www.iva.co.uk

Hi,

Ive just completed my first two years of my IVA, paying £404 a month as instructed without any problems.

However this has been through Accuma who a few months ago transferred my IVA to a company called Grant Thornton - who have promptly and without warning bumped up my payments up to £470.

Now there hasnt been a change in my circumstances such as change of job/wage increase and if anything my monthly expenses since the start of the IVA have gone up - food, petrol etc etc and an extra £65 on top of an IVA without consultation seems too excessive.

Anybody have an insight into why my IVA is now with Grant Thornton and why they have the right to increase my monthy payments to a level I cant really afford ?

I believe that Accuma have tranferred all of their IVA business to Grant Thornton, who are a highy rated company. This is nothing to worry about.

As regards your payments, you need to speak to GT to see why your payments have gone up. They should be able to tell you.

You won't be able to claim that you have been missold an IVA though.

Big problem I have though is that automatically im around £350 in arrears since theyve decided to backdate the increase in payments which means somehow im going to have to increase my monthy payments to over £500 in the next few months.

Ive spoken to Grant Thornton who will send me some forms to fill out, is there any chance I will have a chance to negotiate the level of payments I can make (Its grudgingly dawning on me that ive got no other option than to pay more). Anybody have some experience of dealing with Grant Thornton ?

If you put down exactly what is coming in and going out, then you may find that GT will adjust your payments accordingly.

If the increases are not affordable you could request that the arrears are added on at the end as an extra couple of payments may be easier than an uplift now. You should be fine with GT as they will want your IVA to run it's course as smoothly as possible.

I am sure that they would not have increased your payments without explaining why they have done this. Or maybe there has been a mistake on the part of Accuma which has only just been picked up. GT have an excellent client service team who are dealing with this sort of query, so I would give them a call to try and sort things out directly if I were you.

If it is a mistake by Accuma surely it wouldn't be fair to backdate the payments as it's not thomo's fault?

Just to let you all know the outcome, spoke to my IP and it looks like a basic admin mistake. My first 11 payments were set at £470 before going down to 49 payments of £404 - looks like GT made a mistake and thought I should be paying the £470.

The arrears are only down to the fact my first payment to GT is due this month while last months payment is still on Accumas books and hasnt been transferred into GTs account yet.

A load of my mind, now only 36 more payments to make

That's great news, so glad you got it sorted out.

Good luck for the remaining 36 payments![:)]

Glad to see it's been resolved. At least you can relax a bit and hopefully the next three years run smoothly.