DMP mutual support thread part 13 !!

Suseka97

Good afternoon all

So, a quick update from me. Still getting letters from PRA offering varying amounts of discount - and still filing those letters away. In doing that today I decided to take a closer look at what appear to be quite favourable discounts, wondering if now would be a good time to start wiping those out. All have already dropped from my credit files, so that's good - but I've always intended to clear them, even though UE, just so that I don't have to keep looking over my shoulder in case they should one day unearth the paperwork (unlikely, I know... but still possible).

In doing so I realised I was basing what I classed as a decent discount, against the current outstanding balance - and if you look at it solely in those terms the discount is pretty favourable. But I went back through my paperwork to look at the amount each debt was when assigned over to PRA and when you take into account how much I had paid already before sending off the CCAs, and getting the welcome UE news, it is around 30% to 40% of then total balance. We all know DCAs pay pennies when they purchase debts - so it's definitely given me food for thought. Methinks I'll be filing those discount offers away for a wee while longer

Hope all is well with everyone else in DMP_land.

sourcrates

JMU-95 wrote: »

Hello.
A few of my debts are pre-2007

I am paying these off via a DMP with Stepchange entered into in 2016. Is it worth sending a CCA to each of them? I've not sent one previously. The reason I'm still hesitating is that I read somewhere recently that if the debt went to court, the debt owner doesn't have to provide the original credit agreement? If true, is there any point in CCA? (I'm hoping what i read wasn't true!)

Thanks for any help.

edited to add: link of what i was reading: https://paulatwatsonssolicitors.wordpress.com/tag/unenforceable-credit-agreement/

Its true the creditor does not have to provide the actual original signed piece of paper, but they must have a credit agreement of sorts, a reconstituted copy is fine, but can only be made if the creditor holds sufficiant information on you to reproduce it.

If they dont, they cannot just make it up.

Lots of information in the form of credit agreements get destroyed after 6 years normally, so on old debts, that have been sold on a few times, its unlikley there will be sufficiant information to produce a recon or original, credit agreement.

The guidence on pre-2007 agreements only applies to creditcard accounts, when a request is made under sec78 (sec 77 applies to loans, sec78 applies to creditcards, sec79 applies to hire purchase) the agreement supplied must contain the prescribed terms applicable to that account, if they are not there, contained within the same document, then that account will be unenforcable.

If a document you recieve under any sec above, is illegible, then that also renders the agreement unenforcable, if you can`t read it, how do you know what it says ?


Now the term "unenforcable" gets banded about quite a lot, but what does it actually mean in these circumstances ?
Well, if the creditor wanted to pursue a claim, but didnt have a copy agreement, they could spend £1000`s of pounds on solicitors to prove there case in court using other methods, but obviously it would cost them a whole heap of money, it just does not make commercial sense to do this unless there are many thousands of pounds at stake.

So the real reason these accounts are not pursued is mainly down to time, and cost constraints, debt buyers prefer quick cash turnarounds for the debts they buy, they don`t want to get bogged down in legal action, so they may still try to get you to pay the debt, but they won`t take court action, unless they can produce what they are supposed to.

Marble030509

Willing2Learn wrote: »

When I SMd my DMP, I sent all my creditors the exact same I&E. I did not use NEDCAB as I wasn't aware of it, but I am assuming identical NEDCAB I&Es are sent to all your creditors.

If the I&E numbers have been correctly inputted then they will show what is affordable. I believe NEDCAB will accurately auto-generate your payment offers based on your affordable I&E. If your creditors decline any of your payment offers, then I recommend you still make the payments in accordance with the schedule generated by NEDCAB. Your creditors will therefore have no choice but to accept your payment offers.

Thanks for this, sorry for the late reply!

I would imagine a lot of our payments that NEDCAB have thrown up will be rejected. You say my creditors will have no choice but to accept the payments so will they leave us alone then or will they keep writing to us and chasing the debt even though we are making payments, small ones, at that.

I suppose a payment is better than no payment right?

Also as you know once our DMP starts in January that would of been 10 months of no payments, have you known anyone go this long before because i know the advice on here is 3-6 months?

Just out of interest how long should a DMP last? Is 10 years too long because that is how long it will take us if we have no rises in our wages over the next 10 years. IVA and Bankruptcy are not an option to us due to my partner's financial related job.

Sorry for the all the questions again. I have the occasional panic moments still which i know i need to try and combat!

Thanks again!

Suseka97

Marble030509 wrote: »

......
You say my creditors will have no choice but to accept the payments so will they leave us alone then or will they keep writing to us and chasing the debt even though we are making payments, small ones, at that.

At the moment you are making tokens, yes - and you would have told them why and also when you intend to start making payment under a DMP arrangement. So really there's not much else they can do about it. There would be little to gain by escalating their collection activity, beyond maybe selling it off to a DCA. They may keep writing to you, sending statements etc., but that's the norm. Much of what you receive are computer generated standard letters and you can just keep filing them away.

Marble030509 wrote: »

Also as you know once our DMP starts in January that would of been 10 months of no payments, have you known anyone go this long before because i know the advice on here is 3-6 months?

Yes, there are people on here who have gone beyond the 6 months of no payment, often done to force a default. The advice is a minimum of 3 - 6 months, not a maximum. The main thing is to keep your creditors in the loop and you're already doing that.

Marble030509 wrote: »

Just out of interest how long should a DMP last? Is 10 years too long because that is how long it will take us if we have no rises in our wages over the next 10 years. IVA and Bankruptcy are not an option to us due to my partner's financial related job.

There's no limit - a DMP take as long as it takes. Some might say 10 years is a bit long, but as you appear to have no other option, what else would you do? The main thing to ensure, when in an extended DMP, is that you budget sensibly - so that you are not cutting things to the bone and the DMP is sustainable.

Marble030509

Suseka97 wrote: »

At the moment you are making tokens, yes - and you would have told them why and also when you intend to start making payment under a DMP arrangement. So really there's not much else they can do about it. There would be little to gain by escalating their collection activity, beyond maybe selling it off to a DCA. They may keep writing to you, sending statements etc., but that's the norm. Much of what you receive are computer generated standard letters and you can just keep filing them away.

Thanks for this Suseka.

We are not making tokens at the moment, sorry that was my fault, i should of made it clearer. I was talking in relation to the DMP payment amounts that NEDCAB has thrown up. Some of them are small, so i was just worried that when we do set the DMP up that some creditors will reject the payment, if they do, what do we do next? Is there nothing they can do?

Thanks again Suseka, i would be completely lost without you and Sourcrates and a few others too!

Suseka97

Marble030509 wrote: »

............
We are not making tokens at the moment, sorry that was my fault, i should of made it clearer. I was talking in relation to the DMP payment amounts that NEDCAB has thrown up. Some of them are small, so i was just worried that when we do set the DMP up that some creditors will reject the payment, if they do, what do we do next? Is there nothing they can do

Hi Marble.. okay, so no tokens (actually we tend to suggest there's little point in tokens, really not worth the admin for the creditor). You can only pay what you can afford, and so if your I&E has resulted in minimal payments to them, well - that's all they can have. Some may not accept and will likely sell your account off to a DCA. If payments are small then, again, its not worth their admin to keep hold. My one and only enforceable debt sits with Link and after more than a year of not paying them anything (whilst we haggled over the CCA request and paperwork they eventually provided) they offered me a repayment plan for that debt that is under £10 per month and paying at that rate it would take close to 8 years to clear. I'm quite happy to pay them that the account defaulted years ago and has now dropped off my files.

It's all about affordability these days and there's little to be gained dragging anyone through a court process if their financial circumstances are such that they cannot afford to pay more. Just keep your creditors in the loop and if any look like they intend to escalate matters, jump on here and we'll help.

sourcrates

Marble030509 wrote: »

Thanks for this Suseka.

We are not making tokens at the moment, sorry that was my fault, i should of made it clearer. I was talking in relation to the DMP payment amounts that NEDCAB has thrown up. Some of them are small, so i was just worried that when we do set the DMP up that some creditors will reject the payment, if they do, what do we do next? Is there nothing they can do?

Thanks again Suseka, i would be completely lost without you and Sourcrates and a few others too!

Just to add to the good advice above, creditors dislike managing accounts where only minimal payments are been made, it costs them in terms of time and money, so what normally happens is one of two things, dependant on how desperate for cash the creditor is at that present time.

Either your account will be sold for a quick cash profit, and the original creditor washes there hands of your account, or, they may take a more liberal approach, and out sourse your account to a debt collection agency, who will happily collect your payments on behalf of the creditor, it depends on the company policy.

Going to court costs time and money, you can`t take everyone who is in debt mangement to court, the system would grind to a halt, its the "in house" collections department that decide if court action is used or not, usually only if youve ignored all contact, and/or its a significant amount of money you owe, will legal action be concidered.

But, they also have targets to reach, so occasionally, if they can`t make up the numbers, they may pick accounts at random to threaten with legal action, its all a numbers game at the end of the day.

Minnie82

Hope everyone is doing well, just wanted to say again to those of you at the start of the journey, please don't worry. It all works out in the end and you can get there. Our method was a DAS and at the beginning I was all for paying it years early etc. etc. this never happened for us but instead we've lived a decent life whilst paying back out debts. If you can pay it early great but if not just enjoy being able to breathe. We've gone from around £40k debt and are now sitting at £1750 with 2 payments to go. You'll get there, we had to take a payment holiday early in the process so it'll have been 5 years 9 months when we finally settle it in September. I can't wait. If anyone has a DAS or is considering and wants to chat, I'm never far

Marble030509

Thank you Suseka and Sourcrates!

Great as always!

flee

Hi. We are looking to start our DMP in January as I didn’t realise my wife had built up so many debts whilst going through a severe bought of anxiety and hid letters unopened. I didn’t realise how bad things were as anxiety had never been part of our lives. Now it is and we are handling the monkey side of life together as I didn’t realise how much stress it added to her life. Lesson learnt.
We have to pay council tax, electric and various other bills ASAP and they need to be our priority. Do I contact PP now or wait until January and should we contact our CC people now and let them know our plan of action or again wait til January.
Thanks for any advice