Does anyone have a template letter or suggested paragraph quoting the ICO or similar to try and prompt them?

With thanks

Hi,

This is the letter I sent to one of my creditors at the beginning of my dmp when they wouldn't freeze interest. They still refused and I did escalate it to the FOS and then the interest was reduced, never frozen though until now as its been sold...:D
Address


Date




Dear Sir/Madam

Re: Account details
Thank you for your letter and statement concerning the above account. I am sorry that you feel unable to freeze interest on the above account.

As you are aware, I am in a DMP with Stepchange, reference number ******. The majority of my other creditors have agreed to the offer of payment and agreed to suspend any interest charges still accruing. They have accepted that to continue to charge interest would not assist me in my present financial difficulties, and can only serve to delay my efforts to repay this debt.

I have already paid considerable sums in interest to my account. If interest charges continue, the monthly instalments I am paying will only just cover that interest. Also, the cooperation of my other creditors who have agreed to freeze interest already would be put at risk.

I am aware that you subscribe to the Lending Code which states that lenders will consider reducing or suspending interest and charges if these would cause the debt to increase or lead to the repayment term becoming too extended. I would therefore be grateful if you would reconsider your decision not to freeze the interest. This would mean that the monthly payments I make would actually reduce the balance outstanding to your company within a reasonable time period.

Please consider this letter as a complaint about the interest charges you are continuing to apply to my account. I would like to see these stopped immediately.
If you are unable to help me with this issue, I will have no alternative but to take this case to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.

Yours faithfully





Puzz.x

muppetscotland

Thank you so much everyone.

A new letter now penned to RBoS stressing the amount of interest already paid, quoting heavily from Puzz's letter!

Will let you know how it goes. Such early days I should really have been prepared for problems like this.

On a brighter note, Creation have been amazing. We have a loan and card with them and the man I spoke to was so nice he nearly made me cry! They have instantly agreed to freeze everything for 6 months with a review and if nothing else has changed a further 6 thereafter and so on. Really lovely.

Puzzcat

muppetscotland wrote: »

Thank you so much everyone.

A new letter now penned to RBoS stressing the amount of interest already paid, quoting heavily from Puzz's letter!

Will let you know how it goes. Such early days I should really have been prepared for problems like this.

On a brighter note, Creation have been amazing. We have a loan and card with them and the man I spoke to was so nice he nearly made me cry! They have instantly agreed to freeze everything for 6 months with a review and if nothing else has changed a further 6 thereafter and so on. Really lovely.

Just goes to show how creditors treat everyone differently as they were the one's that wouldn't freeze the interest for me and I complained to FOS about..!

Keep us updated on how you get on..

Puzz. x

blisteringblue

muppetscotland wrote: »

I have seen people on here with similarly big numbers in DMPs so I guess I'm not the only one

Hi Muppet, well done on taking the bull by the horns.

RBOS have my mortgage so they are the only creditor I keep sweet, but it's just my mortgage although it is also my current account (One Account) so it all works well for me, they know nothing about my DMP.

You just have to fight fire with fire with the predators. The only way to force their arm on interest is to pay them nothing or next to nothing.

You will just have to start paying the RBS credit card £1 a month. Write to them and tell them why you are doing this, and you will continue to do it until they stop and they default the account.

They will huff and puff and hassle you, but just stick to your guns. There isn't a lot they can do about it. Yes interest will probably continue to be added, but they normally get the message quite quickly.

I did it with Barclaycard when they decided I wasn't in debt enough now, and put me back to 12% interest. Dropping them to £1 worked instantly, they put me on an unofficial plan, and defaulted me 4 months later. Now I am not saying RBS will do the same, but this is the only way I know to fight them.

We started with 61k of debt 2 years ago. We have just moved under 40k and hope to be done in 2 years with some F&Fs, hopefully starting that process summer 2017.

BeingDebtFreeStartsHere

Puzzcat wrote: »

Morning dmp'ers...

So a few days to go until my new self managed dmp starts... Unlike others I have kept the payments exactly the same as sc were paying and hence haven't had any quibbling....

I wrote to all 9 of my creditors but still had to telephone 4 of them and 1 of them twice as they omitted to send payment details with there reply... durr.... I also found that 1 of them had 'passed' me to Lowells in the last week so until they contact me I shall stash their share away..

I now have 8 of my 9 standing orders set up from my new basic bank account and hope my pennies end up in the right accounts...

Of course typically as us dmp'ers know, I now have car trouble but..... assuming it is something fixable I should due to the lovely budgeting skills I have learnt have the cash to pay for it.. Will keep you posted...!!!

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend...

Love Puzz. x

Wishing you all the best with self managed Puzz - I am really interested to hear how it all goes - sounds like you are making a fantastic start to the whole process

Hoping the car doesn't cost too much - we have also got our car booked in for a check as it's making a loud humming noise when we reach above 20mph
Garage have checked exhaust (for free ) and it's booked in to have the braking system checked. Guy reckons it could be a wheel bearing - hope whatever it is it doesn't cost too much!! :eek: Also got MOT due in April!!

Anyway - keep us updated with how it all goes.

BDFSH x

Scottishmummy

Puzzcat, January et al. how long after telling SC you were going self-managed did it take for you to get all your creditors details back from them? We still haven't heard back from them and not even a reply to an email I sent last week. They are due to take their final payment from us on Tuesday so I want to get the ball rolling asap after that but without all our creditors details we can't. We get regular statements from less than half of them and haven't heard from some of them in at least five years - they are obviously happy enough with the way payments have been going but one is now with lloyds which we only know about because that's who shows on the SC statement - we have never had any paperwork from them.

January2015

Scottishmummy wrote: »

Puzzcat, January et al. how long after telling SC you were going self-managed did it take for you to get all your creditors details back from them? We still haven't heard back from them and not even a reply to an email I sent last week. They are due to take their final payment from us on Tuesday so I want to get the ball rolling asap after that but without all our creditors details we can't. We get regular statements from less than half of them and haven't heard from some of them in at least five years - they are obviously happy enough with the way payments have been going but one is now with lloyds which we only know about because that's who shows on the SC statement - we have never had any paperwork from them.

Hi

We wrote to SC to give notice on 6th Jan. They emailed us to acknowledge on 18th Jan and sent through documentation a few days after that.

SC did not provide any details of bank account sort codes and account numbers for our creditors. That was the most frustrating part of going self managed. We also had debts which had moved from the original creditor to either a DCA or in-house department and had been given a new reference number. We had no idea how to pay these debts.

At this point in time we still have one creditor who has not responded and we cannot make payment to them. SC won't give us the details because they say they pay accounts which are set up for them. They wouldn't even give us addresses - again they are set up contacts for SC to use rather than Joe Public. What they did give us was who the debt was currently with and the reference number for that creditor/DCA.

We waited for the debts to write to us once they realised they weren't getting any money from SC. As I say - all sorted apart from one now.

To be fair there were only a few like this - the rest we had information for.

Don't panic - the creditors will write to you when they realise they are not getting payments from SC.

Puzzcat

Scottishmummy wrote: »

Puzzcat, January et al. how long after telling SC you were going self-managed did it take for you to get all your creditors details back from them? We still haven't heard back from them and not even a reply to an email I sent last week. They are due to take their final payment from us on Tuesday so I want to get the ball rolling asap after that but without all our creditors details we can't. We get regular statements from less than half of them and haven't heard from some of them in at least five years - they are obviously happy enough with the way payments have been going but one is now with lloyds which we only know about because that's who shows on the SC statement - we have never had any paperwork from them.

Hi,
Like January I had to contact each creditor to get payment details, I wrote to them all and 4 responded within a week the other 5 I had to ring to get the details. And discovered 1 had now changed to a dca so will have to wait to hear from them. So 8 set up within a month but I did have to do some of the legwork, which is of course the job when self managing..
Puzz.x

muppetscotland

Quick question tonight!

Does interest stop when default is issued? Is it actually OK to write and ASK to be defaulted?

Thanks all

Brogden

muppetscotland wrote: »

Quick question tonight!

Does interest stop when default is issued? Is it actually OK to write and ASK to be defaulted?

Thanks all

Yes it almost always does and with RBoS it will. They may send you default notices and not default until later but when they do finally default you ie. report it to the credit reference agencies as 'D' then interest will be stopped for........(uuurgh)......for good - did with my 20 anyway including the Gnat's Vest who are RBoS !!

Sorry.......when I talked about your situation being 'against the grain' it came to me. If you are up to date with the cc payments or only a bit behind then you are not defaulted and generally any request to remove interest will be declined (laughed at in a big way in RBoS Towers :mad: )

The default is everything to you. It will probably happen when your payments are behind by an amount equating to six months payments. Check this with them - they have to tell you