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Hi my wife owes around £32k and the CCCS have advised her to go for a DMP as we have too much disposable income for a IVA. Almost two weeks ago she wrote to her creditors informing them that she was in disscusition with the CCCS and could they freeze charges and interest and she will contact them shortly with a payment offer. So far only one has replied and aknowledged this. She continues getting letters with charges and interest and threats of debt collection agencies. She has made token payments to her bigest creditors this month, but needed to pay off some of our joint acc overdraft this month too. She plans making payment from November payday. Also she changed our home phone number and her mobile has been cut off, so they only have her work number.
My questions are
1 is it normal not to get replies until a payment offer is made?
2 can she really get away with doing this only by post. I keep saying she is going to have to ring them up.
3 when companys say debt collectors will handle the case does this mean the bailifs? Although we dont have much for them to take, it would be very embarassing, and I would be fuming! If they did want to take things how do I prove, for instance, my laptop is mine and not the wifes? And the TV is her parents who let us loan it as they are in Spain?
Any help much appreciated!
Rob

How much disposable income are CCCS suggesting that you can afford to pay each month?

Hi, don't have the exact figures but its around £600, it will pay off the debt in 5 years and 7 months.. Im not pleased that both our disposable incomes are taken into account to pay off the debt but have no choice.
Oh and my although my wife has been advised by the CCCS she has chosen to administer the debt independantly, on which I will check as being rubbish with money got her in this mess in the first place.

Looks to me that a five year IVA or thereabouts would be more appropriate - stops interest accruing etc. Visit www.iva.com and review IP's that can give you appropriate advice - it seems CCCS (who are funded by the banks) like the majority of their clients to do DMP's - benefits the banks!

It's more complicated than it looks. I have a loan for £18k which my wife has always paid each month as it was a previous attemt to clear her debts. She has just started a second job to ensure she can continue paying most of it and I will buy all the food. Doing a self administered DMP she hopes to get away with not delcearing the second job so I am not too much worse off. If we went down the IVA route we would have to do a joint one. Im am dead set against this as I have a excellent credit rating and apart from the £18k just owe a few k on CC which are manageable. I would rather stubbonly pay the loan myself and go without than do an IVA!
The question I really want answered is how quickly should creditors respond to a letter announcing that my wife is under advice from the CCCS about a DMP? And genrally will creditors stop charges in this time frame?

Noted but I think that is not the correct way forward. Very rare for creditors to stop interest in DMP's. CCCS - get them to confirm that in writing.

Normally creditors do respond fairly quickly - it depends how good the DMP (CCCS?) company are.

If your wife is wanting to do it herself there maybe self help letters which another poster might be able to refer you to.

Hi
Try www.debthelpcharity.com

This is a self help site where you can download the letters that you need
Regards

Why don't you ring up another company and see what their advice is? Visit www.iva.com for a list of companies.

It doesn't hurt to get a second opinion.

I can also recommend Andrew Graveson of Brightoak, who are a fee paying company but will help you make the offer you can afford to creditors, and not the one creditors say they want.

They will also deal with all aspects of the creditor correspondence for you as well.

Hello rob.be,

I disagree with the previous advice that it's very rare for interest to be frozen in a Debt Management Plan. Where people make fair offers that represent a sincere effort to repay their debt as fast as they affordably can most creditors will reciprocate by freezing or at least reducing interest. There are a couple of exceptions that a good DMP company/charity could advise you about.

If you choose to manage this process yourself I'd strongly suggest that you follow up the letters with calls a couple of weeks later as some companies are very slow to respond in writing. Proactive DMP companies would also do this on your behalf though sadly many others do not.

Andrew - would be pleased to have a list from you of which companies will freeze interest.

I agree with Andrew. With the DMP I was in prior to my IVA, all companies froze interest from day 1 (apart from HSBC initially, but once they sold the debt on - no problem).

My companies were:

Lloyds TSB
Lombard Direct
Direct Line
Halifax
GE Capital
HSBC (passed on the MCS and then Robinson Way - interest frozen once debts passed over).

Hi

I have been on a dmp for 7 months now and all my creditors atopped charging interest from the off set. My creditors are:-

Egg
Mbna
Barclays
Barclaycard
Intelligent Finance
Royal bank of Scotland
Cahoot

I am with cccs and consider myself to have been very lucky as I have had no problems with any of them and never receive any contact from them. We have had 1 ccj on from one of the creditors but as it is an installment order they can not go for a charging order unless we default on the ccj payment. I don't intend this to be a long time soloution but have been very pleased at how easy this has been for us despite the problems a lot of people seem to have.

Regards

I have links with several debt management companies, some small and some market leaders, and they all generally report that over 90% of creditors will genuinely freeze interest - but that they can be a bit awkward at the beginning.

I must admit that I thought this was the industry norm, so it is interesting to see that this may not be happening out there in practice.

Many thanks for that information and for updating me.