www.iva.co.uk

My wife and I recently sent off our income and expenditure for our third annual review with D.F.D.On the expenditure side we increased our petrol ammount from £70/month[a figure set in 2006 when we were accepted for an iva]to £80/month,which is still a bit tight given the constant rise in petrol prices.
Yesterday we received a letter from them and one of the things they required from us,in order to complete our review,was one months fuel receipts.Frankly I can't remember the last time I got a petrol receipt,I pay my money and take the goods.
I rang them to explain this,and was told by the adviser that they required them because it was an increase of £10 or more.
I suggested maybe a bit of common sense should prevail,everyone knows how much fuel is going up at the moment.Or just to make it easier for everyone ammend the monthly increase to £9.90p so it doesn't fall outside the £10/month increase threshold.No if we wanted to do that we would have to put it in writing.So i'm going to collect a months receipts as requested thus putting back our review by at least one month.
But the thing that was of greater concern,I asked the question "at what age does a child get classed as an adult?" for food and household goods.The adviser hesitantly told me 18 years.Now my wife asked the same question,to a different adviser a couple of months ago,and was told it was 16 years old.I raised this point to the person i was speaking to,who then went away to ask their supervisor.
She came back and said that there isn't a set age for classifying between child/adult,everyones curcumstances are different and looked upon as individual cases.Amazing.She went on that we should send a covering letter explaining that my child is rapidly outgrowing her clothes etc,so that this can be reviewed as a special case.
My daughter is 14 coming on 15 eats as much as i do,wears adult size clothes yet she is a "special case".
I think a letter discribing her as an 18 stone weightlifter,built like a brick ****house wearing size 10 shoes might be considered a special case.She's not,she's a 5ft 6inch,slim,elegant bestest daughter anyone could wish for.
Better go i'm a one fingered typist and this as took,how long?.

I would ask for more than £80 given current prices and potential for future rises. It also allows you some room for negotiation. I'm with CCCS and allowed £90 a month. Their guidleines are generally quite strict but adopted by many IVAs so I would argue for at least £90.

Hi,
You would think common sense would prevail regarding the fuel as price increases are fully visable and applicable to all.
A good point raised about the child/adult issue and it will be good to see an experts opinion.

Common sense should prevail but if not stick to your guns. To be honest whilst it might not seem alot to DFD it certainly is a significanty increase for you and one that will make your life easier and will stop you having to take from other budget areas.

I have to say we've been very fortunate with GT and on the times that we have increased our monthly expenditure they have only asked for evidence on the large increases on the unexepcted items. At the beginning of this year we increased our fuel from £100 to £120 and it was accepted with no problems.

Are these people real??? The danger of dealing with junior staff who are not empowered to make sensible decisions. Insist on speaking to the IP next time, and suggest that they are being ridiculous asking you to provide receipts to substantiate a £10 fuel increase.

Hi Melanie,
Thanks for your comments regarding the fuel receipts,but what's your take on my second point about there being no age definition between an adult and child.
Incidently when we returned our income/exp for this review,we increased our food and household goods expenses by £20/month,yet we havn't been asked to provide receipts for that.???.
Regards PB.

You cannot put growing children into little boxes and say one day they are a child and the next that they are a young adult. If your daughter takes adult sized clothes and eats adult sized meals then she is an adult - and this could happen at the age of 11! Personally I cannot believe that your IP is being so fussy, and would have thought they would have better things to do!

Dont speak to the monkey ask for the organ grinder. Ring them again and ask to speak to your IP directly. You can also get there details directly from the insolvency service website.

Do not let them get you down it is not worth it [:D]

Ladyh,

We all do things we regret, obviously including the debt we have got ourselves into but at least we are trying to resolve it by paying our creditors back. Have a restful weekend and give them a ring again on Monday speaking directly to your IP. It is a shame that this girl seems to have such an attitude which alas seems to be a problem with these large factory companies with idiot call centre works who do not know what they are talking about.

I've worked in customer service of one type or another since I was 17 and people like the one you spoke to make my blood boil. Doesn't she realise that she is supposed to help you?

As Ray says you need to speak to the organ grinder - have you got your IP's email address? If not try here - http://www.insolvency-service.co.uk/newipsearch.htm. It might be worth emailing him/her direct rather than trying to get past someone who doesn't really care.

Good luck, you know we're all here for you x

Im sure some of these juniors in the offices get a kick out of playing with peoples lives especially petty things, power does sometimes does go to peoples heads.

DFD are very poor on the communication front and the left hand doesnt seem to know what the right hand is doing.
Hubbys IP was Andrew Redmond. We were told Mr Redmond does not take calls (charming)
We found his email address and emailed him and although we did get a reply, it wasnt from him and we were told to please not email him again (which we ignored even though it made us feel like naughty school kids)
Thankfully we did get to speak to another member of staff who did know what she was talking about so after that we used to just email her instead.

We too were asked for one months petrol receipts and also one months proof of school dinners. We were like errrr excuse me but vending machines and chip shops dont give reciepts.
To be fair though that was the one and only time they questioned our I&E.

Given his role in the company you probably have more chance of knitting fog than getting a response. However, there are active IPs with internal responsibility for overall management of the cases (many of whom I know) and if you want me to help you I'll be delighted to.

You will, unfortunately, have to give me your details so I can draw the problem to the attention of one of the IPs in charge. Get hold of me on the freephone number from my company website if you need my help. I'm free on Monday apart from 10:30 am to 12 noon.

Ian

Do we have a right to talk directly to our IP ?

Ian

If the IP cannot be bothered to deal with the clients who are funding his operation, why is he putting his name to appointments? All clients have a right to access their IP should the need arise.