We are living on very little money at the moment as OH is finding it unusually hard to find work, but we budget and can still pay our bills. Things like water and council tax are split into smaller monthly payments so they still get paid and we don't fall behind. We actually get council tax benefit so we don't have to pay it at the moment but had a large amount we couldn't pay while they took almost 3 months processing the claim.

Then yesterday I got a letter from them which is a summons!! Even though I'd agreed with them to pay it off bit by bit so we could still afford to live they went ahead anyway and are demanding the full amount plus and extra £43 they've stuck on there for good measure to pay for the summons. Steam is comming out of my ears!! They never even warned us they were going to do that. We recieved no letters to say what we were paying wasn't good enough or that if we didn't pay up they'd do this.

I'm going to pay them tomorrow but I wrote them a really nasty email to show my disgust..... for all the good it will do.

Hopefully you will get it sorted - I bet it is some admin blip lovely

Rumpskin is probably right, ive had things like this sent to me. Demanding payments for a tv licenece, Saying he owe all this money. When all along we have one.

Ring them and sort it, dont pay outright if money isnt there. You arranged to pay back what YOU Can affored, if they didnt like it they would of said but they have agreed. They cant just turn around and say ' well actually i want the payments now'!

Good luck !

Sending a "nasty email/letter" doesn't help.

First the summons was probably set in motion when you first fell behind on a payment.

What you need to do is contact the creditor, explain to them you have received the summons letter and ask for their assistance in the matter as you have a payment plan with them.

Legally in the UK you can offer as little as £1 per week on a repayment plan and they have to accept. If they refuse your offer of payment they are effectively saying that your debt can be written off. Obviously if you continue to accrue further debts with the same creditor and don't keep up on them they can take further action to recover monies owed.

Make sure you ask for a hard copy of all correspondence and keep your own records of all telephone calls (time/date, who you spoke to, what the out come was) as back up.

Hoepfully you can get this all sorted out in no time.

I had a problem with council tax ages ago.

I totally forgot one month about a payment and i got sent a letter (apparently, i never recieved one) so then i received the summons saying they wanted all the money, (which was about 400 left until end of year) . So i rang up and said i never received the first letter otherwise i would have paid straight away, i said i will pay now for it. they said that would be fine but i would still have to attend court to say why i wasn't paying the full amount! This was something i was not willing to do (have never been to court in my life!) So to cut a long boring story short, i had to pay the whole amount to avoid attending court.

Its a bugger.

Just ring up hun and say u've agreed to pay it a certain amount each month they should sort it their and then.
Don't pay the full amount.