Apologies if I am resurrecting an old thread but I totally empathise with the OP and wanted to share some of my frustrations.
We went into an IVA due to job losses and finding out that what was originally manageable to repay had become completely unmanageable and we were in over our heads. We looked at an IVA and with great reluctance accepted to go onto one.
2 months after signing our IVA contract, both my husband and myself found better paying jobs and we could now afford all our debts at good repayment amounts and if we had not accepted the IVA we would have paid off most of them by now including interest. At the time, we did not realise that we could fail the IVA and return to agreements with our creditors - how I wish we had done this.
Going from an IVA where we were due to pay less than 50p in the pound over 5 years, we are now looking at paying 100p in the pound plus all costs and finishing up this year - approx 3.5 years.
Yesterday we received a financial statement of payments and receipts. Our receipts are not correct as per our bank statements - we keep a running total on an Excel sheet according to our bank statements. We have received £3400 in PPI refunds plus a few pennies - not reflected on the statement. Last year we had an confirmed claim from BT which we disputed as my husband paid a settlement amount to BT 2 years prior to our IVA (we have to go to an old bank to get statements to prove this) but now the BT claim has disappeared from agreed claims and another creditor has appeared, I assume this is BT again - but the amount is almost triple but not agreed. What the hell is going on I would love to know.
I requested a 21 day notice to be sent out to 2 creditors that had not put in a claim - last year - and was told that a claim had been received but on my statement of accounts it still shows as not received.
According to the statement we have 12.5 months left to pay, according to my calculation of fees (over 30% of my debt) we have at most 4.5 months left to pay to settle all creditors 100% as well as all IP costs.
If you take away the unagreed/unclaimed debts, we would have overpaid by £3000 plus a bit.
We spoke to our firm last year who also told us that we had approximately 16 months left to pay give a few months either way. This was before the PPI monies of £3400 were taken into account and tally's with my calculations.
We took a 2 month agreed payment holiday due to my husband's company changing their payment terms (he receives money weekly) from weekly to 28 days from date of invoice but if the money is due on a Monday - Thursday it only gets paid on the Friday which we receive on the following Tuesday.
Our IP has sent a report to our creditors claiming that we are in arrears and he is in communication with us to collect these arrears - total BS. Nothing has been said to us and no contact has been made.
We were told that the Nominee would get a once of payment of £1000.00 but on our latest statement it states that £1000 has been paid but a further £1000 is due - don't understand this at all.
All in all we have done our level best to co-operate with our IP and have communicated with them constantly but it appears that for us, an IVA was completely the wrong choice. We have compiled an email including our spreadsheet of calculations to our IP and can only hope that it is all sorted out to everyone's satisfaction as I do believe he is unaware of the errors having had the report calculated by his staff and hence the reason I am not naming him.
I am not saying that it is wrong for everybody. If you are not going to be able to repay your debts within 5 years and all costs, then an IVA is definitely the way to go. For us unfortunately it was the wrong choice.
When we took out the IVA we were told that the creditors pay the costs, this is not true as we are paying 100% of all costs as to date we have paid more than our debt and in effect are just paying costs.
I believe in an honest day's wage for an honest day's work and have no problem paying my IP as he has done the work, but I would have preferred to have been told that costs = approx. 30% of your payments or debts (in our case debts) and not the 15% that you pay out of each payment.
I believe that there is always 2 sides to a story and what works for me will not necessarily work for the next person.
IVA accepted 18 March 2011, we have paid our final contribution on 1 June 2014.