DMP & Mutual Support Thread - Part 11

Sazzie23

timetosayenough wrote: »

Thanks all for your kind and supportive words. Patch hugs to you it is so heartbreaking. Life sucks at the moment. I'm under the mental health nurse at my GP surgery cos I had a bit of a breakdown last week. Luckily my brother was visiting so wasn't on my own with Dad to look after. I will make the payments this week and explain why they are late. The other thing is I need to pay for my girls cremation and costs for the vets. Its going to be so expensive because I saw them on Sunday. I'm due to start DMP on 1st November but am considering contacting stepchange and creditors asking if I can start it on 1st December. I hope that it'll be acceptable.

Thanks once again everyone.

Hi TTSE,
you might feel awkward, but it's probably in your interest to mention your mental health issues when you communicate with creditors. They have to play nice (nicer?) if they know you are vulnerable.

Looking after someone is a really tough deal, and doing it with financial troubles makes a breakdown very likely, seems like loosing pup was the final straw for you. Hope things are getting back into kilter slowly. Do you know the rainbow bridge story? Xx

2spicy

Sazzie23 wrote: »

Hi Maddie, sounds like a good plan for a delayed DMP start. Sorry the job hunting Has not found success yet, not sure what sort of thing you are after but in my local (very small town) a lot of the shops are hiring part time for Xmas, so don't give up. Equally don't take on too much, breakdowns are not unheard of in DMP land, go steady rather than race at it.

As an addendum here, defaults are your friend ... ask them to default you as soon as you can. Dont be afraid to talk to your creditors, initially let them know whats happening and that they are recieving token payments. Back this up with a letter, and ask them to issue the default as soon as possible, and secondly, to please only correspond to you by letter and not by phone.

to explain about defaults, briefly, yes a default on yoru credit file is bad news if your applying for credit, however .. they last for 6 years and even if the debt isnt settled, will expire and be removed from your credit file after the 6 year period. So ... get them early and you may find the defaults have expired well before your DMP does .. therefore .. Blank Canvas and "new" credit file

timetosayenough

Hi Sazzie,

Thanks for your advice. Yes I do know the rainbow bridge story. The last few days I've come across lots of things like that, stories and poems.

Ok well, when I send the token payments I will mention my mental health problems. Find that a bit daunting to be honest. But will see what they think of it. Don't want them thinking I'm trying to wriggle out of my responsibilities, it's just that I'm struggling to cope at the moment.

Thanks Sazzie once again. It's a relief coming on here and getting help. Really appreciate it. xx

second_chance

hi I've changed the date of my dmp payment and need to make a manual payment...stepchange have advised they need a card payment by th 21st but i won't be able to do until the 24th will this be a massive issue? thanks

BeingDebtFreeStartsHere

Hi everyone,

Not posted on here for a while but now 1 year into our DMP and all going ok so far.

Just thought I'd share a little hiccup we had with our DMP a couple of months agao in the hope that it may help others.

Our DMP income and expenditure review was due end of Aug/early Sept so I completed this via the SC online budget review.

All went through ok and we were given a new monthly direct debit amount paying an extra £8 per month from £408 to £416.

All was quiet for a couple of weeks then we started getting letters froma few of our creditors saying they had not heard from SC and were assuming we were no longer continuing with our DMP (monthly payments were still being made to all creditors).

We phoned SC who advised that all paperwork was sent off on 10th September and it takes between 7 and 10 working days for this to get to the creditors and our accounts updated. We ended up making numerous calls to creditors and SC as information wasn't getting sent through in a timely manner. One chap at NW eveb said my account was at the end of the 'holding' period and that solicitors would be contacted to start recovering the debt. Luckily I spoke to another nice lady at NW who said that payments were still being made so this wouldn't happen but it was an extremely stressful month or so for us.

Basically, if you are on a DMP I would advise that you do your yearly budget review the month before it is due as it took SC about 3 weeks to send the paperwork off to all our creditors then it takes another week or so for the creditors to process this and update your accounts. Next year we are also going to write letters to all our creditors informing them that we have completed the budget review, the date it was completed, informing them that we are still with SC and that they will receive updated budget information within the next few weeks. We will also inform all creditors that the monthly payments will continue.

I just wanted to share our story in the hope that it may help some of you along your DMP journey.

Have a great day!!

BDFSH x

Puzzcat

second_chance wrote: »

hi I've changed the date of my dmp payment and need to make a manual payment...stepchange have advised they need a card payment by th 21st but i won't be able to do until the 24th will this be a massive issue? thanks

Hi,
Well they used to make the payment to creditors on the 25th so could see it being an issue before but now they do it at the beginning of the month so not sure. Best ring them and ask!
Puzz.x

spidermagicat

Hi

What is the deal with Arranged Payment vs. Default.

I started a DMP in January and my credit card went into default but my bank account overdraft went into late payment and arranged payment.

It's now showing as 6 months late with AP.

Will the AP status carry on throughout the DMP. I am concerned at the state of my credit in 6 years time. Does the AP status and late payment get taken off after 6 years like the default status does?

If AP is worse than default, is it a good idea to force a default now?

As things stand defaults I have would get removed in 2021. I'm only on target to pay off my debt in 2025. I'm worried the AP will still be on my file in 2031!

Puzzcat

spidermagicat wrote: »

Hi

What is the deal with Arranged Payment vs. Default.

I started a DMP in January and my credit card went into default but my bank account overdraft went into late payment and arranged payment.

It's now showing as 6 months late with AP.

Will the AP status carry on throughout the DMP. I am concerned at the state of my credit in 6 years time. Does the AP status and late payment get taken off after 6 years like the default status does?

If AP is worse than default, is it a good idea to force a default now?

As things stand defaults I have would get removed in 2021. I'm only on target to pay off my debt in 2025. I'm worried the AP will still be on my file in 2031!

Hi,
Ap markers stay on file for 6 years from settled so yes show for longer than defaults. As for forcing defaults, well if you have no property then go token payments, personally I don't want a ccj or charging order so am playing the game for now. BC are notorious for not defaulting.
Puzz.x

Sazzie23

spidermagicat wrote: »

Hi

What is the deal with Arranged Payment vs. Default.

I started a DMP in January and my credit card went into default but my bank account overdraft went into late payment and arranged payment.

It's now showing as 6 months late with AP.

Will the AP status carry on throughout the DMP. I am concerned at the state of my credit in 6 years time. Does the AP status and late payment get taken off after 6 years like the default status does?

If AP is worse than default, is it a good idea to force a default now?

As things stand defaults I have would get removed in 2021. I'm only on target to pay off my debt in 2025. I'm worried the AP will still be on my file in 2031!

Like Puzz says, AP markers are a pain as they sit on your file for 6 years from the last one, so you are correct that they will hang about til 2031. Since you DFD is a long one, about 9 years, I think,it would be reasonable to start by complaining and asking for a default. People have complained to FOS in the past with varying degrees of success, but if you do nothing I suspect the AP will sit with you until I least they decide to go to an DCA.

If credit will be important to you in the future, the. Getting an early default would probably be beneficial. If like me, you are not planning on getting any more credit it's probably not,an issue.m

I'm presuming your payments are quite low already if you have a long DFD, it might be in your interests to get them as low as you feel you can tolerate, (you can always keep the extra dosh as savings until you get the defaults). My payments had to reduce due to personal circs. But the benefit of that was I got,extra defaults and also all my accounts went to 0%. So although I'm only paying £17 off one of my accounts, that's,all going to pay the debt, whereas when I was paying £80 I was still only paying off around £40.

Hope this helps, have a think about it before you make the complaint.

Sazzie23

second_chance wrote: »

hi I've changed the date of my dmp payment and need to make a manual payment...stepchange have advised they need a card payment by th 21st but i won't be able to do until the 24th will this be a massive issue? thanks

When will your DD payment be due, will that cause a problem next month if it's the same date? I'd ring SC and ask them to change it a date you can manage. The last thing SC want is to push you into payments you can't sustain.