Harrington Brooks - A whole year of "Mental Torture", Really need some help

[ReVeri3]

Hi Everyone,

 

This is my first post here. I have gone through a lot of threads and have been reading up on a lot of things to get a better understanding of where i stand.

 

I will now try to tell my whole story of how it all started and what situation i am in right now...

 

Around August last year, i was contacted by "TheMoneygroup(.co.uk)". They asked me about all my debts and explained their services to me i.e how they can help me by consolidating all my debts into one payment and freeze the interest. I wasnt too desperate for a DMP but MG managed to talk me into signing up for their DMP. I forwarded all my details to them and i was told that "I have NOTHING to worry about now as EVERYTHING will be taken care of by MoneyGroup". After hearing that i was relaxed and thinking that interest will be frozen and my debt will be cleared off quickly, i was quite happy.

 

I had the following debts:

 

BarclaysBank - £1500

Capital One - £2000

BarclayCard - £450

 

The first call was THE only call that actually sounded promising, after this it all started going down hill.

 

When MG first spoke to me, they mentioned that there will be a fee for their service but i dont have to pay it lumpsum, they will take a portion of my monthly payment towards their fee. So, for the first 3 months, i didnt get any calls from anyone and i was thinking that everything is going good. It was in the 4th month it all started. I started getting calls from my banks saying that they havent received any payments from me. When i informed them that MG are managing my finance now, they said that they havent heard anything from MG.

I contacted MG to find out whats going on and was not happy with what i have just been told. MG said that they have been using ALL of my first 3 months payment towards their fee so nothing has been paid to the creditors, whereas i was told that only portion of my monthly payment will be used towards their fee NOT ALL OF IT. When i asked them why this has happened, they said it should have been explained to you, this is how we do it. I said to them that i was told that only "portion" of my monthly payment will be used towards it not all of it, but they wouldnt listen to me. I then asked them about the penalties built over the last 3 months as no payments was made to creditors, they said we cant do anything about that. I got really frustrated here but got no where with my frustration.

 

After all these 3 months of misery with MG and MG telling me that its all being sorted and i have nothing to worry and to stay calm. I get a call from Harrington Brooks. The person from Harrington Brooks introduced himself and his company to me and said that we are looking after your DMP and we will get the ball rolling now.... I was flabbergasted here thinking what the hell is going on WHO ARE YOU! and why didnt anyone tell me about DMP bouncing from one company to another. I got same reply from HB saying that it shouldve been explained to me but nobody ever did nor could they trace any recorded calls to prove it to me.

 

After a very long argument with HB, i decided to carry on with HB as i had already gotten myself into mess with all my creditors and was worried to take things back in my own hands. So i decided to give them a chance...which was a mistake i will regret for the rest of my life, as my whole year with them has been the worst year of my life.

 

From October 2010 util now....its been nothing but everyday mental torture and harrasments from my creditors. I demanded explaination for not being able to negotiate with my creditors and why is it taking so long and the only reply i would get from HB was " they are not replying to us, we have sent them all the letters" this statement made me even more sick then "weapons of mass destruction" statement. Every time i call them and inform them about my bank harrasing me they just say that we will get our liason team to contact them right away, and nothing will happen again for months. After about 7 months of this mental torture, it got even worst. My creditors started to threaten me yet when i contact HB about this, they are STILL F'IN saying the SAME THING!!! "We have sent them all the letters but they are not respoding"......I felt like doing suicide here especially when i received statements from my creditors showing that they have added extra £500+ as penalties and charges, HB said they cant do anything about these charges.

 

For almost 8 months, nobody at HB would let me speak to their manager, I simply get told that i cant speak to a manager. At one point after shouting over the phone, someone said that they will get the manager to give me a call...but i got no call from anyone. I could NEVER get hold of the person i spoke to before. I get told that the person i spoke to before is either sick, on other phone OR EVEN LEFT THE COMPANY!. So every time a new person would pick up the phone and i would have to shout down the phone to explain my whole situation.

 

around 3 months ago, I took the brave decision to ditch HB. So, i called them up to say that i no longer require this mental torture service from you for which i am also paying. After this, i finally managed to get hold of a manager. I explained everything to her that i been through and all she could do was apologize on their behalf and said that she will look into this matter herself. After one fricking whole year of bull**** and lies from different people at HB who kept bouncing me between themselves and not let me speak to manager, i was TINY BIT relaxed that someone is ACTUALLY going to do something about my account.

 

For the whole year NO ONE from HB WOULD EVER contact me to update me of my situation even at my desperate request to keep me updated. i had to call them EVERY TIME!.

 

This manager kept me updated through emails and she even called. At this point i was thinking i shouldve threaten to leave them a lot earlier.

 

The problem now is things have gotten really out of hand. The manager has STILL not provided me ANY documents to show my account status. I have been shouting over the phone for whole year to provide me with SOME SORT OF DOCUMENT that AT LEAST shows you guys are managing my finances BUT NOTHING!!. This manager still hasnt provided me with any documentation. The only thing that she sent me was a screenshot of all the statements which were pretty much useless as i could not use these screenshots to prove anything to my creditors.

 

I am in real trouble now. Apparently Barclaysbank said that they havent received a single penny from me, hence they have passed my details onto a debt collection company called RMA. I called HB again and spoke to the manager, she said that she will now be sending letters to RMA and contact them. To me, it seems like another bull****. RMA gave me 7 days to respond to them but i was told not to by HB. NOW, RMA sent me a postcard saying that they will be contacting/visiting me this Wednesday....I got really worried as to me this sounds like RMA will be knocking at my door to demand the money and not sure what they will do if i dont pay them. I called HB again and they are saying that I have to wait FRICKIN 28days!!! for RMA to repond as thats how long they have to respond to HBs letters. BUT the sunami wave is right at my door now...HB are not helping me anymore...

 

Someone please tell me what to do i have been crying all night over this mess. I was managing my debts just fine but made a choice of going with MG/HB and allow them to ruin my life....My debt has increased by £2000 because of all the penalties and in grave danger now. HB...year down the line....are still giving me same old bull****. What am i going to do when this guy knocks at my door...someone please help i beg you....

 

Thankyou so much

[BankFodder]

this is a terrible story. You need to take control.

I'm afraid one of the things that you have been doing wrong is that you seem to have been doing anything on the telephone and as I expect that you have not recorded anything, you have no record or no evidence of anything that has been said by anybody.

From now on, you do everything in writing – unless you can afford a good call recorder in which case make sure you record everything – and don't bother to give any warnings.

 

frankly, these kind of people who are dealing with are so hard-nosed, that I think that you are going to have to take County Court action against them to sorted out, get your money back – and some kind of compensation. I think that you had better get used to this idea if you want to make any serious headway with this. Otherwise I can guarantee you that you are going to get locked into a very frustrating time - for a very long period and in the end you will get very little back.

I would suggest that you start thinking about legal action and find out from this forum how you go about it. It isn't hard and it isn't expensive.

 

I suggest that you begin by writing down a full, detailed chronology of everything that has happened with as many dates, phone calls etc as you can remember. Get it going and update it everything you remember something else.

 

Assemble all of the written evidence that you have in your possession. Make sure that you have a full, well-ordered file. This includes bank statements, cheques - everything.

 

Write to both companies NOW and informa them that they have breached their contract with you and that your relationship is at an end. tell them that you will be expecting them to return all of your money to you as they have achieved nothing and have broken all of their promises. tell them that they are no longer authorised to act for you. At this point they will probably start trying to contact you and to open a dialogue. I suggest that you have nothing further to do with them until you begin to sue them - see below.

 

Write immediately to the OFT and also to Trading standards and make formal complaints about both companies. You must also make a formal complaint to the Ministry of Justice. These complaints are important. Don't hang around.

 

Send SAR's to both companies and get as much information which they hold about you as you can. Do this now - do this first - because they have up to 40 days to respond.

 

At the same time you need to contact your creditors. explain to them exactly what has happened. Tell them that you realise that because of the trust which you reposed in the two companies, that your finances are in a very bad state. However, tell them that you are now taking back control and that you are beginning to make payments to them straight away.

 

 

Send each creditor an income/expenditure schedule and start making payments to them - EVEN IF THEY REFUSE. Keep on making your payments to them whatever they say. This is very very important.

 

In your chronology you should set out all the payments you have made and how much you now owe. You must try to estimate how much the whole thing has cost you in terms of money - plus any other losses you feel that you may be suffering.

 

Once you have all of your information prepared and you understand your entire position - and once you have whatever information the companies have been prepared to let you have, you should write them a letter setting out your position and how much you want from them and tell them that you will begin a county court action within 7 days if they don't comply.

 

They won't comply and you will have to sue them.

 

If you aren't prepared to take this step, then frankly there will be little you can do execpt to get over it and put it down to experience.

The lesson for the future, is not to put your life in the hands of people who call you up out of the blue.

Even a brief Google of their name shows me that there are substantial complaints about them from a variety of people around the internet.

Didn't you even bother to make a small check before you started sending your money off to them?

[pandaspot]

I was with them for years, started off good, but I finally ditched them. Best thing I ever did.

 

I rang my creditors and made arrangements to pay, I know I should have done it by post.

 

I learnt from them that harrington brooks paid them quite sporadically and when they fancied.

 

They however did get my interest frozen, but they explained to me when I started the plan that this is only achievable by getting defaults on my debts, not sure if this is correct? But that's what I did. Had 10 defaults on my file

 

They are gradually coming off, I have two left now

 

Think you should leave Harrington brooks, cab can help with debt problems or this site what strikes me is that your debt was not that big to start off with, and you wouldn't have needed a dmp

 

It's an awful story

[Crocdoc]

I sympathise with your situation as problems of this nature with DMP's are common, if you actually read into these schemes they should be providing accurate staements, details relating to the duration of the agreement and written confirmation of fees. In reality this is not the case and very often interst and charges are not frozen. Then if you refer to their terms and conditions if specifically states thet they will try and reach agreement with creditors to have interst and charges frozen. However, all to often the FAIL to advise the debtor that they have not succeeded in having accouts frozen and of course the debt rises.

 

Personally, I would not touch these companies with a barge pole, in my opinion they are just another industry that profits from peoples misery.

[SILVERCAT55]

BF

Glad for this particular advice. I have debts of over £10,000 and thisafternoon received a call out of nowhere from HB. Over the next hour or so, after being caught completely off guard and bombarded with niceties I began to feel they were actually pretty human and genuine - so much so that I've asked for one of their bankruptcy team to contact me in three days time. Hmmm, seems however that I've made a big boo-boo! Desperation and worry do that to you!

 

In all honesty, two thirds of this amount is owed on CT arrears (£3000plus) and priority utility bills (also that amount), but with my monthly income less than £1000 (rent £670 let alone daily living/travel costs) my only option by this point truly has to be bankruptcy but who really will be the best people to put this in place please?

 

Regards

Silvercat

[citizenB]

Have a word with National Debtline - they will talk you through your options and put you on the right track.

 

http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/

 

They also have a free helpline.

 

or call National Debtline free on 0808 808 4000

• Monday – Friday 9am-9pm
  
• Saturday 9.30am-1pm
  

[Wintry]

BF

Glad for this particular advice. I have debts of over £10,000 and thisafternoon received a call out of nowhere from HB. Over the next hour or so, after being caught completely off guard and bombarded with niceties I began to feel they were actually pretty human and genuine - so much so that I've asked for one of their bankruptcy team to contact me in three days time. Hmmm, seems however that I've made a big boo-boo! Desperation and worry do that to you!

 

In all honesty, two thirds of this amount is owed on CT arrears (£3000plus) and priority utility bills (also that amount), but with my monthly income less than £1000 (rent £670 let alone daily living/travel costs) my only option by this point truly has to be bankruptcy but who really will be the best people to put this in place please?

 

Regards

Silvercat

 

Hi

 

Following on from others

 

There may be options other than bankruptcy

 

It might be worth having a look through the CAB Online Debt Remedy / Advice / Information tool

 

http://mymoney.nedcab.org.uk/moneyadvice/

 

If bankruptcy is appropriate and you decide to go down that route the above has example completed bankruptcy forms

 

http://mymoney.nedcab.org.uk/moneyadvice/bankruptcy.asp

 

There should not really be the need to pay for help with bankruptcy especially paying someone hundreds of pounds to fill in the forms.

 

Any chance of putting up your SOA? as I am quite sure there are people on here who can help you further

 

Best Wishes

[sequenci]

Thanks, Wintry

[Wintry]

Thanks, Wintry

 

Hi

 

You are welcome:)