Debt, Mental Illness, PPI's and DMP help needed please

[comebackjimmy]

Hi and welcome to our little club of hundreds of thousands of members!

 

There are better people than me on here who will give you good advice about specific things but I will propose a strategy for you to consider which is as follows:

 

1. Do a personal income and expenditure statement. On the outgoing side the following are in order of priority:

 

a. Mortgage/rent

b. Council Tax

c. Utilities

d. Food and clothing

e. transport

f. Everything else

 

What is left is the total amount you have available on a monthly basis to repay your creditors.

 

2. Make a complete list of all your creditors and the amounts they are owed/monthly repayments required. It is unlikley the amount you have to pay them is sufficient to pay them so divide up what you have fairly between each creditor. This is the maximum amount you can pay each creditor.

 

3. If you want to challenge the enforceability of individual debts it is probably best to start a new thread for each creditor. Name each Neeta v Natwest, Neeta v Capital One or whatever so that we can follow individual cases and know it is you. The rule should be one creditor per thread.

 

4. Hopefully each thread will be picked up by one or more CAGers who will advise you what to do to challenge, reduce or otherwise manage the debt. To make life easier post the following information: Name of institution, type of agreement, amount, frequency of payments PPI included, Date started, date of last payment, any legal situations, any DCA's involved etc.

 

If it was me I would challenge each debt and refuse to pay anything unless they could provide written proof of their right to collect it. If they can I would then make them the offer of payment as previously calculated. Obviously challenge anything with PPI on it.

 

Also, at no time should you accept or make phone calls. Written comms only. Don't engage in useless letter writing for its own sake. Keep all correspondence received AND THE ENVELOPES and file everything. Never sign anything.

 

Get ready for war. Organise all your correspondence in files by individual creditor in chronological order. Depending on the creditor and other factors you may sometimes experience some unpleasant situations. This potentially includes multiple DCA's, harassing behavior and other things designed to scare you/intimidate you. Don't be scared. If anything arrives/happens that concerns you post it up on the thread and people will advise you.

 

Good Luck

[comebackjimmy]

If it was me and I had decided to challenge the amounts I would start with the CCA request. After the mandatory time for reply had expired (which I believe is 12+2 days but hopefully another CAGer will confirm) most of them would not have replied and you could legally withhold payments anyway until they did.

 

So your first action should logically be to get the CCA requests off. Send postal orders for £1 to each creditor and DO NOT SIGN the request, and send each by recorded delivery.

 

Between now and the next 12+2 days you are theoretically obliged to continue to pay them. Therefore your pay plan comes into action and if any payments are due before the 12+2 days expires then write them a simple letter saying you can only afford £X and pay that amount.

 

(By the way cancel any direct debits. Pay either by standing order, card over the phone or cheque/po in the post. A DD allows them to help themselves to any amount they like and they will try and take what they want, not what you offer).

 

A word about the debt collection practices.

 

a. Use the phone harassment template letters on here and send one to each creditor. Some of them will take notice and stop calling you.

 

b. The credit control letters you get are largely harmless but can be worrying if you dont know your rights, the law and the practicalities of collection. For example before they can get a charging order on your property they must first get a County Court Judgement, which they may find hard to do without the proper paperwork etc, as you will discover as we move on. If they get a CCJ you will then owe them the money but you can get the court to set a monthly repayment figure. Only if you then fail to stick to that repayment figure will they then be able to apply for a charging order. The fact they put the documents in the envelope is just a psychological ploy.

 

If it was me and they have included a self addressed envelope find something to send back to them (Couple of pages of a magazine or something) and post that off. It is a small thing but they will have to pay the postage and take the time to open the letter on arrival so you will have the satisfaction of wasting some of their time and money! It feels good to fight back!

[comebackjimmy]

it's about control and empowerment.

 

Spot on rebel

[comebackjimmy]

Neeta it just occurred to me that you mention they put some Charging order documents in the post. Would you please remove any personal details and post them up here.

 

The reason I am asking is that if they are using official court documents in circumstances where they know full well they cannot get a charging order that may well be against official debt collection guidance. You could start a complaint, but we need to see the docs first. I would not mind betting these so called docs are just so much cobblers.

[comebackjimmy]

I would respectfully disagree with rebel on the subject of same or separate envelopes.

 

If it was me I would send each communication in a separate envelope with separate recorded delivery (making sure I knew which topic was covered by which recorded delivery slip). My reasons are as follows:

 

1. It may be that they comply with certain requests and not others. From a management point of view it is better that you can handle each part of your correspondence separately. If you subsequently have to complain about a non-response or they deny receiving something if you use a separate recorded delivery they cannot come back with shenanigans such as we received a. not b.

 

2. It can work to your advantage to send separate letters as sometimes these go to separate people resulting in different/conflicting information being turning up/returned to you. This is great because you can point out their contradictions and put them on the back foot or save potentially damaging items for a rainy day.

[comebackjimmy]

it's ok for them to bombard me so therefore it's ok for me to do the same back right?

 

..right!