Benefits/drawbacks of self managing DMP

henrryyyy

I see some people move away from debt charities and start to self manage what benefit do you get from this?
One of my PDLs has put a note on my account when i log in saying "did you know we would much rather work with you than a debt management company"
Are companys more likely to freeze/reduce interest when working with a debt management company? or are they just as likely to do it if you try to self manage?

is the benefit just that you can make overpayments on certain debts when you like, to kinda encoorporate the whole snowballing idea too?

When you switch to self manage after being on a dmp, is it literally just taking over from stepchange(or whoever) or do you have to renegotiate everything again?

January2015

Hi :wave:

I moved to self managed after a year of being with SC. I did this because I wanted to control the amount I paid some of my creditors. Some creditors were not freezing interest and would not issue defaults and I dropped them to token payments of £1 per month. With hindsight I should have (and would now) just have stopped paying them altogher.

When I moved to self managed I used the NEDCAB DMP site as my starting point - it literally walks you through setting up and generates offer letters and a financial statement to send to creditors. Stepchange will not give you bank sort code or account numbers for creditors and you have to find all that information for yourself. If you debts have been passed around a few times this can take some doing.

Also when I went self managed I stop paying SC around Xmas and didn't start paying on self managed until March - giving myself a few months grace to save more in the emergency fund and for full and final settlement offers.

For me there are no drawbacks to being self managed - it's all been good.

henrryyyy

thanks for that site will save it as I think its the route I'll also end up going down.
did you find renegotiating with your creditors got you the same deal as with step change.. ie frozen or reduced interest stayed in place?

Keezing

I've gone self-managed from the start and there are some small drawbacks.

1. Signed for post is expensive. I have 8 creditors and every time I have to send a letter to them I think it costs a total of £13 for all 8. You have to send a lot of letters at the start and it's surprising how the costs add up. With stepchange they communicate with your lenders for you.

2. Royal Mail lose a lot of letters. I had no idea how unreliable Royal Mail was before I started my DMP. They seem to lose at least 1 letter (sometimes as many as 4) for each bulk load of 8 letters that I send. Maybe I just have a dodgy local post office!

3. Many creditors don't understand self-managed DMPs. For them a DMP is an intermediary such as SC or PayPlan. The incompetence has been disappointing. One of my creditors even wrote to me to say they had received my offer but didn't have the authority to deal with the 3rd-party (which was me!!!). I still have 2 creditors that just can't get their heads around it despite me using the standard templates from NEDCAB.

Small issues really!

January2015

Keezing wrote: »

I've gone self-managed from the start and there are some small drawbacks.

1. Signed for post is expensive. I have 8 creditors and every time I have to send a letter to them I think it costs a total of £13 for all 8. You have to send a lot of letters at the start and it's surprising how the costs add up. With stepchange they communicate with your lenders for you.

2. Royal Mail lose a lot of letters. I had no idea how unreliable Royal Mail was before I started my DMP. They seem to lose at least 1 letter (sometimes as many as 4) for each bulk load of 8 letters that I send. Maybe I just have a dodgy local post office!

3. Many creditors don't understand self-managed DMPs. For them a DMP is an intermediary such as SC or PayPlan. The incompetence has been disappointing. One of my creditors even wrote to me to say they had received my offer but didn't have the authority to deal with the 3rd-party (which was me!!!). I still have 2 creditors that just can't get their heads around it despite me using the standard templates from NEDCAB.

Small issues really!

I didn't send any letters via recored delivery. Just used 2nd class stamps. I only sent one letter to each creditor when I went self managed (11 x 55p). They acknowledged it, acknowledged the DMP and that was it. I did write to them after that when my circumstances changed, but I used the email addresses they sent me in their first response letter. I don't use stamps now - everything emailed. They always respond.

Regarding creditors not understanding self managed DMPs - I've always quoted a NEDCAB reference number. I know it's just a number generated by the NEDCAB website, and I know I'm self managing - it even says that in my letters/emails - but creditors are much happier because they even quote 'as you are taking advice from NEDCAB we are agreeable to your proposed payment plan'. It just shuts them up:rotfl:

It sounds like I've had more luck with my creditors than you have. It only takes one person at a creditor to not know what they are doing in relation to DMPs (self managed or otherwise) and it can lead to hiccups/problems.

So whilst I've had now drawbacks to date, I can understand the points Keezing makes above.

Edit: actually I just remembered PRAT don't answer emails so I have sent them 2 letters since self managing

Keezing

January2015 wrote: »

I didn't send any letters via recored delivery. Just used 2nd class stamps. I only sent one letter to each creditor when I went self managed (11 x 55p). They acknowledged it, acknowledged the DMP and that was it. I did write to them after that when my circumstances changed, but I used the email addresses they sent me in their first response letter. I don't use stamps now - everything emailed. They always respond.

Regarding creditors not understanding self managed DMPs - I've always quoted a NEDCAB reference number. I know it's just a number generated by the NEDCAB website, and I know I'm self managing - it even says that in my letters/emails - but creditors are much happier because they even quote 'as you are taking advice from NEDCAB we are agreeable to your proposed payment plan'. It just shuts them up:rotfl:

It sounds like I've had more luck with my creditors than you have. It only takes one person at a creditor to not know what they are doing in relation to DMPs (self managed or otherwise) and it can lead to hiccups/problems.

So whilst I've had now drawbacks to date, I can understand the points Keezing makes above.

Edit: actually I just remembered PRAT don't answer emails so I have sent them 2 letters since self managing

I think your creditors may have have been easier to deal with because you were already in a DMP with SC so the process was already in place on their systems.

I must admit it's been really difficult and time consuming starting self-managed from scratch. Royal Mail didn't help, but the main problem has been creditors just responding with semi-relevant computer generated templates that mainly miss the point. When it comes to DMPs, it's clear that their systems and templates have been designed to deal with an intermediary.

I've even sent 2 formal complaints to AMEX which they have completely ignored!

Regardless, it's still do-able and in 3 months all but 1 of my creditors have stopped interest and charges, 3 of my accounts have defaulted and 1 is currently with a DCA. They DCA is much easier to deal with.

zenshi

I went self managed from the start and have had no problems at all. Once it was up and running, I never got any phone calls and only minimal letters say once a year to see if I can still afford the amount I'm paying

All interest etc was stopped after my initial letter. Only 2/7 debts have been sold, the others are still with OC

boobaby

I am currently in the process moving our DMP to self managed. We have had our DMP with an intermediary for years and some of the debts have therefore been sold on to third party collections agencies. When I am contacting creditors should I be contacting the original creditor, i.e. NatWest, or should I be directing correspondence to whomever is collecting the payments on our DMP? Any advise would be appreciated.