Hi guys, nice to be here again.

Just after some advice because I smell a rat!

A family member is looking to enter a DMP.

He’s found the above firm online and approached them.

They purport to be a firm of lawyers/barristers and are relatively new so there’s not a lot of information on the internet about them. However, I’m extremely dubious regarding their methods, this is what they’ve told him so far-

In the first instance he stops paying his debts now and they give him a reference number to quote when the phone calls start.

He will pay nothing to his creditors for the next 12 months but he will pay a £120 per month fee to them while they approach his creditors.

They also talk a lot about challenging contracts, interest rates, irresponsible lending etc, but nothing initially about debt management.

After the 12 months has elapsed, they then consider his/their position regarding any successes of freezing interest, debt write-off, lowered payments etc and decide a way forward that “could” result in a debt management plan.

oh yes, he was also told on the phone that they could “almost” guarantee that 80% of his debts would be written off.

Now I know you are all going to say that this is one big s*@m, and I totally agree with that. But I would like to hear any thoughts on this as to be honest, I’ve never heard of anything like this before so any experiences would be gratefully received.

Thanks all

I would want to be very careful about making any kind of comments that could be interpreted as being defamatory of a set of chambers which apparently is comprised of solicitors and barristers.

I would ask anyone else who contributes to this thread to be careful about what they say.

Having said that, it certainly sounds very strange and it makes me feel very uncomfortable on the basis of what you have explained to us.

I'm sure there will be other people who will have a suggestion to make – but if you are going to go for debt management then I would suggest you go to an established organisation that is may be linked to a charity.

Of course, you could do a lot worse then come here and explain all of your debts to us and maybe we can help.

I expect that we probably have more experience than most organisations. And of course, we are completely free

Thanks for the reply bankfodder. I agree with what you say but barristers or not, there is still an amount of vagueness on their website. You would think that people like these would be very clear about their services. Especially about what may happen after their 12 x £120 payments of which all is their fees. It made me wonder just how many creditors would be quite happy to have payments suspended for 12 months and only after that period enter into debt-reducing negotiations?

£120 per month!

I obviously read it too quickly. I thought it was per year.

Frankly I think that's the end of the discussion.

That’s what I thought too.

It seems that those payments are just to see if there are any reasons to challenge the validity of the Agreements.

There’s no mention of anything resembling a DMP until after that period and even if that happened, I’m sure there would be further, maybe hefty fees.

One thing I forgot to mention though, the guy on the phone told my family member it would be pointless challenging the Agreements on their cars, even though one is at the one-third payments mark and one is just over halfway.

I suggested a VT on the one that is now halfway through the payments to save them a bit of money but it didn’t go down too well.

I also offered to draft letters with a view to reducing payments but that didn’t go down too well either which is fine by me as I’m limited by time at the moment.

Dump them now

Do it for them yourself

Ive done your posts for you too

Please get rig of them

Send your mate here

Thanks dx, these iPads aren’t very good! I’ll have a word about him joining up.

Ive done your posts for you too

 

Please get rig of them

Send your mate here

the extra chrs# were not you cag has a few issues wee ironing out after a long awaited upgrade.

Sounds like a well disguised IVA Plan

open

I think they've now gone bump.  Ray Austin Williams (Barrister) resigned earlier this year (see CompaniesHouse).  WebSite gone too.

If you paid via direct debit (I paid via GoCardLess) then ring GoCardLess and do a chargeback under the direct debit guarantee scheme

Thats a shame