Step Change Bias?

[Twigs]

Hello all

I was just wondering if anyone is aware of the Step Change bias? Only every time I ring they seem to want me to respond respond respond, to my creditors or something they want me to do. Is it Gov funded? Target driven? Who funds them?

I set up a min. payment with them 4 years ago, a £1 to each creditor, it only ran for a few months, but had I not followed this advice, I may have been able to get my debts statute barred by now - so this turned out to be dud info.

Today I noticed it again, for every question I asked, they seemed to give a reactive answer, urging me 'act', 'get in touch', 'accept liability for debt', 'live life better having dealt with it' etc etc. I'm starting to wonder if I can trust the service. I listen to the info but rarely do what they suggest, opting to leave it alone again for now, after having got the bits of info I need to help me in this decision, but it's always amidst heaps of extra info they want to impart on me with this sense of 'urgency'.

I mean why apply for bankruptcy now if it's not too late to do this when I am served papers? I may as well wait and see if I get served first right? It makes no sense to me to put this in motion unless I have no other choice.

They seem obsessed with engaging with the creditor, and I don't think this is always the answer, yet it is always theirs.

Or maybe I have this wrong and I'm just being an idiot, I should have more 'urgency'? My creditors have about a year to take action before the debts can be statute-barred, they 'could' be getting ready to pounce and she knows it, but then so do I hey.

Be good to know if anyone knows their bias for sure or what has been your experience. Thanks, Twigs.

[Roger]

Hello all

I was just wondering if anyone is aware of the Step Change bias? Only every time I ring they seem to want me to respond respond respond, to my creditors or something they want me to do. Is it Gov funded? Target driven? Who funds them?

I set up a min. payment with them 4 years ago, a £1 to each creditor, it only ran for a few months, but had I not followed this advice, I may have been able to get my debts statute barred by now - so this turned out to be dud info.

Today I noticed it again, for every question I asked, they seemed to give a reactive answer, urging me 'act', 'get in touch', 'accept liability for debt', 'live life better having dealt with it' etc etc. I'm starting to wonder if I can trust the service. I listen to the info but rarely do what they suggest, opting to leave it alone again for now, after having got the bits of info I need to help me in this decision, but it's always amidst heaps of extra info they want to impart on me with this sense of 'urgency'.

I mean why apply for bankruptcy now if it's not too late to do this when I am served papers? I may as well wait and see if I get served first right? It makes no sense to me to put this in motion unless I have no other choice.

They seem obsessed with engaging with the creditor, and I don't think this is always the answer, yet it is always theirs.

Or maybe I have this wrong and I'm just being an idiot, I should have more 'urgency'? My creditors have about a year to take action before the debts can be statute-barred, they 'could' be getting ready to pounce and she knows it, but then so do I hey.

Be good to know if anyone knows their bias for sure or what has been your experience. Thanks, Twigs.

Well lets start with setting out your debts in the AAD Diary format!

[Dottir]

To answer your question. Stepchange are supposedly independent but https://www.stepchange.org/about-us/...e%20government

scroll down to how we are funded. Most comes from creditors so personally I believe there is a conflict of interest.

[Night Monkey]

Or as Di wrote in my diary when I started this journey:

DMPs set up by charities are a way of outsourcing their debt collection activities in a seemingly respectable way.

StepChange were useful to me in that they effectively put my situation 'on hold', which gave me some breathing space while I decided the best way forward. In retrospect, while they were a welcome single point of contact at the time, I'm not sure that their priorities aligned with mine.

[Twigs]

@ Dottir ahhh, it makes sense now. I couldn't find this info but thought the terminology was strange on the list provided of those they say they are in 'partnership' with. Good to know. Thank you.

[Dottir]

You mention bankruptcy - this, in my opinion, is the nuclear option. ?Do you have assets such as savings or your own home? If you have a decent job they would take most of your earnings and assets I think. Try to find some impartial advice. The following link might help, its from the Scottish government https://www.mygov.scot/free-debt-advice

[Roger]

You mention bankruptcy - this, in my opinion, is the nuclear option. ?Do you have assets such as savings or your own home? If you have a decent job they would take most of your earnings and assets I think. Try to find some impartial advice. The following link might help, its from the Scottish government https://www.mygov.scot/free-debt-advice

Presumptions and opinions the first and rather obvious step is actually create and flesh out a AAD Diary.

[Sparkles]

The way they act is to recover as much as possible for the creditors even though that can be very detrimental for you. If you take a DMP as an example, they'll advise you to start paying as much as you can straight away, the result is that you repay the full amount and get an arrangment to pay marker which stays on your credit report for 6 years after the debt is cleared. A much better approach is to stop paying altogether until the debts default, and then pay a minimal amount while saving up for a full and final settlment offer to clear it. Defaults drop off six years after they were applied so following Stepchanges advice could mean you paid twice as much as you needed to and have a credit record that's harmed for twice as long as it needed to have been. There was someone on the MSE forum who had had an inheritence and Stepchange advised them to split the whole lot between all their creditors, if they had made reduced offers to them all instead they could have cleared the whole lot and still have some of their inheritence left.

I'm sure they are useful for some people who don't know where to turn, but their advice must have left lots of people far worse off than they needed to have been.

[Roger]

The way they act is to recover as much as possible for the creditors even though that can be very detrimental for you. If you take a DMP as an example, they'll advise you to start paying as much as you can straight away, the result is that you repay the full amount and get an arrangment to pay marker which stays on your credit report for 6 years after the debt is cleared. A much better approach is to stop paying altogether until the debts default, and then pay a minimal amount while saving up for a full and final settlment offer to clear it. Defaults drop off six years after they were applied so following Stepchanges advice could mean you paid twice as much as you needed to and have a credit record that's harmed for twice as long as it needed to have been. There was someone on the MSE forum who had had an inheritence and Stepchange advised them to split the whole lot between all their creditors, if they had made reduced offers to them all instead they could have cleared the whole lot and still have some of their inheritence left.

I'm sure they are useful for some people who don't know where to turn, but their advice must have left lots of people far worse off than they needed to have been.

Sparkles
Yes well set out!

Before I came to AAD I had set up and negotiated a Payment Plan with a Income and Expenditure sent commonly to each Debtor.
But you soon learn that these agreements actually do not mean that you won't be SUED.

Actually the better route is Divide and Conquer because well no two debts are the same.

AAD Diary does precisely this it empowers us to take control of individual Debts
Setting out each Debt and history details often reveals weaknesses if not outright UE.

AAD and wise comments and advice actually made me realise that all of my Debts were actually flawed and UE

Not just knowledge of the Law but actually knowing such things as IRON MOUNTAIN; known issues with specific DCA's and yes Original Lenders.
The Banking collapse and rapid restructuring in Banking its self created problems.
Knowledge empowers and therefor better placed to make decisions!

I know there are few wise heads on AAD who willingly share their knowledge which has been gleamed from their pwn experiences and the AAD Diaries!

[Dottir]

The way they act is to recover as much as possible for the creditors even though that can be very detrimental for you. If you take a DMP as an example, they'll advise you to start paying as much as you can straight away, the result is that you repay the full amount and get an arrangment to pay marker which stays on your credit report for 6 years after the debt is cleared. A much better approach is to stop paying altogether until the debts default, and then pay a minimal amount while saving up for a full and final settlment offer to clear it. Defaults drop off six years after they were applied so following Stepchanges advice could mean you paid twice as much as you needed to and have a credit record that's harmed for twice as long as it needed to have been. There was someone on the MSE forum who had had an inheritence and Stepchange advised them to split the whole lot between all their creditors, if they had made reduced offers to them all instead they could have cleared the whole lot and still have some of their inheritence left.

I'm sure they are useful for some people who don't know where to turn, but their advice must have left lots of people far worse off than they needed to have been.

Hi Sparkles

You do make some good points but as always, knowledge is power. If your dmp payment is below the contractual minimum payment then the creditor should default you. However, they do not always do that and you need to complain to the company and the FOS and ICO.

If the payments are above the minimum contractual payment you will probably get the dreaded AP marker.

Before I came to unenforceability , I was in a paid for dmp however the financial statement we sent was quite creative leaving me with maybe more than I would have had with say pay plan.

You need nerves of steel if you go on the UE route. The creditors will dial up the heat and from my experience, more likely to sell it on and it is the debt purchasers who issue court claims.

I don’t have statistics but anecdotally it seems you are more likely to get a claim from a debt purchaser than an original creditor and again, payers less likely to get a claim than non payers.

I have been on all the different sites, CAG which use to have some real fruit loops who didn’t believe in UE. LB who can be good, even get out of debt free and they are totally barking, issuing counter claims and rants, not one success- even they moved over to following the pre action protocols. Debt camel is excellent at explaining things.

of course we need to remember only a judge can rule something as UE and in some cases it needs to go to appeal for example Amex v Brandon. Lots of case law can be seen on the forum.

Not every case is financially viable to pay to defend but that is a problem with the way the courts and businesses run.

I would hesitate to tell people to stop paying, elsewhere on here , Colin points out that the decision must be a personal one and an informed one.

It is of course a lovely feeling when all debts are SB and getting to that 6 years is indeed squeaky bum time.

As I listed elsewhere, I had over 50k and the last few only went time barred less than two years ago although they were small amounts I could have paid off.

As time passes many of the options are removed , S127(3) stopped in I think 2007 and things like Iron Mountain fire (2006) are potentially less relevant as it was so many years ago.

And remember, if you die, your debts become part of your liabilities and the funeral has to be paid for first, no money left then tough.

[Roger]

This is from posting by Di (JSC) 2018

I've already said that it may be unwise to write to any of your debt owners until you're clear on your legal position. Every letter you write has the potential to end up in front of a Judge (although let's hope that never happens) so careless wording could be seen as an admission of the debt or in the very least let slip some information which the debt purchaser doesn't know.

In my firm's experience the 'end of the chain' doesn't always know that the Barclaycard they purchased started life as Egg (or Goldfish, Marbles, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter etc). Don't give them any clues.

This is one of those cases where patience is a virtue at the research stage.

You need to establish who actually owns each debt which is not necessarily the business who is writing to you, such as a Debt Collection Agency.

Once you know where you stand (legally speaking) you can make an informed decision on whether to make a F & F or not pay them a penny.

Di

Patience, Silence, research