How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

[towns2950]

Hello, 1st time user here,thanks for the welcome.l have been looking at your website with all the valuable information you have and was hoping to use your help.
Here goes,
I'm looking to either pay token £1 payments or make full final payments.
I'm currently on a debt management programme and have been for around 7 years. I still owe around £20000 to around 9 creditors and pay dm around £260 per month,it seems to be taking an eternity to repay, and due to a change in circumstances ie split with partner my income has dramatically fallen to the stage my expenditure is more than my income. I've managed to get by on bits of savings but they've dwindled away now so I could really do with the payments I make to dm to live on. I'm wondering how to get started as to making £1 payments is it really just one of your template letters sent to my creditors? Or are there other things to do beforehand?
Also parents are willing to help with around £3500 to help pay off debt and again was wanting help with the procedure to do that and should I stay with dm company and they negotiate for me, or ditch them and do it myself,as at the moment i keep getting settlement letters where i pay half the debt in full and they right off the rest and I'm scared if i ditched dm then those offers would be cancelled and charges and intrest start again, is it really possible? Please advise! Thanks

[MrsD]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

welcome to AAD

the best thing you could do is let us have a look at the debts, it sounds as if they may be quite old.

Which Debt management company are you with? Personally I believe all DMPs, debt plans etc etc are the work of the devil, but that might just be me.

If you could complete one of these for each debt, we'll get a better and clearer picture.



Type of account (credit card/loan)


Date commenced (ideally before Apr 2007)


Approx balance


Date last paid (approximate date you last made a FULL payment)


Are you on arrangement or not paying


Status (default/in arrears/up-to-date)


Account owner (who is writing to you, a DCA or the lender)

[PlanB]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

currently on a debt management programme and have been for around 7 years. I still owe around £20000 to around 9 creditors and pay dmp around £260 per month,it seems to be taking an eternity to repay

I was in a DMP for far too long until I realized that they (the DMP company) was making more money out of me then my creditors were getting.

Take this one step at a time. The step I wouldn't take is taking advantage of your parents' kind offer to help to pay off these debts unless it's really necessary. Okay I have to admit that I speak as a parent of a daughter who simply doesn't *get* money !

Do as MrsD says and let us see chapter and verse on who is owed what and from when ( ) so we can take it from there.

Plan B xx

[towns2950]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

Ok thanks for that information, I'll dig them out and post them here when I find paperwork, I know a lot have been sold onto debt collection agencies and sometimes even sold back or sent back to the original creditors.

[PlanB]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

I forgot to say to AAD


Let's help you to sort this.

[Undercover Elsa]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

Hi and welcome from me too

When you do your list of debts could you also note on each one whether they've been defaulted/terminated and interest stopped.
Once we have the info we can see what your options are. Most DMP companies will drop you anyway if you don't have enough surplus income available to pay creditors.
Which company are you with?

Elsa x

[SA Gold]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

Hi Towns,
Welcome aboard, you are in good hands here.
I was in a debt management plan for a while before discovering this forum and it then dawned on me that they are merely prolonging the agony. It does seem like the best thing to do at that time, but isn't (in my opinion).
Best
SA

[towns2950]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

hello again and thanks for the welcome from everyone, seems a very friendly forum. In the process of posting my debts for you to analyse. I am currently with gregory pennington, who have been fine, was just glad to make lower payments and no more hassle from creditors. My biggest debts are with halifax and it was them that originally put me in touch with them. It wasn't until a while later i realised they are part of the same company so they're still making money from me!

[MrsD]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

If you really must have a DMP then you can use a charity for free so I can see nothing to recommend using a paid for company.

Did Halifax make it a condition of accepting lower payments?

and have they all stopped interest?

[Undercover Elsa]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

That's absolutely despicable of Halifax to suggest a fee paying DMP company!
GP take an 18.5% cut. Making money from people's misery.

[towns2950]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

Will go to charity if nothing else comes up from this forum thanks. No there was no condition and they accepted lower payments, in fact i think they were the 1st to accept!

[towns2950]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

as requested heres a list of my debts and creditors.

type of ac loan
date commenced nov07
approx bal £8400
date last paid june08
arrangement yes dm
status default
account owner halifax passed onto blair, oliver and scott ltd

type of ac loan
date commenced nov06
approx bal £2867
date last paid june08
arrangement yes dm
status default
account owner mbna moved to moorgate loan services

type of ac loan
date commenced april08
approx bal £3650
date last paid june08
arrangement yes dm
status default
account owner northern rock passed onto marlin financial services

type of ac loan
date commenced april07
approx balance £2050
date last paid june08
arrangement yes
status default
account owner santander

type of ac credit card
date commenced jan07
approx bal £2345
date last paid june08
arrangement yes dm
status default
account holder halifax passed onto idem capital securities ltd

type of ac overdraft
date commenced nov03
approx balance £1900
date last paid june08
arrangement yes dm
status default
account owner halifax passed onto pra group (uk) ltd

[nanna58]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

Thanks for that someone will be here soon with ideas xx

[MrsD]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

not such a bad list! seen much bigger, mine for instance.....................

Ok we can look at several ways to deal with this.

Firstly I would phone Gregory money grabbing and tell them you have lost your job and you will be reducing your payments to £1. Don't ask, don't discuss, tell them this is the situation. Don't supply any i&e tell them from 1st March that is what is happening.

Do you pay with a direct debit? either change it online or phone the bank and change it.

If you are not working you cannot possibly pay out the is money. If GP don't like it, well tough, you can then either go it alone with out help or go to Stepchange or Payplan, no charges in any of those options.

Then , when you can afford it, I would be sending of CCA requests (they cost a £1 postal order each), some of them are too new but no harm getting the paperwork, and some are old enough that UE could apply. You then need to read up all the threads about UE on here and familiarise yourself with how it all works.

I certainly wouldn't be trying any F&F settlements at the moment and I wouldn't be taking any money from your parents to do this. ave what you can, you may need it further down the line. F&Fs are not going to help your credit file, if everything has been defaulted, they are there for 6 years, regardless of whether they are paid or not.

So lots to do and read, come back if you have any questions and we;ll get the CCas off when you've drawn breath.

Remember it's only money, what is the worst these eejits can do?

[towns2950]

Re: How to get started making £1 token payments and making ff offers.

Thanks for that, so much to take in and deciding which decision is going to be best for me.
Would I be best to ask for cca before I request £1 monthly payments and would dm accept making £1 monthly payments or would I be best to stop making payments to dm and just leave them? Basically what order should I do things?