Chasing cars

I feel like an utter fool. A complete moron. An absolute sucker.

In October 2001, I was made redundant from Trinity Mirror. At the time, I had debts that I was struggling to pay whilst receiving my salary so I knew that to drop to just above minimum wage temping, I had no chance. I was desperate and knew nothing about debt management (back then, it just didn’t seem to be an issue, unlike today where it seems to make the news at least once a week). So I called a debt management company in and agreed to let them handle it. I couldn’t handle the threatening phone calls from the bank in question and the idea of someone else dealing with it sounded great. OK, so it was gonna cost me £40 a month, but if I could be debt free and not reduced to tears every time the phone rang, it seemed fair enough. Plus, it was my own stupid fault for getting into debt in the first place so I should have to pay something to solve it. I can’t blame the banks on this, I was an idiot to get into debt. That’s the fact.

So they sorted everything, froze the interest on everything and started taking payments from my account. Everyone was happy. This went on until January 2005 when I decided to increase the standing order by £25 a month. Then, after the wedding, I increased it again by another £35 a month. I thought I was paying everything off quicker and everything would be OK. I called the company to arrange both increases and also notified them when I got married and changed my name. (I never got round to notifying them I’d moved, tbh I didn’t see the point. Money was going out, they never wrote to me anyway and they had my mobile number if they needed to get in touch.) I thought everything was under control.

Fast forward to today. I recieve a call from the debt management company related to the bank offering me 20% off the total if I pay it off today. Obviously I can’t do this (and don’t they think that if I could, I would have done it automatically?). The amount they quoted was a little higher than I thought was owing and they still had my old details. I thought I’d better ring my debt management company and make sure everything was up to date. (Oh, surely you can see where this is going?)

Only the number was not recognised. Nor was the website and there was no listing in the yellow pages or via directory enquiries. So I contacted both my creditors to make sure they were still being paid. They were but at the original lower amount – there had never been any increase in the payments. Crap. The bank let me know that the account the money was coming from had been closed in 2002. Holy crap! I’d been paying money for 5 years into a closed account. Obviously, I’ve now cancelled this and set up new standing orders direct with my creditors to equal the amount I was currently paying. It’ll be tight for the rest of my maternity leave but at least the debt will be going down much quicker. I should be debt free by January 2009. Yeah!

But I feel like a moron for many reasons. I should never have paid for this service in the first place, I know, but I had no idea back then that you could get it for free. I should have checked more regularly for my balance, etc, but I just thought, well, the money’s coming out, the creditors aren’t banging on the door, everything must be fine. Why didn’t I check? Why was I so damn trusting? This company appears to no longer exist and owes me at least £1200 in the extra payments I was putting in, let alone the monthly fees which they were taking and not doing anything to earn.

And to top it all, I had my smear test today. The nurse took one look up there and said she’d need to call a doctor to come and have a look (cos that’s what I needed – one more person rooting round up there after what felt like the entire labour ward staff did this in September!) Turns out I have some unknown (at present) infection and have to take antibiotics for a week.

It’s not Friday the 13th, is it?

Until there is a next time…

xx