Misleading individual voluntary arrangement mailings

rnLetters have been sent by many companies to individuals who have entered into an individual voluntary arrangement for years who have stated that they have been mis-selling. The OFT have taken action by stopping a few companies consumer credit licences. Web forums focussed upon debt and IVAs have contained troubled questions from individuals in an IVA for multiple years. The trouble has been caused by a letter that has arrived, from a company with an official-sounding name, which suggests they have been duped into an IVA when a more relevant debt explanation was available to them. At a time of financial and at times also emotional vulnerability these letters have caused much concern and distress for the recipients. To help reassure the public who received the letter, trading names such as the ''IVA Review Board'' or ''The IVA Council'' were picked to convince them of the importance behind the accusations in the mailings. It can be seen how the public were easily convinced by the text of the letter by looking at reports on a regular basis of mis-selling in some areas of financial services such as endowment policies and PPI insurance. The target of the letter was to persuade individuals that the greater alternative for them was to go bankrupt rather than starting an IVA. However it is impossible to find out which option is more appropriate for individuals without doing any exploration. It is essential to know that a small amount of individuals who started an IVA in the past would have been swayed towards bankruptcy. The ones that contacted the company after getting the letter were offered their services and encouraged them with the option of bankruptcy. These services came with a bill, often to thousands of pounds. Delightedly the Office of Fair Trading has acted against a bunch of these companies. All of the companies concerned were based within Dorset. Their licences to trade have been revoked following an unsuccessful appeal. The OFT calculated that the inadequate direction and delusive mailings were in breach of their Debt Management Guidance which licence holders must follow. Consumers who are in an IVA (or who will enter one in the coming months and years) are now much more essentially secured from this kind of misinformation. Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) service providers will now be content. Their clients that received these concerning mailings had to be reassured by assigning important resources to them. A recognized IP (Insolvency Practitioner) funded legal action against the inaccurate information in these letters as he was anxious about the damage and harm being caused.