www.iva.co.uk

Just an advisory for people really from our experience.

We did a full and final one off payment IVA in December 2007 and got our discharge certificate in Jan 2008

Out of our 14 creditors, 10 of them marked the credit file as closed with partial settlement

However, as I discovered last month, First Direct, Mint, Tesco and Citicards were keeping active balances and still happily writing a default mark on every single month since Jan 08

This meant that my credit file was still showing that I had 19k of active unsecured debt, not to mention defaults on my file that would take 6 years to drop off from now

I rang them all up, tesco, Mint, and First Direct were all very helpful and agreed to back date the credit records until the date of the discharge certificate.

Citicards were utterly useless however. They had a foreign call centre and since my query went beyond' what is my balance please?' , they told me they would not help , but someone will be in communication regarding your debt very soon to discuss repayment methods ffs, Yeah I'm sure they will 2.5 years later [:p]

So to deal with them, I've written to their head office and also to Experian and Equifax in the hope of getting their records backdated.

This should have been the job of my IP to sort this out, but I've not been able to get hold of him since.

Hi,

I am very sorry to hear of your problems but it is not the job of your IP to sort out your credit file it is down to yourself.

I have completed my IVA via a F & F and checked all 3 credit reference agencies and lucky enough none have defaulted me since taking out the IVA. You only need to write to each creditor to get them to update there files with a copy of your completion certificate. If you still have no joy with them I believe you can submit a complaint to the ICO (http://www.ico.gov.uk) who will make them adjust there records.

Oh right, the IP at the time promised that he would send a copy of the certificate of completion to all the creditors so I was going by that.

Thanks for that link, will be useful if as is likely, Citibank don't sort it out.

I believe the IP does send a copy of the letter to the creditors, and they should make any alterations necessary.

Write to Citibank, enclose a copy and tell them they have 28 days to sort things out otherwise you will take matters further.

I don't think your IP has an obligation to clear your credit file.

They may send the certificate to the insolvency service but doubt they would send it onto each of your creditors. You need to do that.

It is the initial default date you need to be concerned about as it is this that is used for the 6 year drop off point.

Not the fact that the creditor is showing that the account is in default every month. Technically it is until it is completed.

Technically the creditor does not have to mark the account as Satisified, as the creditor had no choice but to accept what you have paid under the law through a IVA.

They do however HAVE TO mark it in some way to show that NO MONEY IS DUE as this is a TRUE FACTUAL STATEMENT which if it is not recorded on the CRA file would mean the creditor is in breach of a number of the 8 Data Protection Act principles.

Most of my accounts were marked partially satisfied.