Scared people are going to visit my house - debt advice

atc05040

Hi there,

I'll explain my situation in brief - last year I took a loan out and when I lost my job I was struggling to pay - I was also dealing with severe mental health and my anxiety seemed to improve when ever I spent and got money and got into a bad habit of pay day loans and credit card spending and got myself into an awful situation.

My major debts are to halifax whom I owe over 8000 to and some other creditors of at least above 2000

I am dealing with step change who are fantastic and organised a DMP and i understand creditors will still send default letters

i currently live with my parents and im so scared they are going to send debt collectors around and i dont want them to find out

my mental health as improved and starting a new job next month so can start making payments again fully but because my accounts have nearly all defauled i will continue to use step change and just increase my payments through them

i guess what i want to know is, as long as im making some sort of payment and dealing with stepchange will anyone have to visit my house and take stuff away etc ?

im scaring myself silly

sourcrates

Stop panicking, although often threatened, home visits by collection agents are pretty rare, they are usually only employed in areas where they can visit a large number of clients at once to make it cost effective.

It's important to remember they are not bailiffs, and have no more power than you or I do, they can not take away your stuff.

Please do some research on the subject.

You possess the Death Star main weapon when it comes to dealing with them, your front door, just keep it closed, speak to them through the letterbox, one clear and concise sentence "im dealing with stepchange please address all concerns to them, goodbye", that's it, that's all you have to say, walk away and ignore them, if they refuse to leave, call the police, film them on your phone, they don't like that, tell them it's going on YouTube.

Seriously, they are nothing to worry about, and as long as your repaying your debts they will not be calling.

datlex

Hi OP, Many years ago I found myself with best part of £10K debt with First Direct. Different bank to you but I thought I would share my experience. I lost my job so could not afford the payments. I spoke to them and they reduced the amount I had to pay by a huge amount, about 70%. Now obviously that won't happen for everyone. Today I am totally debt free (assuming you don't count credit cards paid in full and not used as additional funds just as a means to pay to get rewards), I never got a late payment marker from first direct nor a negative report from them on my credit report! There is far too much advise on here in my opinion about handling getting behind. My advice is at the slightest sign of any financial issue talk to your providers, don't wait until you miss a payment. Most are reasonable if you are up front. It is when you go cap in hand after missing 4 or 5 payments that they get more difficult.

I hope things get brighter soon for you :-)