118118 Money So Worried..

katnoluck

Hi everyone, I am on a DMP with Payplan and 118118 has sent me a very threatening looking default notice. i called Payplan just now and they told me that this is a legal requirement due to my situation and that I will probably get more from the other creditors.

I am just worried about what they will do next.. Will they pass my debt on to a debt collections agency or court? Has anyone had any experience with 118 in a similar position?

I have been worrying about this all weekend, as got the letter Saturday and couldn't call anyone as was too late. I am in tears and not sleeping about my situation - the gravity of it all is hitting me hard.

I am keeping this all to myself. I cannot tell my husband, as he is not very patient or understanding about debts. It would definitely be the end of us if he found out and I know this for a fact. He has a very short fuse and our relationship is not good at the best of times.

I am doing my best to take control of the problem but it's the worry about what might happen. Thanks for listening, any advice appreciated.

RecentPost

Just a standard notice, nothing to worry about, they can sell it to DCA who will most likely accept payplan dmp as the new creditor.

Unlikely this will reach court if you are making payments.

If they sell debt just like your payplan manager know the new owner.

Don't worry about it

RubyMcC

Hello,

It sounds like a standard notice and nothing to panic about.

I have to say (and I'm sorry if this isn't the kind of advice you wanted!), you sound very stressed from your post

I know from personal experience that keeping all of this to yourself and bottling things up rarely ends well! If you don't feel confident that your relationship would survive talking about these things then try reach out to family and friends or even debt helplines, I promise it will be a weight off your shoulders and you never know which friends and family might have some great advice for you!

Hope everything works out and goodluck :beer:

sourcrates

Allow me to explain how these things work, once you entered a DMP, you essentially broke the terms of your agreement with 118118, as you were unable to continue making the contracted payments.

As you are aware your loan is covered by the consumer credit act 1978, this act gives both you and the creditor certain legal protections, rights and obligations.

One obligation for the creditor is that before they can default you, they must send you a default notice, under sec 87 CCA, this gives you a certain timeframe in which to bring your account up to date or else a default may be registered on your credit file, this is a standard notice and does not take your DMP into account, it must by law, spell out the potential consequences of non payment.

So in your case, as your in debt management, this is for information purposes only, you do not have to comply with the notice, you do not have to do anything, it can be ignored.

These type of loan companies do not have the staff or resourses that the major lenders have, to pursue bad debt, so they simply default you, then one of two things will happen, either they will pass your account to a collector such as wescot, who will manage the account on their behalf, so your DMP payments would go via wescot instead (could be any collection agency, but wescot is a popular choice).

Or the other option would be for them to sell the debt to a debt purchasing company such as Lowell/Cabot/PRA Group, etc there are a few to choose from.

From your point of view, nothing will change, you still make your DMP payments, these new companies may not be aware of your DMP, so if/when, you get a letter from one of them, either write to them yourself explaining the situation, or pass it to Payplan to deal with, your payments will not change, remember, you are in control of your DMP no one else, you will recieve default notices for all your accounts included in your DMP, so get used to dealing with them.


Just remember you do not need to comply with the terms of the default notices, and they are nothing to worry about, they are just for your information only.

katnoluck

Thank you to all who have replied, I really really appreciate it.
Sourcrates, that's really great and explains things much better to me thank you.

I was thinking of trying to go for a DRO but not sure... My husband however, earns OK and if they take his into consideration I cannot do it. Does anyone have any experience of this and if they had to involve their partner? Also, house is in his name would they look at me having any 'beneficial interest' in it? He bought it years before meeting me and I have not paid for any major work to the house. Thank you all.

sourcrates

katnoluck wrote: »

Thank you to all who have replied, I really really appreciate it.
Sourcrates, that's really great and explains things much better to me thank you.

I was thinking of trying to go for a DRO but not sure... My husband however, earns OK and if they take his into consideration I cannot do it. Does anyone have any experience of this and if they had to involve their partner? Also, house is in his name would they look at me having any 'beneficial interest' in it? He bought it years before meeting me and I have not paid for any major work to the house. Thank you all.

This is the criteria for income for a DRO application :


How your income is assessed

Your DRO adviser will work out how much spare available income you've got, looking at all the money you've got coming into your household. This could include:

• your salary or wages
• welfare benefits, such as jobseeker's allowance and employment and support allowance, although if you get disability living allowance the amount you get can automatically be counted as necessary spending
• any income you get from a pension
• any contributions other people, such as family members, make to your household expenses
• any rental income.

You will be able to deduct a reasonable amount for your household expenses. If the figure left over each month is £50 or less, you will be able to apply for a DRO, if you meet the other conditions.

Other conditions are :

# Debts of no more than £20,000

# No assets over £1000

# A car worth up to £1000

# Must not be a homeowner

# Must have £50 or less left at month end (not including debt repayments).


For the purposes of a DRO beneficial interest may not apply.

fatbelly

Subscribing to this thread as it may develop into a DRO theme.

I was initially going to post to comment that the posters here seem to have been doing a better job at explaining things than the 'FCA compliant' professional debt advice organisation seems to have done.

I am actually coming to the conclusion that stepchange and payplan in bending over backwards to appease the FCA are giving worse advice in that any meaningful information is swamped by the meaningless. The literature provided to the OP no doubt includes information on administration orders, which are a historical relic, and options available to her should she choose to move to Scotland!

There also seems a growing reluctance to use DROs as a strategy and fewer resources are directed to that. Payplan have 7 DRO intermediaries which would be similar to a CAB office in a large town.

Quick comment on beneficial interest - it is recognised as an asset in a DRO if it is established beneficial interest so if a court has declared that you have an interest of x% in a property then that has to be declared as an asset.

Partner income is only taken into account for the purpose of allocating expenditure fairly (Edit: just re-read your original post. If your partner does not disclose his income there is an assumption of a 50/50 split of expenditure, which may work out better for you anyway. The other thing you should know, which we do not always flag up as relevant, is that a DRO, being an insolvency solution, appears on a public register for 15 months. You would have to know where to look and search specifically. After that it drops off the register but stays on your credit report for 6 years from when it was awarded)