Our Marlin Experience

themagics

We have been with Payplan for almost 2 years since our financial difficulties started to affect our ability to make our Mortgage payments (very worrying). Most of the creditors entered into the arrangement with Payplan and accepted a pro-rata share of the £250 per month we pay to payplan. We have had a better quality of life since, until February this year when we started to receive letters from HSBC and Pheonix Recovery saying that the debt had been passed on, 2 of the letters we exactly the same, but printed on each others letterheads!!! - We forwarded these onto Payplan who proceeded to make the transfer of payment, in the case of our debt with HSBC was £30 per month. We thought it was all sorted until we started to get letters from marlin which referenced the HSBC accounts, who wanted the debt paying in full.

My wife phoned Pheonix who said the had PASSED the debt onto Marlin. We obviously informed Payplan.

The other day we received another batch of letters from Marlin stating that if the complete balance of each account was not paid in full with 7 days they would seek legal proceedings and request a charging order be placed on our property.

Understandably my wife, at this point very upset called Marlin and Spoke to Mr Harris who said that the legal proceedings could be avoided if we make an agreement with them to pay the debt in full over 36 months - £368 per month, my wife said he should phone back the day after once she had discussed it with me.

I called Payplan the next morning to inform them of the request, payplan said they had received 1 acceptance of the 3 accounts that had been PASSED ON. but the other accounts had not yet being transfered.

Mr Harris called at 7:30 the following evening wanting to make the arrangements for payment that my wife had agreed to make. I stopped Mr Harris to inform him that they had been informed by myself that payplan were dealing with all our debt management and they had no record of a new agreement, or REFUSAL of agreement when the debt was passed on to Marlin. Mr Harris said that was my fault for not checking with payplan the account status. Mr Harris also informed me that he had a letter in front of him that stated a refusal of any agreements with payplan for the HSBC accounts. He also informed me with emphasis that Marlin had BOUGHT the debts directly from HSBC with the sole intention of securing the debt against my property with a charging order, all prior agreements and payments to those accounts were NULL AND VOID.

Mr Harris then requested that I stated for purpose of the recorded phone call that I did not want to agree to the offer of terms of the new payment (£368), I stated that as we were in a DMP we could not afford the amount put forward.

Mr Harris informed me that at the end of the call the legal proceeding would begin, legal cost would be added to the balance and interest including backdates would be charged at 8%, calculated on a daily basis, once the charging order was granted (quote) I could choose not to pay a penny of it but the debt would increase by £127 per month until the debt was cleared.

It would seem that Mr Harris has a script!

Today I went to see citizens advice to ask if Marlin could go straight to court and apply for a charging order (without the process of CCJ first) I was told YES, if (lets say) it could be arranged that way!!!

The advice was which is the point I was trying to make before I told the whole story!!! was:

Keep making the payments as usual.
Make notes of any other phone conversations.
Make copies of every piece of correspondence and forward it onto payplan.
When the court forms do arrive - deal with them IMEADIATELY, make copies and send them to every party involved RECORDED DELIVERY.

We intend to request that ALL correspondence from Marlin and their associated companies should be made by letter.

We hope that when this matter goes to court, our efforts to actively pursue a method of payment to all our creditors will indeed be in our favour, and enforce a payment that we can arrange to afford.

Marlin were asking for £368 for just over 10K worth of debt, we currently pay Payplan £250 to share to pay 56K of debt.

stapeley

hi , RULE ONE , never talk on the phone to these people . I would now request a copy of your CCA and notice of Assignment from MERLIN . I very much doubt they have a enforceable CCA . As you are with PAYPLAN this shows a court you are prepared to deal with your debt . These tactics by the DCA ARE OUT OF ORDER !. Stand firm , I would be very surprised if the DCA come up with a CCA .