One aspect of the whole IVA Factories debacle was the amount of IVA Miss Selling that apparently went on. The whole concept of IVA mis-selling is an intriguing one given how relative the term itself is. If you by a ticket to a football match and the game is a nil nil draw with little action or entertainment you may feel the £30 you paid to get in was not worth it. If you go the next week and are treated to a five goal thriller with you team wining in the last minute you are likely to think your £30 was better spent. The fact is you have essentially knew what you were going to before you went. You made a conscious decision to part with money on both occasions.

Now imagine an ad appears saying you could claim your money back for the game that was nil nil. The advertisement claims that your club failed to tell you the game was going to be boring. You were misled into spending money you could seldom afford in the first place. The greedy club is taking your money to pay its greedy players. The next thing a tabloid newspaper takes up the cause campaigning for downtrodden football fans, not before long everyone involved with the club is being blamed. The programme seller is exploiting people, the person on the turnstile is a thief, the hot dog seller, the players, the board, the whole thing has become a never ending circle of blame. Someone else went to the nil nil match, paid the same money and was happy. They knew what they were getting into, they paid the money and got on with it. But do we hear from these people. No. Because no one wants to hear about his or her experience because it is so average, it doesn’t create controversy.

Britain is a blame culture, more so than ever. The insolvency industry seemed to have gotten away with it until the whole ‘IVA Factories’ situation came about. Somebody, somewhere (I have no idea how or when) reached the conclusion that thousands of people on IVA’s had been miss sold there IVA which in turn created a panic amongst those on IVA’s that they had been ripped off by the ‘IVA Factories’. The internet began to buzz with individuals claiming they had been miss sold there IVA. At the time I was working as a post appointment administrator at an insolvency firm. There was a notable increase in the amount of clients calling in complaining about their IVA’s some using the immortal lines ‘I’m going to Watchdog’ or ‘we are going to sue your company’. When quizzed why they had suddenly felt like this most replied with a line like ‘we didn’t know what we were getting into and you didn’t tell us about bankruptcy’.

One client in particular called in and along with her husband eagerly encouraging her in the background began shouting down the phone about how we had ripped them off. She claimed the following:

We had not told her about having to re-mortgaging her house in the fourth year.

Her creditors were not being paid.

She did not have to pay at Christmas.

Her friend was on an IVA and was paying less (this was evidence we were ripping her off).

We lied and said she would not have to pay overtime into her arrangement.

The client was about four months into her arrangement and when asked why she was complaining she advised us she had heard about people on IVA’s being mislead on the radio by a reporter (the press and IVA’s is a whole other topic I will be discussing soon). The company I worked for recorded every phone call made to clients and was excellent in terms of training staff. Every single one of the clients complaints was proved false.

The client was sent copies of all calls yet was still massively unhappy. They then claimed they had not read the proposal and would have signed anything to stop the creditor harassment. Of course I could sympathise with the creditor harassment, but not reading the proposal and not listening to what the advisor and drafter had told them? The client was still unhappy demanding payments be lowered and the length of the IVA shortened to three years. Quite rightly, the IP refused and the client was told the arrangement would continue. The client then posted on a forum about how badly they were being treated omitting every single piece of relevant information such they had been made aware of everything they were complaining about and they had not read their proposal. Within days there was host of disgusted replies tearing my company to shreds and calling for the client to take legal action.

Most incredible though was the ringleader of this online lynching was another insolvency practitioner self righteously preaching that action need to be taken against rouge IP’s ripping people off. Surely, in a time when IP’s were being savaged a more measured approach from the IP on the forum would have been sensible? But no. Here was an IP commenting on a case of which they knew nothing about and surely must have realised was perhaps very one sided. Human beings lie. If your IP refuses to give you payment break because they feel there is no reason not to make the payment what sounds better on a forum? Your IVA firm told you to pay because there was no reason not to Cheap Accutane pay; or your IVA firm still made you pay even when your sick mother needs around the clock care after her operation and the firm you work for aren’t going to pay you for the time off?

Many clients I dealt with did not blame themselves for the amount of debt they were in. It was their creditors fault for sending them credit card applications, which they filled in, sent back and then maxed out on numerous occasions. It was the systems fault for allowing the banks to lend money to people like them. They were victims of greed, and now they found out they could claim they were unfairly on an IVA and could now blame someone else (IP’s) for their ongoing misery.

Look on any consumer forum and there are people complaining. Many with good reason.. But many are simply people who WANT to complain, it is in their genetic make up to do so. The sad truth is it is these people have the loudest voice causing other people to follow suit. My advice, make your own mind up and for heavens sake READ YOUR IVA PROPOSAL.

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