Anyone who has had a DMP with Payplan, advice needed.

wuzzypoo · 11 May 2011 at 10:17AM

Hi,

I have had a DMP with Payplan since 2003, my debts were approx 10K when I started with them. I have paid as much as I can and increased my payments every year. When i first went with them they estimated that my plan would be finished by 2008 at the rate I was paying. As I said I've increased my payments every year and haven't defaulted at all, but I got a very very distressing email yesterday saying that my plan will not finish until 2015!!!! This was like a smack round the head, I haven't slept all night!

i spoke to one of the many many plan managers who have looked after my file 2 years ago and he said my plan would finish in 2012, but since having another 2 case managers since then, the email yesterday has put my head in such a spin. I'm already being treated for sever depression, and this has just pushed me over the edge I think.

When I rung up 2 years ago and spoke to the person who rang my account he said he will not even approach my creditors to cancel the interest etc until 2012, I though this set up was meant to help people. One of my main creditors has not cancelled the interest, and has only dropped the amount of interest recently, but I'm still being charged £50 a month interest, so my payments aren't making much of a dent in the amount I owed. I got a letter from this creditor a few days ago and I still owe nearly 9K, I owed just over 10K 2 years ago, but due to the interest it's not going down.

Has anyone else had any problems with payplan? As I have said, I have asked them repeatedly to speak to my creditors, but they refuse saying they will not contact them until the end of my plan, but the end date keeps changing. This isn't by a few months, like I said, they've put another 7 years on it since I started.

I'm sorry to rattle on, but as i have said, I am at the depth of depression and this has really rocked me. My home is a wreck as all my spare money goes to payplan so cannot have any improvements done. it's so so cold in winter as my doors & windows are so old and so make no difference if open or closed. I am in definate danger of being made redundant, so not a good place.

I don't need to post a SOA as done all that, i just want to know others experiences from Payplan, and what they did etc as really don't know where to turn at the mo.

Many thanks

dancingfairy · 11 May 2011 at 11:16AM

Hmm. I haven't dealt with Payplan but I have a few suggestions for you.
I think I would write to Payplan and ask them for a full breakdown of who they've paid and when for the plan so far. I'd also ask them for details of what contact they've had with the creditors as well.
Hopefully this will shed some light on what the situation actually is at the moment. You may need to do a subject access request (SAR) though if they fail to provide the info. first time around but a SAR is 10 pounds I believe and means they have to provide you with eveything they have ever held on your file.
It seems very much like they haven't managed to get creditors to stop interest and charges. Now there are no guarantees the creditors will but I would have thought they would have by now and Payplan should have been hassling them to stop all charges by now. Without seeing what they've done and how much effort they've put in it's a bit difficult to judge how successful/ otherwise they've been.
Once you have uptodate figures from Payplanand can work out what's happened I would cancel the plan as clearly it's not working for you at the moment. I would contact the creditors directly and try and arrange full and final settlements.
df

Tixy · 11 May 2011 at 12:04PM

Agree with DF this really doesn't sounds good.
Generally the people who post on her and use Payplan tend to have had more positive experiences than you have found.

I know people who have found contacted creditors directly to ask them to reconsider freezing interest (even when they have been on managed DMPs) I would suggest you might want to do this for anyone still charging you interest (there is a good template on national debtline website you could use as a starting point).

Aside from that I agree with DF find out exactly how much they have paid to each creditor over the years, what the original balances are, when each creditor stopped interest or what interest is still being charged.

If you owed £10k in 2003 and still owed £10k 2 years ago in 2002009 then something really doesn't look right. Whilst creditors agreeing to freeze interest can never be guaranteed it would be very unusual for none to have frozen or reduced interest for your payments to have only covered interest & charges..

dancingfairy · 11 May 2011 at 12:38PM

It's going to depend on how far short of the minimum payments they were - if they kept increasing the payments as well. It might be something stupid like the payment each creditor is getting is close to or even more than the monthly minimum then they might feel there is no need to stop interest and charges.
Payplan and/or creditors could have made an adiminstrative mistake - the OP really needs to get all the facts in and then consider making a formal complaint if needs be, as well as trying to sort out the resulting situation, which is again not 100% clear.
df

wuzzypoo · 11 May 2011 at 7:10PM

Thank you so much for your replies. I'll write to my main creditor's md or CEO and see what if anything they will do. I'll also take your advice and write to the manager of Payplan and ask exactly what they have paid and what contact they have had with my creditots as I'm sick of being told different things. I'm not sure if it's because I have had so many people handling my account as I'm constantly being contacted by different folk and when I ask where the last person went I'm not told anything, but the email saying i wouldn't be paid up and they will not contact any of my creditors for a few years seems very wrong to me.

Thanks again for your help.

wuzzypoo · 13 May 2011 at 10:01PM

Hi,

Just an update. I have written to the MD of my biggest creditor, the one who won't cancel the interest, so I'll just have to wait for a reply on that one. I have asked Payplan for a breakdown of starting debts, what has been paid to whom and when my creditors have been contacted as I have told them I have serious worries of how my account has been handled.

Many thanks to those who replied with idea's to help, it has helped and picked me up so much.

Frankie100 · 13 May 2011 at 10:30PM

Hi wuzzypoo,
Payplan can sometimes get it wrong.
I was with Paypal a good few years ago and they told me that I would be paying for 7 years.At the end of the 7 years I contacted them to ask when I will finish the payments,they checked for me and realised that I should of stopped paying a year earlier so I got a refund of over £1,000 from them.So you see maybe they have got it wrong in your case too.Hope you get it sorted soon wuzzypoo

wuzzypoo · 24 May 2011 at 9:29PM

Hi All,

As I said above I contacted my biggest most awkward creditor to ask them to write off the remaining debt and unsuprisingly they have written back to say no way. Payplan is conducting and investigation into how my plan has been handled after I complained about being told I'd be paid off and then again and again the date getting further away, so have to wait for that, but in the meantime, is there anything else I can do about the creditor? I have tried the Fin Omb before regarding the PPI have been charged and payments not stopped years ago when i first defaulted, but as this was before 2006 they have said I can't do anything about it, does anyone else have any other ideas?

Thanks again for all of you help.

Frankie: I'd love for this to happen, I do seem to have apid a lot for them to refuse to contact my creditors at all.

amersall · 25 May 2011 at 1:10PM

Hi there, look here for reasons for mis sell of ppi
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/reclaim/ppi-loan-insurance#step2
If any/all apply to you then put a claim in.
Does not matter when you took these out or if they are in default as people have won mis sell from the 90s, if you win mis sell then this will be used to reduce your debts and that can only help you.

Post here if you need anymore help with this.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.php?f=169
If you do not have a claim then at least you will know.

Toggit · 27 May 2011 at 4:02PM

Hi Wuzzypoo
My husband has had his DMP with Payplan for the last 6 years and has a March 2012 completion date - we aim to pay even more into this from August when my mortgage rate drops considerably to clear this by the end of this year - interest is an issue we have recently picked up on, but worse still, we had a letter from a creditor stating that the payment they had received in february 2011 was the last one required and the debt was paid in full. My husband immediately sent this on to Payplan and emailed them. Regardless of this, they made a further 2 payments to the creditor. After the first payment went to them in error - we queried it with Payplan and they said they needed to be told that the account was closed - seems the official letter from the creditor wasn't good enough. When they paid it a second time - we asked again why? and were told by yet another agent (like you, there have been many over the years) that it was a mistake at their end - that they are there to follow our instructions and it would not happen again they had now closed the account. However, they have never advised why they did this - we put in an official complaint as we have been unable to retrieve these overpayments which amount to £425 and still in their response they do not advise why they made this mistake and the outcome is - our money is gone. Our only option now, is to escalate our complaint to the financial ombudsman.

This is such a stressful situation to begin with that you do not need the people who are supposedly "on your side" working against you.

Do you have access to your Justabank account with payplan? It shows all creditors, the starting figures and current balance BUT the figures are only for the year you are currently in - so there is no way of seeing your overall history since you began your DMP, from start up to the current date.

I don't believe this can be right either and would be very interested to see what response you get from Payplan.

Good luck!!
Toggit

KYOTOBLUES · 27 May 2011 at 5:00PM

Hi I have had a similar experience with Payplan which resulted in my bankruptcy. In Feb 2010, I had around 10k of debt and opened a DMP with PP @ £200 per month, suggested by PP from my SOA. My est end of DMP was 2015 from payplan and they got the ball rolling, a few months later, 6 of 8 of my creditors had accepted the offers of repayment. Like you, I was worried that the payments were going on interest only, so the DMP end date was very misleading.

payplan were reporting that all repayments were made to each creditor, but my main creditor, HSBC was returning my payments, as they were not enough, according to them, even though they knew my situation. Payplan fobbed me off regarding this as they said the returned money would be refunded or paid to my other creditors, it wasnt and all stayed the same until Nov 2010, they continued to send HSBC the payments, no sign of the returned payments being paid to my other creditors or returned to me, it was disappearing, and when I investigated direct with the bank, no one from PP had been in touch with them and the bank was sticking to their guns re full repayments, they issued a bailiff notice when I explained that I was in debt and could not make what they were demanding. After contacting PP and getting nowhere, on advice from National Debtline, who were very good, always have been, I stopped the DMP and considered BR as a solution.

BR is not suitable for everyone as there are risks involved, but it did worry me that although I was making payments in attempt to pay the debt, it was either being rejected or being eaten up as payment to interest and nowhere near the min repayments. PP were less than helpful and also tried to persuade me to increase my payments, which they knew I could not do. They promised to act as a 3rd party between debtors and creditors, which in fairness, they did to a degree. But when I rang them expressing concern about HSBC, they told me to ring them myself, which I did. It was then a case of both parties 'passing the buck' and me pouring money down the drain.

I know this is probably uncommon and DMP's suit some more than others, but they should be honest and realistic when setting up DMP's, in my case they did the bare minimum. In the end, BR was my only option as I was also on a temp work contract with a disable child to support.

Just before declaring BR, I felt like I had wasted nearly a year of making DMP repayments only for the debt to INCREASE to £13k by the time I declared BR and ended up making repayments of £90 per month as an IPA in my BR, which I have been told goes direct to the creditors and not on interest.

Anyone who has had a DMP with Payplan, advice needed.

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