www.iva.co.uk

On Saturday 16th I received a letter (apparently) from Aperture (dated 8th March). It appears to be from them but the letter is not on their colour letterhead.

It tells me that I urgently need to change the bank account that I pay my monthly IVA payment into. The letter says this must be changed by 31st March - as an aside -and that the "great news" is that we can now pay by Direct Debit. This lets Aperture (or whoever it is) decide when and how much they take from my account.

I have 2 main concerns.

This type of mail is a common scam so that your payment goes into the scammers bank account after telling you to change the Bank details.

Why are Aperture in such a manic rush over this and gave such short notice. Perhaps this means that the company is having financial problems?

Has anyone else received this letter, and if so have they had a day or two to try and get through to Aperture to check this. To me this looks very suspicious.

Thanks

I would not change anything until I speak to Aperture -- on a call of my own making first.

This is the first I have heard of this and you are right to be sceptical.

Thanks very much Foggy. Hope I can get through to Aperture on the phone before the 31st ...........................................

Hi Stevedgn68
I have also received a letter from aperture stating the same information, I have sent aperture an email requesting confirmation that the information is legitimate. I will let you know if I get a response. I am feeling pretty anxious about letter as I only have 1 payment left before the end of my IVA....

Sounds odd to me.

I too would be concerned getting a letter like this. I would do nothing until you get confirmation via a phone conversation with Aperture that you instigated.

You shouldn't need to change bank accounts and you certainly don't want to give out details otherwise you may find your bank account has been cleared out!

Hi! I received the same letter yesterday and managed to speak to Aperture’s customer service (Sam) who confirmed the new bank account details of Aperture. I myself was concerned as I only have 5 payments to do. But now that it’s confirmed, I have changed my standing order.
Hope this helps.

I am still not convinced ... surely they would be giving more than two weeks notice of needing to change account details and surely in the age of digital technology they would have updated their website to put on a notification or a voicemail automated message to confirm the changes...they must have known people were going to question the legitimacy of such a random letter.
I would want some kind of second written assurance before I changed the account details.

I agree.

I too have received a letter. The fact that it wasn't on colour headed paper and the short timescale also rang alarm bells for me. I haven't been able to get through to Aperture so I took it along to my bank to change my Standing Order. The assistant said one of the numbers given for the account was wrong so did not change anything for me and told me to contact Aperture. I am still trying to get through to Aperture to get a definitive answer from them.....

Keep phoning to make sure.

Amazingly.... I just spoke to someone at Aperture who reconfirmed the new Bank Account details and also said they had had a large number of calls on this subject.
Thanks for the help from you all.
S.

Wed Apr 10, 2019 3:22 pmStevedgn68 wrote:

Amazingly.... I just spoke to someone at Aperture who reconfirmed the new Bank Account details and also said they had had a large number of calls on this subject.
Thanks for the help from you all.
S.

Hmmmm ... how about a mention on their website to put clients minds at rest ??? Wouldn't occur to them of course !