More words of wisdom for the financially crippled..... (Bill Payment Services in general)

Member Name: Biffa

Product:	Bill Payment Services in general
Date:	09/09/00 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They're supposed to pay the bills for you

Disadvantages: They DON'T pay the bills for you

There are now agencies that will pay your bills for you! How excellent! Or not as the case may be.

A good friend of mine was financially in the deep brown poopy like stuff, so she consulted one of these agencies to help her out. She was paying them £150 a month for three months, the idea being that they would use the £150 to pay all her bills and come to agreements with them over reducing the amount to pay.

So, 3 x 150 = £450. And out of that, they have so far paid one bill of £10. She's still getting letters demanding money from all the people she owes to, despite the agency telling her that they would deal with all the correspondance.

She has now told them she wants all her money back as she will pay the bills herself - because at least then they'll get paid! The agency have told her that she won;t get all her money back because of the administration costs, and that it'd be better to keep paying them. All this when she had a letter from them advising she could cancel the arrangement at any time with one phonecall.

So the moral of this tale is - why pay someone to pay your bills when you can make a better job of it yourself. She has successfully negotiated lower payments with all her creditors (the agency didn't do it for her) and she's told them to take a running jump.

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