Debt Management
After the shock of finding out my hubby was going to be made redundant just before I was due to have our second child, we needed to find a way to help pay debts while he was looking for a job. I don’t know where my hubby heard of them, probably a TV ad I think, but he called Baines & Ernst and they advised him to set up a DMP. It isn’t until recently we even realised that this is what we had back then! I don’t think anything was really explained to us properly! Hubby was lucky, all of his creditors were quite happy with this and went along with the offered payments, but mine were a different story. I was about to get my first experience of creditor harrasment!
We changed our bank account as advised, as we had loans, overdraft etc with LLoyds TSB. We stopped all payments to creditors and then sent all the paperwork and initial payment to Baines & Ernst. I don’t think we were ever made aware that some creditors might not be happy to take part in the DMP. I’m sure it was there in the paperwork somewhere, but hubby was stressed with looking for a new job and I was overdue to give birth! We weren’t exactly thinking rationally! It didn’t take too long for Baines & Ernst to sort out the paperwork and soon we were making the reduced monthly payments to them which they then distributed to creditors. They advised us to tell all creditors who phoned that they were dealing with our finances now and not to get into conversations with them. They told us to send on all post regarding debts to them and they would deal with it. This sounded fine and for a few weeks all we got were letters which we forwarded on as told.
I finally gave birth 2 weeks overdue ( to a ten pounder!!) and thought all was fine and going to plan. Then the phone calls started! I had a newborn baby, was stressed and tired, but the one company I owed the least money too decided they wanted it all back NOW! We had bought a computer on credit in my name through PC World who used Beneficial Finance and I think we had already paid for most of it only owing a couple of hundred pounds, but they weren’t happy with only getting a small amount per month. They started to phone at least 5-6 times a day. A different person every time demanding immediate payment. Every time I told them we were with B & E and they would be in contact and we could not make any more payments, but they were having none of it. During one phone call the woman – I won’t call her a lady- on the other end was actually shouting at me! You could hear my son crying in the background quite clearly and I got so upset I started to cry, she was talking to me like S*** basically. My husband had to take the phone off me and tell her in no uncertain terms where to go! After this I decided I was no longer going to answer the phone. We used to have one of those Amstrad phones which told you which numbers were calling, so anything I didn’t recognise or was witheld would not get answered. I think during this time the phone calls actually increased! They would phone and leave messages around 20-30 times a day! No joke! B & E said they were dealing with it and they were receiving thier share of the payments, so I just ignored them.
We did get good news after a month or so, my husband got another job which would start as soon as his previous job ended! This was great and believe me was such a relief! It was then that hubby decided to do something we now regret so much and was the worst thing I think we could’ve done. He decided to consolidate. I can’t remember the name of the company. I know he saw them on the telly and it was the one Carol Vorderman used to advertise. He called them and arranged a secured loan on our flat to pay off all the debts. The payments were lower than the DMP, but were spread over 15 years! We really didn’t think it through to be honest, all we saw were lower payments and no more harrasment! We even got a little extra for us to go on holiday with. All we looked at was the short term. We didn’t think about facing up to our debt problem at all. In fact we just made it worse in the long term. The one thing we did realise is that our debts had been higher than we thought. We had guessed at around £15,000, but in reality it was more like £25,000 and then we added another £5,000 on top! So now we had a £30,000 secured loan! Do you know what though? We did agree at this point not to get any more credit cards!! We just had our overdraft on our new bank account and a store card and our Next account. So we were ok – for now!
