IVA Complaint - Debt Movement - Ombudsman

nathswindon

Hi All,

 I've sent the below to the Financial Ombudsman. I'd be interested to know you opinons on this.

 I cannot express how difficult this company have been to deal with.

I am three successful years into my IVA.

 It has been taken over by ‘Debt Movement’.

 Put simply, my income has not risen (beyond that approved 10% overtime clause) and my expenditure has gone up. Despite this ‘Debt Movement’ have raised my monthly payments.

 They claimed the following:

 

·         The raise was due to my child benefit.                                                  They accept now that it was there from the inception of the agreement and throughout each subsequent I+E review.

·         The raise was due to an increase in income.                                       They accept now that I am entitled to this and throughout each subsequent I+E review.

·         The Overtime was not clearly stated on my payslip.                        The overtime has always been labelled as ‘Payment Plus’ including the original agreement and at each subsequent I+E review.

 

 So they now accept that my claim is correct (above), however they have requested that I send 12 months of payslips, rather than the agreed 3 months of payslips because of the “huge” (10% overtime clause) excess of earnings.

 

 Can I ask whether they are entitled to request this? I have been shocked by the way in which I have been treated. They have ignored 20+ questions that I have asked of them. They have completely failed to explain over a two month period the reasons for their decisions, and to be completely honest they feel as though:

 

·         They do not know the rules around IVAs.

·         They are looking to bully me into paying more.

·         They have acquired IVAs in an attempt to profit from them.

 

 This process has been extremely stressful from me, despite being an excellent customer I feel that I have been dismissed repatidly, before they have realised that I was correct all along and are now trying to bully me by making a request that is not (to my knowledge) within  their right / parameters.

sourcrates

Have you exhausted the IVA companies complaints procedure ?

Because you must allow the business a chance to put things right before the FOS can become involved.

All they will do with the above is tell the company they have a complaint to deal with.

fatbelly

Can the FOS deal with this?

Cit A don't seem to think so

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/debt-and-money/debt-solutions/individual-voluntary-arrangements/problems-with-an-individual-voluntary-arrangement/complaining-about-an-insolvency-practitioner/

Debt Camel seems to think they can only get involved in the initial misselling of an IVA and only then if the firm is FCA regulated

https://debtcamel.co.uk/complaint-iva/

nathswindon

That's a huge help. Thank you so much.

For what it's worth, I appear to be heading down the correct path.

nathswindon

Sourcrates, yes, I think that I've exhausted what I can.

The genuinely seem to be making it up and deflecting away from questions that they cannot answer. Ultimately, if I were wrong they could show me in their policy where it says so. But they, so far, haven't referred to policy once.

nathswindon

I won the arguement. 

Debt Movement conceded that they had deviated from my original terms.

It took four months and has to escalate the complaint twice.

fatbelly

Well done!