Posted: Thu Jun 14, 2007 11:29 am
This may seem a daft question, but does the amount you owe to a company affect the amount they want back in the pence? I ask this because I have been reading various comments about Northern Rock - who are annoyingly our biggest creditor.
We have been in our IVA for one year, paying off approximately £0.55 in the pound (don’t have paperwork to hand).
I took out a NR loan in April 2005 for £17,000 to pay off two credit cards that had very high interest. We were advised at the time by NR that as we still had several other credit cards to pay off with high interest repayments, that we should take the NR loan out over the maximum 10 years so that we could concentrate our efforts and spare money on paying off the remaining credit cards. The problem is she didn’t make it clear over the phone that it would make the overall repayment over double the loan amount – yes they wanted £36,000 by year 10! Two days later when the paperwork arrived after nearly dying of shock I tried to cancel the payment protection as I had heard you could get cheaper payment protection from companies if you bought it separately. I also asked them to quote me the same loan but over a shorter period. NR said that they couldn’t cancel the loan or the protection and that if I was to go through another loan request to cancel this one, they would take the £36,000 into account as money I owed so basically I had no chance.
The thing is, we never intended actually having the loan for the full length of its term because several of our loans would have finished between January 2007 and January 2009 freeing up over £1000,00 per month to finish the NR loan early – by early 2011 if not before - which they said we could do, so therefore we wouldn’t have paid the full £36,000. After entering into the IVA the finish time is the same – 2011 not 2015 that the original loan was taken out until.
We never took this issue further because a year later we went into the IVA and it was obvious that they wouldn’t get the full amount back, but as they are still our biggest creditor and as I am at risk of redundancy or of doing the same job for less money than we may need to lower our contributions and I am now concerned after reading through the comments that NR will only accept a minimum of 40-45p in the pound which was a complete surprise.
I wonder therefore if it would make any difference to try to pursue NR (obviously with the agreement of our IP)or if in fact everything they did was correct and even if it wasn't it would have no affect on how much they want in the pence?
We have been in our IVA for one year, paying off approximately £0.55 in the pound (don’t have paperwork to hand).
I took out a NR loan in April 2005 for £17,000 to pay off two credit cards that had very high interest. We were advised at the time by NR that as we still had several other credit cards to pay off with high interest repayments, that we should take the NR loan out over the maximum 10 years so that we could concentrate our efforts and spare money on paying off the remaining credit cards. The problem is she didn’t make it clear over the phone that it would make the overall repayment over double the loan amount – yes they wanted £36,000 by year 10! Two days later when the paperwork arrived after nearly dying of shock I tried to cancel the payment protection as I had heard you could get cheaper payment protection from companies if you bought it separately. I also asked them to quote me the same loan but over a shorter period. NR said that they couldn’t cancel the loan or the protection and that if I was to go through another loan request to cancel this one, they would take the £36,000 into account as money I owed so basically I had no chance.
The thing is, we never intended actually having the loan for the full length of its term because several of our loans would have finished between January 2007 and January 2009 freeing up over £1000,00 per month to finish the NR loan early – by early 2011 if not before - which they said we could do, so therefore we wouldn’t have paid the full £36,000. After entering into the IVA the finish time is the same – 2011 not 2015 that the original loan was taken out until.
We never took this issue further because a year later we went into the IVA and it was obvious that they wouldn’t get the full amount back, but as they are still our biggest creditor and as I am at risk of redundancy or of doing the same job for less money than we may need to lower our contributions and I am now concerned after reading through the comments that NR will only accept a minimum of 40-45p in the pound which was a complete surprise.
I wonder therefore if it would make any difference to try to pursue NR (obviously with the agreement of our IP)or if in fact everything they did was correct and even if it wasn't it would have no affect on how much they want in the pence?