marbles/hfc bank and moneytalk scotland

[dorisbiglugs]

Hi all! First off, in mess of debt! Worst problem is marbles c/c, with balance of £14.5k. Anyone who has this c/c will probably be aware that repayments went up by 1/2% in January, and they are now also putting up the interest rate again, this is crippling our finances to the tune of £360 per month -if we didn't have it, we could just about break even each month. I am now waiting to receive a phonecall from Moneytalk scotland and wondered if anyone knows anything about this company or have used them at all? Have been robbing peter to pay paul for so long, and now all credit applications are being refused ( tried to transfer balance of marbles onto a fixed payment loan) Basically a complete financial mess, and unsure of best way to deal with it all. Have no late payments on any of our finances, but push is coming to shove and I would appreciate it if anyone could tell me what would happen if we simply stopped paying the marcles c/c? Does it go to a debt collector? Thanks in advance for any help received .

[IdaInFife]

How long have you had the card?

Are you paying the min each month?


idax

[dorisbiglugs]

Hi there,
have had card maybe 7-8 years, and yes we are paying the minimum every month.We have transferred balances from it before, at various/numerous times since we've had it. Thankyou for your reply, if there is anything else please let me know

[veryweary]

Identical problem some years ago, which involved Marbles/HFC account. Because I kept refinancing to keep up minimum repayments, and also robbed Pete to pay Paul, I practically quadrupled my unsecured debt in a very short period. It all blew up in my face ,in the end I bit the bullet and started a Debt Management Plan with Consumer Credit Counselling Services. Wish I'd done it sooner, would have saved thousands in debt.

If you stop paying, Marbles will initially make a lot of noise down your phone chasing payment, this can be dealt with and you can ask for them to deal with you only in writing. There's template letters you can use to contact creditors explaining that you are having problems. I used CCCS as a free DMP, there is also Payplan and you can get free advice on the National Debt Line to do a DMP yourself.

HFC wouldn't stop interest or charges on the account until the DMP started with CCCS and they received budget details showing income and expenditure, other creditors etc from CCCS. But they did accept a reduced repayment amount once the plan was set up. Same with Barclaycard. Think only a couple of creditors stopped interest and charges before CCCS involvement.

Because I always paid the reduced DMP repayment , eventually HFC wrote and offered a 40% reduction on the overall balance, to be repaid interest free over 10 years. Not sure if small print would have shown they wanted new deal secured on the house. Didn't take their offer as it involved paying a very slight increase compared to what they got on the DMP.

They then asked if a voluntary charge would be allowed on the house and when that was refused they sold the account to a very aggressive DCA who's given a lot of harassment, and is threatening court action to gain a charge .Everyone else has been reasonable up till now. HFC from what I've read in other threads do seem to want to secure bad debt on property by way of charge orders. That doesn't mean that they always get them however.

No 2 people's circumstances are ever the same. Balance on HFC account mentioned was considerably less than yours, but combined debt figure was huge. IMHO and personal experience, I'd never recommend refinance to pay off unsecured debt, but other people argue it worked for them.

Is this the only unsecured debt you have? Are you a homeowner with equity in your house. Is your credit rating important to you or your job?

[dorisbiglugs]

Hi and thanks so much for all your advice. Our total c/c's comes to about £45k (all unsecured) and we have an unsecured loan currently approx£12. There is no equity left in the house, as we used it earlier on this year to pay off 1st plus ( 20K debt, paid £10 into it over 5 years and had to repay balance of just over £20k, so annoying, but was secured debt and we didn't appreciate what we had done, when we did it, so to speak) We have both got to the stage where credit rating is no longer important, and must admit the Trust deed looks like a credible answer to our problems. If we did this, and it was all signed and sealed etc. at least we can say that 3 years down the line we can start again ( ps don't mean rack up any more debts!) I'd like to think we have learnt our lesson. Again, many thanks for your encouraging reply and hope all is good with you and yours

[veryweary]

Our total debt was larger than yours Had a lot of different creditors so with being disorganised, it was easier to make 1 payment to CCCS to distribute. Due to all the recent price hikes our monthly repayment figure is considerably less than what we started the DMP with. But at least it's reducing at a rate we can afford.

Looked at Trust Deed, but didn't suit due to equity release requirement in year 3. Have read on threads here that they don't seem to suit most people, also some people are being misled into them .Also didn't want to pay heavy managment fees to company who oversee it. Been charged enough interest/fees on debt for the whole of Scotland, or it sometimes feels that way

Hope you get things sorted out