www.iva.co.uk

Dear Forum, I am feeling very fed up with the customer service at GT.

I entered into an IVA in March 2007 with 95K of Debt with BE. I made every payment on time and provided extra earnings, in total I have paid back a divident of over 90p in the pound. Like many my IVA was taken over by GT.

I made my last payment in May, received confirmation of all funds received and intention to close and like many others I was told 3-6 months for closure certificate.

I contacted GT after 3 months and found closure team fairly helpful and was told all claims received accept one from RBS. A final notice to claim was issued to RBS and this expired on the 18th October.

After having to chase quite hard via email I received the below update today;

"I have checked your case and we are still awaiting contact from RBS, we are at the stage now where the final notice has expired and we are approaching the time where we may need to consider if the claim should be excluded. Our claims team are looking into this at the moment. Ideally we want all creditors to have involved in the arrangement to have registered their claims as we find from experience that this leads to less creditor contact from them to you in the future, therefore we do not take the decision to exclude a creditor lightly. However by the same token we will not give creditors an infinite time to respond.

The claims section when closing an IVA, if there are issues with creditors responding to requests, can tend to be the lengthiest part of the closure process. Once this is complete it will be a matter of clearing the arrangement of any final distributions, and completing the final paperwork.

I will place you in the diary for an update in 4 weeks time, 29 November, as I would expect to have a more detailed progress report for you. In the interim we will be tracking the progress of your case and if there are major developments we will be in touch via email"

My questions are; given the notice expired two weeks ago why has it just not been excluded from the total debt and why is it going to take an additional 4 weeks to give me another update?

I also have my second year annual report that clearly sais all claims have been received.

Getting into Debt was wrong and it was my fault, but I feel like i've done my time and I should be allowed to move on.

Any advice on how to respong to this email from GT would be much appreciated. Likewise if you think I should just it back and wait, let me know.

Thanks for listening....

Hi and welcome to the forum. So many posters are at this stage in their IVA all payments made and then a delay issuing the completion certificate.

I guess to wait is all you can do but hoepfully one of our experts will have some wise words for you. Hope it's not too long before it's all cleared up x

It feels very wrong to me. As the customer I feel that I want to instruct (yes instruct, they are acting on my behalf) GT to exclude RBS from the claim and make the final dsitribution of funds.

Be great if one of the experts can comment on whether I can do this?

Hi, I am fed up .... unfortunately there is very little you can instruct GT to do. When they (or, in your cae, BE) were Nominees, preparing the propsal, they were working on your behalf. Once the proposal is accepted they are no longer working FOR you, but WITH you as the Supervisor of the arrangement( although some IP's forget you entirely and other's still see you as a person requiring help and are happy to assist in any way they can).

As supervisor they are "honest brokers" between all parties, to ensure everyone sticks to the agreement. This usually translates to "ensuring YOU stick to the agreement!"

Over the course of my IVA I am paying in excess of £15K in charges. Frankly I expect GT to be working just a little bit harder and with a little more urgency. Is that too much to ask?

Not too much at all - but experience is telling me otherwise!

Sorry to split hairs, but you are paying all of your money to the creditors, not to GT. The creditors have, in their turn, agreed with GT that they might retain some of the monies as fees --- us IVA'ers are not, in reality, paying anything.

I, like you, have been handed over to GT, without so much as a by your leave. They would not have been my first choice and their recent track record ( actually since taking on BE's books) seem to leave a lot to be desired on the timeliness front. Nor do they seem to be very pro-active. We have IP's on here who can close a case down in a few weeks, whereas GT seem to think 6 months is a minimum, not the maximaum it is intended to be.

My previous company had agreed claims with all of my creditors by the end of the first year -- I just hope GT don't want to start from scratch !!!

Hope you get sorted soon

Hi there,

RBS are one of our creditors, so it would be good to hear if anyone else with other IP companies have had the same issue !

welcome to the forum

I too had a creditor that hadnt claimed ( im with or should i say was ) with DFD, having made my last payment in April this year. My creditor that hadnt claimed had been given the 24th Oct as the final date at which they could submit their claim; im not sure if they did or not but was told on Fri last week my IP at DFD would be reviewing my case for closure this week.

Today I recieved my completion certificate , 8 days or if being padantic 6 working days after the deadline they had to claim .

So it is possible for an IVA co to move quicker than in your case, although obviously each IVA co has their own way of doing things

It does strike me that the end of an IVA comes as a total surprise to some companies! I can think of no reason why they cannot get the ball rolling in anticipation of the final payment, so they at least hit the ground running.

I continue to be confused about IVAs where creditor claims have not been agreed until the end of the term. What on earth has been happening over the last five plus years in this regard, and has any money actually been paid to your creditors?

Don't worry about RBS being able to chase you once the IVA has closed. If they were bound by the IVA, and could not be bothered to make a claim, then they have lost their chance.

Mel, thanks. You really are the voice of reason. From looking at the balances on my credit reports I believe nothing has been paid out since GT took over in year 3. Several payments were made by BE previous to this. Here is my response to yesterdays email that I have forwarded this morning;

"Thank you for your email. I have to say it's not the update I was expecting or wanting to hear. My understanding was once the deadline for RBS to claim has passed, funds would be distributed and my closure certificate issued. Infact from talking to several of the IVA experts on the IVAforum.co.uk I believe this should take no more than two weeks.

I am also confused as to why you even needed to get claims from my creditors when my year two annual statement clearly sais that all claims have been received. Please could you explain?

I would be most grateful if you could provide a clear outline of all of the steps that still need to happen in the lead up to final closure with deliverable timings"

Hopefully this will lead to you getting a detailed response about the issues which have prevented closure. I do believe that this occured as a result of the previous firm's administration of your file, but it does seem to be taking a very long time to resolve.

Hi

What is the point of issuing a final notice to the creditor and then not acting on it ? We are not dealing with some obscure creditor in the highlands of Scotland afterall but a High St Bank

To state that you may have communication from the creditor post IVA if a claim is not settled is simply misleading

Keep chasing them

Regards

Good old GT at their best as usual, good luck with their expert, Karol must be getting fed up by now with all the complaints her department are receiving, perhaps that's why she doesn't respond anymore, after all there is only so much bull**** you can sprout before it starts repeating itself.