Thomas Charles

[james.c]

Is it correct Accuma own Thomas Charles??

[MelanieGiles]

Yes - Thomas Charles are a wholly owned subsidiary of Accuma.

[james.c]

Should they not tell clients this, as i have always said if i had of known i would of gone to Accuma direct because with Thomas Charles i had to pay two payments up front first, whch never went towards my iva, so in a round about way this is like accuma getting an upfront payment first.

Have i just got this all wrong i do i feel right to feel that i have been ripped of?

[MelanieGiles]

I don't think that they work like that James. Thomas Charles are at the front end assisting with the gatherin up of all the paperwork and helping you to deal with your creditors in the meantime, and then they send a packaged product to an IP of their choice - usually their parent company - when it is ready to be proposed.

At the end of the day only you can determine whether you have had a quality, value for money service.

[animaleyes76]

james,

i feel exactly the same.

if i had known (and i did ask) that i could have approached an ip for no fee i would have done. I was told the chances of being accepted were quote "a lot lower" than if they did the prepwork so went with them as i was that worried and desperate i paid up.

For £800 I feel ripped off, and lied to. What can you do though. You live and learn. The fact they answer questions on here for free is like rubbing salt into wounds as well. (

[Julie]

I agree wholeheartedly, we approached Thomas Charles July 06 and had to make 2 payments upfront. The service was shocking to say the least - they kept saying we hadn't sent certain documents in, however I keep copies of everything and the "missing" documents were actually sent in the same envelope as received documents??? Our IVA didn't actually go through until Feb 07. I wonder how many additional charges etc. debtors had added by then? Furthermore, BR was never mentioned as an option to us.

Like you say, you live and learn.

[bigpete]

We used Thomas Charles two years ago - could not fault them, but maybe things change?

[debbie.s]

We also used Thomas Charles over two years ago. We were told to stop paying creditors and instead to make two payments of £1000 each to them. This was for preparing all the paperwork and fending off creditors. They then passed us on to Melanie Giles. As we were not paying our creditors it wasn't difficult to find the money ( we were paying out over £3000 a month on debts) and we assumed that was the way it had to be. The service was excellent and the lady we dealt with was very helpful and caring. Our next payment was for £900 directly onto the IVA.

[Skippy]

I went with Thomas Charles as well. At the time I was pleased with the service, but after things didn't work out for me I wish I'd gone directly to an IP. I made 2 payments of just under £500 to TC and they passed my details to Accuma, who again I thought were ok at the time, but actually weren't!

[Julie]

Skippy - what probs did you have with Accuma? Thats who we're with and so far so good. Be interesting to know what may go wrong.

[Skippy]

My IVA payments were too high and not accurate and when I queried the accuracy I was told not to worry! I was actually £200 a month short due to the way they'd worked out my rent payments. I was told what expenditure I could and couldn't have - I wish I'd been stronger and argued the case.

To be honest I didn't really understand what I was getting into - when I spoke to TC at the beginning I was made to feel that an IVA was best for me and that I needed to avoid BR at all costs. I wanted to repay as much as possible and the IVA seemed the best way to sort things out.

I'm glad things are going well for you with Accuma Julie and I'm sure you'll be fine x

[animaleyes76]

Hi Julie,

I'm with accuma as well, which is no surprise as we all used TC to be honest. I wasn't given the option of BR either, a technicality in my case as I myself had written the option off due to employment reasons, however I still believe this is totally out of order.

I was also told to include a newly opened current account in which the debt (o/d) was only £200. Looking back i wish i had kept that account out of my IVA as i could have had a decent bank account...

I had massive problems with accuma, mainly with their admin staff messing up DD's, taking 2 months to reply to a simple query (if they did at all), losing letters, breaking verbal agreements and claiming the calls never happened... The attitude of some of their admin staff is unbelievable too acting like teachers "Why did your DD fail, this simply isn't good enough Mr Brown" etc etc when actually it was their fault. People that think they are better than people in IVA's seriously shouldn't be working in that type of industry, whilst in all probability they are just living life with their cards and will end up in the same position.

Have to admit though that has all changed since I found the email address for my ip on the insolvency website thanks to Melanie.

My actual IP is a bit of a legend. Andrew Wilkinson, I salute you sir, you are a great, very helpful man, sadly let down by awful admin staff.

[Julie]

Thanks - hopefully we won't have problems with accuma- rest assured I'll be posting on here for advice if need be.

[Lola]

We were a little cheeky I suppose.

We got a phone back from a company, one I assumed who would prepare the paperwork and do the IVA.

During the course of the chat I was immediately suspicious because he said that I should stop paying creditors and that the next two months payments of £664 would go them and by then an IVA should be sorted and then the payments would go into an IVA.

We basically took all the advice they were giving us for free. I was on the phone to them for about an hour, picking their brains and I&E etc.

We then told them we would think about it and got an address for a local IP (Ensors) near to us and set up a meeting for the next day.

The IP were fantastic, told us that Govt guidelines meant no money could be taken until the IVA was approved.

They even funded an independent finance guy to come around and check all over I&E and paperwork. This happened within three days and by the end of the second week we had the proposals in our hands for signing.

Two and a half weeks later (today) we had our IVA approved. Payments start on June 1.

We haven't had to shell out a penny.

[suzz]

Funny thing in that we first went to Accuma and they refused said they could'nt help, we then went to Thomas Charles and got accepted, but the person dealing with us at TC was useless, then after the two payments we got passed onto Melanie.