IVA Review: Prefer Not to Say on penelope stubbs (526 views)

Review of: penelope stubbs

Review date: 25 July 2009

Insolvency Practitioner who handled case: penelope stubbs

I proceeded as far along as: Accepted IVA

The solution I opted for in the end: IVA

Speed of response

No of days to make a decision after I spoke to IVA company: 7 days

Weeks to IVA proposal after decision made: 3 weeks

Weeks to IVA accepted/rejected after decision made: 12 weeks


IVA Company Ratings
Their debt solutions expertise:	10 out of 10
Their customer service:	10 out of 10
Their speed of response:	9 out of 10
Overall Company Rating:	10 out of 10

Insolvency Practitioner Ratings
The quality of IVA proposal:	9 out of 10
Overall Insolvency Practitioner Rating:	10 out of 10

My circumstances:

Employed living in London. Debt of 66K. Tried to remortage and found 50K negative equity. Tried to resolve with paying creditors, when starting to bounce mortgage took advice at suggestion of one of my creditors and was given several numbers to phone. We Chose Freeman Jones. This was a joint IVA with myself and husband. Before we reached IVA point we were having approximately £10 a week for two for food. Only when bank starting banging on major charges that everything started to go wrong, including bouncing mortgage payments. We orginally got into money debt when moving as were misold a loan, which had a very large repayment penalty, which were not informed of when took out loan.

My interaction with the company:

I had a different advisor at every stage of IVA. I was nervous that this would not offer continuity of service. However the opposite - all of their staff were so well trained and professional it was easy. They answered my calls and responded to voicemail messages promptly. They were good, professional, friendly and seemed to care that they would get me the right solution - which my husband and i feel they have.

Why I gave the ratings I did:

Debt solutions expertise - they offered us unbiased solutions based upon our circumstances and I had a cooling off period to ensure that I was comfortable with our decision - this is good as no hard fast selling. Customer Service was excellent, we had three creditors that were getting very aggressive and had my wife in tear on one occasion - they gave us advice on what to say to creditors that was appropriate, firm, professional and gave us the knowledge that our creditors assumed lay people do not have. Speed of response. I rated this 9 as i had to sometimes leave 2 messages to get a reply - but I am inpatient and often called twice within the same morning. Company Rating - they do what they say and dont promise you anything they cannot deliver - they offer good professional advice. Quality of IVA proposal - I read these carefully, lots of pages with a few mistakes - general stuff, not major, but always read through, noone gets everything 100% at first draft - this is why it is sent to us to check. Practitioner - had not had many dealings with them as 4 months into IVA - but so far professional and skilled. All in All they conveyed a good organisation who helped us and didnt blow smoke - we soon learned that they could deliver what they said and were honest and trustworthy.

One thing they did - which really impressed me:

When my wife had a bad call from a major high street creditor who despite the fact that we said we were going into an IVA continued to demand a payment - when we phoned Freeman Jones they advised us how to handle creditor calls and what to say and to advise them if we had any problems - they helped us to come through a very difficult time.

One thing they did - which I felt could be improved:

I was advised to take out a think banking bank account. This account is managed for you with two seperate parts, one for bills and one to spend. There is a fixed £17.50 charge a month and no extra charges. This works and is a really good account. However, my phone bill has doubled due to calling them on an 0845 number regularly - it would be good if the charges could go up to £20.00 a month and this change to an 0800 number. I am not allowed to phone 0845 from work.

Other points

We can buy proper food and pay our utility bills. This is not an option that we would have chosen as we would have prefered not to got into this situation - this is not an easy option. We have learnt that if we dont have the money in our account we cannot afford something. This is for a 5 year term and we have no plan to get a credit card after the 5 year term. We have not written off any money as after the year term our property will be checked for equity and we will then pay the remainder. Although this sounds unfair we tried to remortgage already so am happy with this.

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Review from Prefer Not to Say (526 views)

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