The debt solutions market places has grown in recent years to new heights, fueled by decreasing real wages for many of the lower to medium paid and a generational ignorance about debt related protection and laws.
The boom in new debt management companies, many of which have questionably unethical sales strategies and excessive charges have used the lack of public knowledge in the United Kingdom to there advantage.
Its is highly questionable if these companies provided a quality, cost effective service, indeed many of the small companies are in fact subsidiaries of larger groups such as The Money Group and other large debt management companies, offering like in the way of different services and provisioning a smoke screen of industry competition.
Fair too often these companies are unclear about their costs, charge large up front fees for little real work and are generally ignorant to advising there client to the impact of the plan, what there creditors rights are, leading to generally and confusing for many as there credits increasing becoming more aggressive in their attempts to recover payment.
The Office of Fair Trading has started a probe into the industry but it is illegally to mean any real change in the industry for the short term and as economic conditions improve and people return to paying their creators directly, its unclear what changes it can really produce , with many of these companies like to not survive in their current form.
However, the damage will have already been done, with many people paying excessive fees, lengthening the time it takes to pay their debts, increasing the over all cost and causing long term damage to there prospects.
What is needed is a more firm set of industry guidelines and a duty for debt management companies to be more upfront. In addition, many are now arguing that the aggressive sales strategies that use should be band, in particular the use of cold calling and loan broker provide information. This should result in principle, people needing debt management to seek it, instead of those with no real need using it as a service to reduce their repayments liabilities or being sold that very idea. These are needed now but are unfortunately to happen.