CCCS & REclaiming bank charges Advice needed!!

[littlebea]

Hiya,

 

I am on a DMP with CCCS and was intending to take Barclays, Barclaycard and Egg to court to reclaim my bank charges. all these accounts are closed and incorporated into my DMP.

 

I owe about £10K and was planning to attempt a Full and Final Settlement Offer with my creditors in the summertime. then i thought i would just reclaim my charges and that this would provide the bulk of the cash which i would offer in F&F.

 

however i am confused that if at this point i start the court thing and say they all pay up would they pull out of the DMP and demand repayment of the balances, or the reclaimed cash would be treated as seperate to the DMP arrangement, in which case i could stash it away until i had raised the rest of the money to make full and final offers.

 

there are a few people in my situation over on MSE and any help/direction would be greatly appreciated as im dithering around here wondering what to do for the best!

 

thanks

 

LB

[dubliner10]

Hi bea,

 

 

I'm in a similar situation and just sending LBA to First Direct. Spoke to payplan, and they've advised me to go ahead. Worse case scenario I will owe FD less if they knock the amount I'm claiming off my debt. If they cancel your DMP, they will have to bring you to court (irony I know), which will cost them, and in the end the court will ask you to pay in a similar way to the DMP - either way banks are no better off.

 

Stick with it bea. I intend to

 

Dub

[littlebea]

We need one of you on MSE!! thanks for that. do you know if charges reclaimed from one creditor would be automatically distributed amongst all the creditors on the dmp or just the one?

[Glenn UK]

Hi all

 

I have a couple of observations, if you owe a company money and then reclaim the charges they will use the money reclaimed to offset against the outstanding debt.

 

If you have cash to settle the debt then make them an offer of around 50 - 60% and its likely they will settle, then you can reclaim the charges you have paid.

 

There are also some pitfalls to be aware of when settling debts but we can do that in a bit.

 

Something else to think of is that if you reclaim money from one of your list of creditors, any money gained will probably have to be distributed pro rata amongst all your creditors.

 

This would be a normal condition of having a DMP with someone like CCCS or Payplan (I used payplan for mine).

 

Having said all of that I am not for one minute suggesting not reclaiming your charges, only that you be realistic about what will happen when you get money back.

 

The problem i think you face right now is that any money you reclaim will give you a like for like bargaining power when it comes to settling.

 

If you had the cash its likely to could a settlement value of something like 65p in the pound which is of course very favourable.

 

As Dubliner said the worst that can happen is that you owe less than you do now.

I also agree that they wont cancel the DMP otherwise they will have to go to court why the took money unlawfully from you, then had to pay it back and then cancelled the payment plan you had agreed with them.

 

HTH

 

Glenn

[dubliner10]

Well said Glenn. And a some points I'll be using -

If FD do settle in full, and return it to me I intend to put (most of) the money into the DMP to pay the rest of my debtors pro rata. If FD won't send a cheque, I'll push them as far as court, in which case they will owe me more than I owe them, in which case I would be happy to settle for FD writing off the debt as long as I receive the surplus.

Might be pie in the sky, but I'm going to wait and see.

[Glenn UK]

Dubliner

 

For clarification, if you are in a DMP then if the organisation you are suing is part of the plan then its my view that they cannot use the money to offset your debt with them without the agreement of the other creditors.

 

If the DMP has an section that says you will divvy up any windfalls between all parties then they have signed up to that too and so have the other creditors.

 

If i was one of the creditors and found out one of the others was taking the biggest slice of any windfall for themselves at the detriment of me i wold be hacked off.

 

I wold expect a court to support a debtor in this position when insisting for the money back in full from the creditor involved provided it is to be paid out pro rata amongst the other creditors.

 

JMHO

 

Glenn

[dubliner10]

Glenn you are a gentleman and by my reckoning a scholar. That helps a lot. I've been mulling over what to argue when FD file their defense or even launch a counterclaim as I owe them money, and what you've said makes perfect sense. I'm with Payplan too, and although you can NEVER get through to them, they are supportive and have encouraged me to chase FD for the claims.

Have you won against anyone you have in your DMP?

[Glenn UK]

I have been very lucky, i managed to remortgage and pay off my DMP, i wont bore you with the details but it all happened before i found this site.

 

So my DMP is finished and i managed to raise sufficient cash, around 63% of my outstanding debts, and paid them all off F&F.

 

Now I'm suing them for my charges and before you ask, no i am not short settling with them. So far i have reclaimed from 2 of them.

 

Since were talking settlements, you have to be cautious because in theory a debt cannot be repaid by a lesser amount.

 

However, where there is some 'consideration' (i.e. benefit) to the creditor then that can constitute full and final settlement.

 

There are other conditions where short settlement can be considered as full and final and if you want to go through them some time ill try to remember the issues.

 

Hope that helps

 

Glenn

[littlebea]

thanks for the replies am gonna crack on with it eeeeeekk