Thank you. I'm not worried about £150. That was the amount offered by HB before the financial ombudsman or the FO adjudicator was involved - i.e.where they started off. Quite frankly it was insulting.

I thought that the adjudicators first decision was fair and just. I didn't agree at all with her revised figure - i.e. the offer from Harrington Brooks however I am self employed and time is money to me. To wait for the Financial Ombudsman to make his final ruling in 6 - 9 months time and then that being likely he may find what the adjudicator had said in her revised ruling should stick seemed to me to be a bit of a lottery. So rather than spending anymore of my valuable time I decided what I would be happy to accept (bearing in mind their first "and final" offer was a paltry £150 before the involvement of the adjudicator) in order to draw a line under it all and it not to take up anymore of my time. That was the figure I proposed to them and they agreed. I don't think I sold myself short since there the adjudicator advised that her revised finding was in her opinion fair, she didn't view what I asked for as being reasonable I don't think. She made it clear that she wouldn't put it forward to them as "her recommendation". I came out a few thousand better off than when I started the process.

Well Para and the others following this sorry tale I have had a big refund from Harrington Brooks. The Financial ombudsman's adjudicator made her recommendations and HB dismissed them saying that in their t's and c's they stipulate that they don't guarantee to get any interest charges stopped. The adjudicator agreed with them that this was a fair point and asked me what I wanted to do. HB had made a much lower (about half the original amount recommended) counter offer. I gathered a lot more information from my creditors - full transactions reports of every correspondence between them and HB. For one company it went on to 12 pages over the 18 month period. Mostly showing them chasing HB for missing money. The choice then was to accept their lower offer or ask the case to be referred to the actual Financial Ombudsman for final judgement - but I was told this process could take 6 - 9 months. I did neither. I made a counter offer at which I said I would settle which was roughly halfway between what the adjudicator had originally recommended and what they actually offered. The adjudicator said she would put my suggestion to them but could not put it to them as her recommendation given what they had already counter stated. Long story short they agreed to settle for that amount and paid up very quickly in the end. It took an awful lot of time and effort on my part to write to all my creditors several times and then to put it all into something which could be used but well worth it.

Ok now had a counter offer from Harrington Brooks considerably lower than the original amount suggested by the Financial Ombudsman's adjudicator in her findings. No apologies or explainations as to why they didn't stick to the payment plans they negotiated on my behalf. Does anyone know of any specialist solicitors who deal with issues like this? Ideally I'd like to explore all options before responding to them.

I did actually notice when I looked up HB's GM and senior staff on linked-in how incestuous it all is. Dreadful. The whole system is flawed that they are able to get away with it.

dx100uk Thank you for taking the time and trouble to post. I'm just curious as to why you suggest the SAR . The claim will move forward to the Ombudsman on Monday next week should there not be a full response by close of business tomorrow. I'm just wondering if it would be worthwhile organising some kind of collective case against them since there are so many in the same boat. I really feel very strongly that someone needs to try to bring a halt to the way they are duping people into believing that their debt problems are being dealt with when in reality they are making the problem much, much worse. They are preying on people at their weakest. It seems to me that the vast majority of people simply bin them off and lose the money they have paid them and believe, in all good faith, that they have passed on to their creditors. So in effect HB are coining it in by simply giving a bad service. It's all wrong and it need to stop.

The company is Harrington Brooks.

Thanks for the advice but that wasn't what I was asking for in my post. I've already taken control - did that months ago. As far as my creditors are concerned they are being paid every month, the interest and charges are frozen and I will be debt free at the end of it all. I'm dealing with them directly, myself. It's fair to say they did frighten me at first - but at the time I was dealing with a very sick child, which in turn meant I was unable to work and everything was going from bad to worse. I just couldn't deal with the stress of it. A friend of a friend recommneded the DMC.

Yes hindsight is a wonderful thing but at the time my options were limited because I am self employed. This particular company came highly recommended by a friend of a friend - who it turns out received £100 of Tesco's vouchers for recommending them. The card companies would not at the time set up a payment plan with me simply putting on more pressure to meet the minimum payment amounts. With a very sick (nearly died 3 times) son in hospital it was with great relief I handed the whole thing over to this particular DMC who said that they would do a better job, quicker than any of the free services. I took what I was told in good faith having researched them and found lots of positive reviews about them online - which, incidently, are still there.

Long story short I entered into a DMP in March 2012. It was with Harrington Brooks. I paid every month from conception of the plan in full without missing a payment or paying late etc. When letters from my creditors (6 credit card companies) kept coming and phonecalls saying I needed to make payments etc. I chased Harrington Brooks and was repeatedly fobbed off with a variety of excuses. Two of my debts were sold on to Aktiv Kapital (who have been very helpful in helping me to ascertain exactly what has been happening) another was passed into the management of Mercers (Barclaycard's in house company I believe). After much investigating into what was happening I discovered, to my horror that Harrington Brooks had failed to make payments as agreed with my creditors. That's not to say they didn't may ANY payments - they did - but in most instances they were less than the agreed amount and were not made within agreed timescales. So some of my creditors received nothing for weeks on end and then received a token gesture payment. Occasionally they were paid more than the agreed amount - but only after weeks of non-payment into the plan. When I found out what was happening I binned off Harrington Brooks and dealt with my creditors directly myself. Some of them will not now allow me to set up a "formal" arrangment because for the last 12 - 18 months in their eyes I have not stuck to previous agreed formal arrangments. One in particular has said that I will not now be able to set up such an agreement with them for the next 5 years. My credit rating rather than improving has deteriorated because of Harrington Brooks mis-management. As a result of all of the above I wrote to Harrington Brooks concerned making a formal complaint. They admitted they had made mistakes and offered me £150 ex gratia payment as a gesture of goodwill. I declined this and took my complaint to the financial ombudsman. An adjudicator from their service found in my favour and advised that Harrington Brooks should pay me over £3k which they have calculated to include interest and charges added to my debts, amount paid into my plan by me less the amount paid out to my creditors from the plan, a nominal amount for "distress and inconvenience suffered". It was recommended that this be settled by the third week in March. The deadline came and went and Harrington Brooks asked for - and were given - an extension in order to complete their investigations. Harrington Brooks complained that they were not able to check the facts given because I have now revoked their authority to deal with my creditors. The information given was backed up by the information the adjuicator had accumulated during her enquiries - supported by documentary evidence provided by the credit card companies and Aktiv Kaptial and Mercers. The second deadline has now passed and the FOS adjudicator is trying to contact the case handler at Harrington Brooks but that person is "unavailable". A colleague has said that they will look at my case if they can. Meanwhile the deadline has been extended again to the end of this week. I am informed that if Harrington Brooks do not agree with the adjudicators recommendations that I have the option to have my case put in front of the Ombudsman but that can take months and months - currently 6 - 9 months. So my questions (sorry for the long post!) are these: What are the alternatives to the Ombudsman? Are there any legal firms who specialise in taking on such cases? I keep reading about the "Ministry of Justice" - who are they are should I be making them aware of my case? If I did what juristriction (if any) do they have? Does the Office of Fair Trading or Trading Standards have any juristiction over Harrington Brooks? The FOS adjudicator has said that the Financial Conduct Authority regulates the industry - does anyone know how to go about raising an official complaint with them to have this company investigated? Since this happened to me I have googled about Harrington Brooks and found that I am not alone. There are lots and lots of other people who have had this happen to them, one of whom ended up receiving a CCJ because Harrington Brooks had not made a single payment to her creditor whilst telling her that it was all in hand. So, given that I am not an unfortunate isolated incident, how do I/we take action to see that Harrington Brooks is either prevented from trading in this way again and/or has it's licence revoked? Harrington Brooks has several different trading names and I have found a not insignificant number of threads complaining about them on this group. I have also noticed that the trend of those complaining is to pay Harrington Brooks in good faith and when the letters and phonecalls from their creditors don't stop to discover eventually - usually after 6 months or longer - that Harrington Brooks has been making no or very little payments. At this point they sack them and make other arrangements. Very few of the people affected seem to have been successful in obtaining a refund of their monies paid to Harrington Brooks whether or not they were passed on. in effect Harrington Brooks is lining their nest from this very nicely and getting away with it. How can we call a halt to this? It's scandalous and in my view nothing short of both theft and fraud.