Pre-Stepchange DMP questions

RAS

@BuzzyBees101. You are best asking questions on your own thread. 

But.....

Yourself and Mikuhar both need new bank basic accounts into your salaries etc are paid. You also need a decent budget and new savings account. Henceforth, you live within your new budget month to month and you put everything else into your savings account. Your also use that time to stress test your budget, because people often forget to put aside 1/12th of annual expenses each month.

When a creditor defaults, you will get correspondence telling you who to pay;  this might be the original creditor, their debt collector, or they might sell the debt. There will be details of your new account reference and bank details. You start paying the creditor for the defaulted account as soon as you know those details. The fact that other creditors haven't issued defaults is irrelevant. 

Depending on the state of your emergency fund/savings you might want to make this a reduced payment initially, so you've built a decent cushion to cover redundancy or illness as well as domestic emergencies. Stepchange only seem to allow £25 per month towards emergency funds. 

13thlegion

BuzzyBees101 said:

Hi I am also thinking of doing the same thing…can I just ask, when your waiting for everything to default and some will quicker than others for the ones that defaulted earlier is there a chance of them sending bailiffs out whilst your waiting for others to default? 

Sorry I didn’t mean to crash the post but my question may also be helpful to you.

Thank you

Just so everyone is clear

Bailiffs coming to your door is the end of a very long road, with many stops, turn offs to different routes, and sign posts along the way.

No one can send bailiffs out without a court order. Consumer debt is very very unlikely to take that route. It is not worth the hassle and cost for them. 

We must remember that our debts are a lot of money for us, and basically meaningless pocket change to the businesses we have borrowed from. This is the reason they sell them on so quickly for pennies on the pound.

BuzzyBees101

 Hearing that just made my shoulders go down phew! Will have to keep telling myself to stand back take a look at the bigger picture and keep on with the plan.

Thanks for your help  

Rob5342

13thlegion said:

BuzzyBees101 said:

Hi I am also thinking of doing the same thing…can I just ask, when your waiting for everything to default and some will quicker than others for the ones that defaulted earlier is there a chance of them sending bailiffs out whilst your waiting for others to default? 

Sorry I didn’t mean to crash the post but my question may also be helpful to you.

Thank you

We must remember that our debts are a lot of money for us, and basically meaningless pocket change to the businesses we have borrowed from. This is the reason they sell them on so quickly for pennies on the pound.

That's a good thing to remember. Debt collectors buy debts at 10% or less of their value with the intention of making a return over a number of years. Even quite a small repayment will make them a nice profit for no effort so they don't have to chase every debt for the full amount. 

Mikuhar

Hi everyone,

So I stopped all payments mid Feb and have started my emergency fund. (2 missed payments on loans)

So far I haven’t received any letters at all but have had calls, texts and emails reminding me of the missed payments.

Today I got an email from Bamboo informing that my account is now in collections, I’m not seeing a default on my credit file and did think it would take a little longer to see defaults / give me time to save.

If they’ve passed to collections already does that mean defaults will appear soon and I should pay whichever company collections is with the amount I’ve confirmed is affordable?

thanks in advance!

2021rdsunshine

Mikuhar said:

Hi everyone,

So I stopped all payments mid Feb and have started my emergency fund. (2 missed payments on loans)

So far I haven’t received any letters at all but have had calls, texts and emails reminding me of the missed payments.

Today I got an email from Bamboo informing that my account is now in collections, I’m not seeing a default on my credit file and did think it would take a little longer to see defaults / give me time to save.

If they’ve passed to collections already does that mean defaults will appear soon and I should pay whichever company collections is with the amount I’ve confirmed is affordable?

thanks in advance!

Bamboo has to send you a default  notice by letter to start with before you can see the default on your credit file. The email you received is probably telling you that your account is now with their collections department. In my case they took 7 months to default me and then they went silent after that. I then waited until someone contacted me which took another 8 months. So, just recently I had a letter from Bamboo saying they have sold my debt and introducing the new owner TBI. I have now started paying the new owner by standing order.  

So I think you need to wait for your default first  before start making any payments and it might take a while 

Mikuhar

Thanks! I’ll keep waiting on them and checking my credit report

ManyWays

Bamboo loans are normally very expensive, have you looked at an affordability complaint? 

Mikuhar

Bamboo is by far my largest debt due to them adding interest at the very start of the loan.

it was originally a £6500 loan which is now almost 10k despite paying £260 per month for around two years, do you think it would worth looking the affordability complaint? I’m not sure whether you would do this before or after defaulting but will do some research.

fatbelly

You can start the ball rolling now. It's a long process

https://debtcamel.co.uk/refunds-large-high-cost-loans/

Also see

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-4034310.pdf