debt free direct any one had experience?

[candyfluff]

considering this for large debt any help please

i reccomend payplan instead, no IVA's and very helpful, we went with them to sort out our loans/credit cards...

have you been to the citizens advice bureau?

Please remember you can do most of the stuff a debt counselling service would do free of charge with help of the CAB and a bit of form filling.

Haven't used them, but do have experience of an IVA with another company.

Are you thinking of an IVA or more debt management?

Use CCCS they are charity and don't take a commission Martin Lewis's web site has tons of advice and help www.moneysavingexpert.com The debt free board is excellent for advise

payplan is free, government funded....

Agree with everyone else, you can get all the advice you need free either on the web or through CAB.
Good luck.

Go to CCCS, we did and they have been fab! They helped us so much.

debt free direct are free why no positive stories

we just searched on't web and first one we came across were payplan... they were brill from day 1 and we're happy...

I think that you have to bear in mind that although they are 'free' they do make a profit from your debt. Normally, for example, in an IVA, you negotiate a payment, say £500 per month, but your creditors are only offered e.g. £350 of that, and the rest goes to DFD. This is a very simplistic explanation, but you get my drift.

CCCS are non-profit making, so all the money that you pay goes toward your debt. They have no incentive to push you down a particular path, and will advise you as to your best options.

maybe im thick but what does it matter to me if they make a profit

Because they are not impartial. Without details it is hard to be specific, but here are some examples:

Say for instance, you had a large amount of debt, but a great disposable income, they could suggest a Debt Management Plan. You could pay £120 per month towards your debts, but if they are taking the first £40, only £80 is going to your creditors, meaning that it takes longer to get paid off.

With regards to IVAs, they make an offer to creditors based on your available payments. However, this is reduced by their fee. Usually £5000-£8000. The offer is based on a pence in the pound basis. So if debt is £1000, and they offer 40p in the pound, the creditor gets £400, and writes off the remaining £600 as bad debt. However, in order for an IVA to succeed, it has to be worth the creditors' while.

E.g.

Debts of £30000, available payment £250 per month. Usual length of IVA is 5 years. If that all went to creditors, they would eventually get £15000 (£250 X 12 X 5). This means that they get a payment of 50p in the pound, and write of £15000. However, DFD need their £5000, so they take that off, and the creditor is instead offered 33p in the pound (£10000 overall). Therefore, the creditor may vote against an IVA, because it is below their acceptable threshold.

This weblink may help

Sorry, what I meant to add about impartiality, is that they won't have as much incentive, for example to recommend a Debt Management Plan over an IVA, because it is less profitable. Also, they wouldn't recommend bankruptcy, because there is nothing in it for them, the official receiver gets the fee, not them.

we contacted cccs and we would have to wait 2 wks to even geta appointment with them over the phone and we need to get the ball rolling asap. im confused as i feel whoever i choose its going to be the wrong decision

Have you tried National Debtline for advice?

Do you have any assets? If not, is bankruptcy an option?

Sorry to hear that 2 weeks is a long time to wait.

I know when we decided to do something about ours we put our details into something we found online and they rang us the same evening (sorry I can't remember who may have been debt free direct.)

Do you have an idea what you want to do? Bankruptcy, IVA, debt management?

The company we went with gave advise of all three of these.

If you want to chat off board you can email me angeg2802 at hotmail dot co dot uk

advice

how much debt are you people talking about?
we have quite a bit of debt but I don't feel as though we need to get help as such? maybe Im wrong? what do people consider extroodinary and not just allpart of getting aloing in todays rocky climate and expensive society?

It's not usually the size of the debt that is the problem - it is having sufficient income to meet the repayments. So for one person £5-£6k would be a disaster whilst another could cope up to £40-£50k.

The real problem comes when you have to start moving debt around - "using Peter to pay Paul" - then you really are in trouble.

we owe 22 grand all tolled from credit cards and one loan its getting so bad that for 3 weeks out of every month we are really struggling for the basics,we are going to have an iva just not sure who to go with

we owed £17.5k over 2 credit cards, 2 overdrafts, and a personal loan. Lots of it came from DH's student days, when he lived at home, payed pennies in keep, didn't drive and could afford it all. Now we have kids we just couldn't make the payments. it got so bad that we were sking for next month before we'd even been paid... and were living in our overdraft because ALL our income was going on charges here there and everywhere...

with our DMP ALL our disposable income goes to the creditors, there was no pressure to give up things like our sky or internet... we were given a healthy budget to cover food and petrol expences...

We think we'll be able to re-mortgage with our DMP provider in 2 years when we're off our fixed rate mortgage, and will be able to pay off all our debt for around £10k, which will be great for us, or another option is to move somewhere where housing is cheaper to release the equity in this house pay off the debts and still have a roof over our heads.

12mths ago when we started with our DMP we were in a bad situation and now we can see light at the end of the tunnel!!!

Candyfluff, good luck with it all.

We are now in the third year of our IVA and it's going really well. It really has changed our life for the better

have sought lots of advice and are thinking now that we will try the debt management programme first from the dational debtline people anyone had any luck with this?

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