Letter to IVA Council

[admin]

Dear IVA Council,

Thank you for joining our forum and taking the time to post. However your membership has been suspended until you agree to adhere to certain forum guidelines and resolve your legal issues with the BERR/DTI, these are:

Forum Guidelines
-Non solicitation, you must not sell your services in your posts (but you may advertise what you do in your signature)
-Your posts should make good constructive points that advise people based on sound factual evidence
-Non defammatory - please do not slander other posters, debt solutions or firms, however you can constructively criticise as long as you include reasoning and have a factual basis

DTI Logo Copyright Issue
We have been in dialogue with BERR (used to be DTI) and they are not happy that you are using their logo on your website (your website also looks very similar to their website). While we would like your participation and input on the forum we feel that we cannot allow that until you resolve this legal issue with BERR.

Letters to People on Insolvency Register
Many people have complained that they have received letters from yourself advising them that they have been miss sold an IVA and that they should stop paying IVA contributions. A blanket mail like this is dangerous as, although there maybe cases of miss selling, it is unlikely to be of a significant nature and asking all people in an IVA to stop their contributions could lead to many going bankrupt. Bankruptcy as an alternative to IVA is discussed at length on this forum and I wont go into it here but both have their pros and cons. However there are clear instances where bankruptcy is not a good option, these include:

-Where someone is in a job where bankrupts are not allowed to work (e.g. armed forces, teacher, company director, solicitor, etc)
-Where someone has a house with a lot of equity (but they are still insolvent).


There may of been cases of miss selling in the past and this is one of the reasons why this forum was set up. Miss selling claims seem to have greatly reduced and this may in part be down to the transparent nature of forums such as this. We have another thread open on this and intend to find miss selling cases and place them as case studies on this site as well as forward them to channel 4 who are making a documentary on the IVA industry. We already have 2 case studies - which are currently in our blogs section.

I hope you understand our position and if you can resolve and agree to the above then we would be delighted to have you posting on the forum again.

Admin Team

[MelanieGiles]

What a superb posting, Admin, once again demonstrating that this forum is at the leading edge of the marketplace and is prepared to put its head about the parapet when needed to.

As a professional within the industry, I am very pleased and proud to be able to contribute to the forum. The balanced views of all of the experienced experts - especially those who are expert because of their own personal experiences - provide a second to none one-stop-shop for sonsumer advice.

And can I just add my own note to the IVA Council. Please have the decency to return my telephone call of yesterday, to explain to me why you felt it necessary to circulate my clients if your target audience were clients of so called "IVA factories". Please be so bold as to identify what you actually mean by this term, so that we can all understand what you are getting at.

Regards, Melanie Giles, Insolvency Practitioner for over 20 years.

To have me propose an IVA for you, please visit:
http://www.melaniegiles.com/ivaEnquiry.asp

See customer feedback at:
http://www.iva.com/iva_companies/IVA_Advice_Bureau.asp

[colins]

WE have a IVA which we entered in 2005. today we have received a letter from the IVA council in bournmouth saying we may have been missold iva by IP and they are investigating and we should stop making payments. Who are these people is what they are saying true.

They have told us not to tell our IP

[mish1953]

Colin_s
a question - how the blazes would they know that you have been mis-sold an IVA, have they got all the details, know how much money is involved, know what your I & E is ... nope - - didnt think so .
These folk seem to be eejits, read some of the other posts on here about them.

Do you think that you have been mis-sold ?

Slainte
Mish

[MelanieGiles]

This firm have been extremely rude in circulating letters to clients of IPs who have probably acted in completely good faith, without having the decency to take their thoughts to the professionals concerned in the first instance.

Perhaps this will now persuade the DBERR that the publicity of the IVA register on-line is not a sensible measure, given all of the illicit correspondence that firms seeking to make money out of vulnerable people manage to generate.

I you feel that you were mis-sold an IVA, and did not receive appropriate advice from your own IP, the right place to take these matters is to the Financial Ombudsman or the appropriate Regulatory Body.

And I suggest that you send this letter to your IP, to make them aware of what is happening out in the marketplace, so they can take this matter up with the "IVA Council" whoever they are. Hopefully he/she will have more luck in getting someone from this outfit to answer the phone and return calls.

Regards, Melanie Giles, Insolvency Practitioner for over 20 years.

To have me propose an IVA for you, please visit:
http://www.melaniegiles.com/ivaEnquiry.asp

See customer feedback at:
http://www.iva.com/iva_companies/IVA_Advice_Bureau.asp

[neil277]

Hi

I have just received a letter from the iva council stating i have been mis-sold my iva.

My payment was made today to my IP for £414.00 and this is to be my last payment to cleardebt.co.uk as my wife and i have decided that in the best interest of our family and our new born baby i should go B.C.

I was one year 3 months into my iva of 6 years, time passes us by so quick and i need to give all my support to my family and intime buy a house with my wife.

I have been told by debtline that i have to miss 3 payments before i apply for bankruptcy so on 29th July i will apply to Medway County Courts for bankruptcy.

I would like to say am i scared not one little bit because its the right thing to do.

Regards.

Neil

[Adam Davies]

Hi Neil
Sometimes it is the right thing to do
Good luck to you and your family
Regards

[neil277]

Hello Andy

Its good to see you working hard for your family and also IVA.CO.UK and yes THE IVA COUNCIL are here to stay?

I feel sorry for cleardebt.co.uk because they were very honest and helped me when i was in trouble but times change.

The debt we are in today is caused via THE Labour Party and we all need to change and also the law needs to change because we have to protect the Country.

I would like to say i was in Local Goverment for two years and of course Mr Gordon Brown did not call the elections as i would have liked, so today i have given up my dream and have done what is right for my family.

Any one who wants to join my facebook just *** and i will link to you.

We all can make a difference.

Regards

Neil

Hi Neil,
*** We do not advise publishing your email address as it is an invitation to receive a lot of spam. It has therefore been removed.
admin

[Skippy]

Hi Neil, good luck with your BR. If you want to go BR sooner it might be worth speaking to your local court - you don't always need to miss 3 payments. I missed 2, and I wasn't asked anything about the IVA, only why it had failed.

[olympic_torch]

neil277.
I am glad BR is the right solution for you.
I cannot say my debt was caused by the Labour party, as i got married when Maggie was in power.
In my opinion, my debts were caused by 'me' (and mrs torch a little bit).
Nobody twisted my arm up my back to buy my council house, nobody put a gun to my head and forced me to spend more on plastic than the national debt of Brazil.
We just 'Did'

What a great name for a 'IVA.CO.UK signon,

wejust'did'

[Skippy]

I agree OT - no-one forced me to spend the money and I don't even have property to show for it! To be honest I don't have much at all to show for it which is the scary part.

[mpmb11]

Hi

When you say that the IVA is tricky to show that it has been mis sold can someone offer me advice on this scenario.

My partner had accumilated a lot of debt from a previous relationship. She was appraoched by a company in fact she was hounded by a company to take out this IVA with repeated calls maybe 2-5 per day. Eventually she went through the details and she informed the IP that she did not want my income taking into account as her debts were nothing to do with me at that time and wanted this based on her income expenditure alone. The IP eventually completed the IVA where she ended up paying £315 per month, however, within 3 months this figure went up to £385 pounds I can't remember the details of why other than they had based it on my income. I explained to them that they should not have taken my income into consideration and when looking through the court judgement that they submitted and their supporting documents within the IVA there was no mention of my income. Therefore they based an IVA on her income and expenditure alone, submitted this to the court and the creditors and then decided to increase after the event due to my income. I ended up paying the IP approx £3200 for nothing as the IVA was unaffordable for her or me.[:(!]

Therefore would this be classed as a mis sold IVA.

Thanks

[kallis3]

Hi and welcome.

You income would have been taken into account to.show that you were both paying your fair share of the household bills. This would have freed up more of her disposable income to pay towards the IVA. However, you shouldn't have been hounded and pressured into taking it out.

What company was it?

[plasticdaft]

Nobody held a shotgun to your head though,and all charges are written into the agreement up front so it is hard to prove mis-selling. The iva council just want to make money out of the iva being quite a tough time in ones life,and they try to take advantage of that and offer an easy end to it all.

If you dont like the iva you have entered then make yourself bankrupt,dont pay someone to do it for you!!!

Paul

[Tina Shortland]

Hi mpmb11 - it does not sound as though the IVa was mis-sold. It does however sound like there was an issue with communication if things are being questions after the event. Also, to be directly approached to enter an IVa and chased on a number of occaisions does not sound good practise but it does not equate to mis-selling. Your partner should have had everything explained to them, even the fact why your income was included in the calculation. Any increases in payments should be as a result of a review which highlights further disposable income being available. Again something that should have been explained.

I suggest your partner goes back to her IP and get s some clarity on any issues and look at an I&E review if the payments are not manageable. None of this is something the IVA Council can help you with - they themselves have targetted her which is not a good approach. If your partner does not get anywhere with her IP then she should go to the IPs regulatory body to take the matter up with them.

Let us know how things go.

Regards,