Gregory Pennington IVA / Debt management Review

Overall Rating

Helpful at the start.
Think Banking manages your money in two separate accounts - your card account, which is your money to spend, and your salaries account where they hold funds for your bills.

Badly organised, do the bare minimum, unhelpful, 0845 number, hard to get in touch with, expensive.

When I first signed up with Gregory Pennington and Think Banking 2 years ago, it was a weight of my mind. I thought I'd finally be getting my finances back on track - boy was I wrong.

For the last two years I've been paying GP £200 a month towards my debts as well as a £15 banking fee and £20 monthly debt management fee. In that time, I had been told my interest on the accounts had been stopped. So I would have thought that I'd have made an impact on my debts.

Today was the last straw when I received yet another letter from Lloyds telling me the payment had not been enough. GP have not stopped the interest on any of my accounts, they continue to miss payment dates which incur me with further charges and my debts do not seem to have been reduced AT ALL.

When I ask for statements of my account to show what they've been paying my creditors, they can not help. When I ask how much I have left owing, they can not help. When I ask why they've miss payment dates, you guessed it, they can't help. Not only this to but to speak to someone I have to call them on an 0845 number which, without fail will keep me in a queue for at least 20 minutes.

I'm taking my debts back on myself because all GP seem to do is take my money and pay the debts - well I could do that. They seem to ignore the letters I forward them from my creditors that I'm still receiving, just as they ignore the letters I write to them.

On top of this is the Think Banking account. Now it's not all bad, but for an account that you have to pay for, I'd expect a better service. My card doesn't work in ANY of the 6 or so cashpoints local to me. Frequently it is refused when I'm trying to purchase items online. When I ask TB about this, they try to tell me I'm putting my details in wrong - I'm not a moron thank you!


Over all this is an awful company, they may look like a night in shining armour to begin with, but the cracks will soon start to show as you notice your debts aren't being reduced.

Members' Comments onAngels Sin's Review

• Rachie83 on 18th Jun 2009

  I agree when I first signed up with GP I too thought, brilliant, everything is going great, No way jose, they are very helpful but like you said you end up paying loads more money anyway to them in order to pay your debts and sometimes these are not getting paid. Thinkbanking is THE worst bank I have ever had, and you have to pay for the mis pleasure, they lost a 3k cheque on the system and I had to wait 3 weeks to receive my own boyfriends money back, they then closed my account and let me carry on paying money into it, then told me they could not find this money as the account was closed, the guy I spoke to was aggressive and rude, I recently stopped paying all of my debts but am now thinking of re joining a debt management company again, any suggestions!?

• ladypen on 18th Jun 2009

  Well i have just read this and am so worried now' i am having the same proplem help'