What finally made me sit down to write this story happened on a long bus ride from Oslo to Torp airport this past weekend. I still can’t figure out how Ryanair can say their flight goes to Oslo when it is an almost two hour bus ride to the city, but that's another story? The cab was going to be £400 round trip, so that’s how I wound up on the bus.

On the long cramped bus ride I was reading an article from my £4 Time magazine (the conversion rate sucks in Norway). The article mentioned how someone from Wal-Mart had been nabbed intentionally manipulating their entry in the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, to suit their needs. The article said, "On Aug. 14 a computer hacker named Virgil Griffith unleashed a clever little program onto the Internet that he dubbed WikiScanner. It's a simple application that trolls through the records of Wikipedia, the publicly editable Web-based encyclopedia, and checks on who is making changes to which entries. Sometimes it's people who shouldn't be. For example, WikiScanner turned up evidence that somebody from Wal-Mart had punched up Wal-Mart's Wikipedia entry. Bad retail giant."

It triggered a memory that I had about someone telling me that CCCS UK had been doing the exact same thing regarding their entry in Wikipedia and a user, Tirian, who stated that he/she was a member of the CCCS press office, and kept editing out information posted by others. I’ll get back to all of that later in this article.

Is CCCS Defending Consumers Regarding Critical Financial Issues?

But first, since I was already thinking about CCCS, and I had that huge ride ahead of me, I contemplated the point, as the red barns went by, that was raised by Alan in a comment to an earlier article that I wrote, “Reward Offered for Payplan and CCCS in the UK”. Alan asked “Never mind the IVA debate. Where have CCCS been in the entire unlawful bank charges debate?” and that seemed to be a perfectly reasonable question and got me thinking. I did mention it was a long bus ride.

Finally off the bus and back to an internet connection I did a quick search of Google showed that Consumer Credit Counselling Service (CCCS) has been all but silent over important issues in the past couple of years regarding unlawful bank charges and concerns about Payment Protection Insurance.

What I was unable to find was any official statement, much of an interview quote or proactive outreach by CCCS regarding bank charges or PPI.  I find this to be puzzling since with their strong media connections, press office and frequent press appearances they can easily champion consumer causes and speak out on behalf of consumers, with little to no effort.

The bank charge situation in the UK isn’t a cutting edge or breaking news story. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has had this matter under investigation for some time now and has issued public statements regarding the overcharging by banks of consumers on penalty bank charges. By now, even tens of thousands of consumers have taken their banks to court and won refunds for the recovery of bank charges.

Recently the Office of Fair Trading issued a notice that they are taking the banks to court over this unfairness issue and hope to secure a ruling from the High Court, quickly. Of primary concern here is why has CCCS not stood up tall and proud for consumers that have had to pay these unfair and disallowed bank charges and why does it appear that they have not helped to educate the public about their right for a refund of these charges? Especially since consumers have been able to recover thousands of pounds back from their banks and these refunds would help to reduce the debt owed by consumers and clients of CCCS.

Several forum posts around the web did mention that CCCS staff members had agreed with the consumers attempt to reclaim these bank charges, but this appears to be a response from an individual counselor, rather than an organisation policy.

In addition, CCCS has not made a loud public noise to help educate consumers about the refunding of Payment Protection Insurance (PPI) premiums or unlawful bank charges. Again, the Office of Fair Trading has taken a very clear view on the disadvantage that PPI places the consumer in and the OFT has gone as far as referring the PPI matter to the Competition Commission.

Other sites, like that of Martin Lewis, have been very vocal and much more helpful in providing advice about the PPI and bank charge issues.

Recently, issues surrounding the Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) have been getting attention since a group of creditors and a public company are attempting to orchestrate a policy which will in essence strike the IVA from access to the poorest and most disadvantaged members of the UK. Again, CCCS has been deadly silent over these issues also.

The Concern Today: What does the CCCS silence on these issues mean, if anything?

At a Money Advice Liaison Group (MALG) meeting in London last year I raised a concern about banks not treating consumers individually, sympathetically or fairly according to the Banking Code (see recent article about this subject). At the time I was very surprised that it was Jan Smith from CCCS that immediately leapt to the defense of the banks and proclaimed that not to be true and unfair.

I walked away from that meeting a bit perplexed about why, aside from a comment made in 2004, that CCCS would be the defender of banks and not agree with me on the consumer side that there was much work to be done in that arena.

Maybe it is all coincidence and I’m not quite sure what to make of it but it does appear that CCCS has been:

1. extremely silent about the unlawfulness of excessive bank charges;
2. quiet about the overcharging of consumers for Payment Protection Insurance;
3. tight lipped about the banks ignoring key sections of the BBA Banking Code that can assist debtors; and
4. absent in the public discussions over the IVA changes by the Insolvency Exchange that fundamentally restrict access of the poorest members of society from the IVA as a fair and reasonable solution.

A review of the CCCS Website media section also failed to show any current or past public outreach over any of these issues.

All of that leaves me wondering, why? What, if anything, does this mean?

Does CCCS Have a Charitable Consumer Voice or Have They Been Muted by Funding?

As the CCCS Website states “CCCS is funded and supported entirely by the credit industry. It is this totally unique mechanism that allows CCCS to provide its services totally free to consumers.” They are paid a “fairshare” commission based on the money they collect from consumers and return to the banks, for their benefit. Lenders are happy to pay the charity in this way, Mr Bell says. "The creditors trust us and incorporate us into their operations - and no lender can chase debts owed to them for less than the amount they pay to the CCCS."

And while CCCS states they are a free service, we must ask, at what price to consumers? At what benefit to banks?

It would be an absolute tragedy if the strong funding ties with the banks and credit card companies that fund CCCS and allow them to provide services at no charge to the public actually control the registered charity to the point that it prevents them or makes them hesitate from speaking out to defend consumers regarding critical financial issues when the banks that provide their funding have been the bad actors.

A point raised in the CCCS Wikipedia discussion seems to sum it up best, “Recent UK Charities Commission research of charities that deliver public service programmes found that only 26% of charities delivering public services feel they are free to make decisions without pressure to conform to their funders’ wishes.” That means that 74% of funded charities do not speak out against their funders’ wishes. Is that what has happened to our dear friends at CCCS?

The CCCS mission according to the Charities Commission Website is, the relief of poverty amongst persons in the United Kingdom by: (1) The provision of advice to assist such persons to reschedule and refinance their borrowings, (2) Training such persons to manage their finances more effectively by the mounting of training courses in such management, (3) Establishment of counselling centre’s to which persons may resort for advice on debt matters generally, (4) Establishment of an insolvency practice to which such persons may resort as an alternative solution to debt problems.

And while their stated mission does not specifically say they should defend the public or provide warnings and guidance regarding financial situations which impact a large number of consumers, I think it might be assumed by many that a registered charity should serve a benevolent purpose or one of public benefit and if anything, error on the side of the consumer, rather than big commercial banks.

CCCS and Wikipedia

What triggered this article was my memory of the edits that CCCS has levied on their Wikipedia entry. Until I read the article in the magazine I did not realise that others found such self-censorship of alternative information regarding a company listing in Wikipedia to be disturbing or in “bad taste”.

If you look at the history of page edits in the CCCS Wikipedia entry you will see that almost as quickly as someone adds additional facts and material about CCCS, that it is edited out by the user Tirian, who has stated, is a member of the CCCS press office. See entry dated 27 March 2007.

When I visited the CCCS Wikipedia page I also found some very interesting information as well about CCCS in the discussion section. This material raised some more interesting questions and presented some disturbing information regarding the formation of CCCS, links the group has and background of the management team from GE Consumer Finance.

Final Thoughts

So if Consumer Credit Counselling Service in the UK was created using the the credit counseling approach "...which worked well in the USA..."

1. but that approach has been shown to be flawed and now under investigation by the Internal Revenue Service in the US;
2. the original funders and organisers of the operation were creditors;
3. CCCS was started with the assistance of an employee of a creditor;
4. day-to-day control of the organisation is by a management team that came from the creditor community;
5. CCCS funding comes as compensation earned from debt collection services they provide for the benefit of the creditors; and
6. they have been deadly silent in support of consumers over unlawful bank charges, PPI, IVA exclusion and other important consumer issues.

Where does all this leave consumers? What are we to assume?

More importantly, should the organisation, as a registered tax-exempt charity, be tasked with defending and benefit the community, or primarily engaged in and paid for the collection of debts for banks? According to the Charities Commission - "Charities are organisations set up for the benefit of the community." But which community?

Acting as a charity is a difficult and almost impossible task and I learned that from running a charity myself. To be deadly honest it is a difficult and fine line to walk in charity management between being a business focused on making money and being a defender of the public, no matter what the cost.

And as long as the majority of funding comes from creditors, for whatever reason, there will be no doubt that it does create "golden handcuffs" that would bind any organisation in a similar situation. You can imagine how hard it would be to speak out about the actions of the people that fund you. It creates an understandable and difficult conflict but is that one that the public should tolerate?

In the United States the lawmakers have limited the amount of funding a credit counselling group can get from its DMP or debt management activity to 50% of its revenue and that the charitable purpose of the organisation must be earned from activities other than the collection of debt through debt management plans.

While a charity gets great financial benefits such as the exemption from many taxes and reduced rates for products, leases or services, in exchange for those benefits they also have a great amount of responsibility.

Employees of the charity probably also have a duty to speak up if they feel the charity has wandered away from its mission in the relief of poverty and help to keep the charity focused on the delivery of services for the public benefit and the protection of the poor in order to maintain the mission of the entity.

In a perfect world all I would like to see is that the CCCS charity becomes a loud, vocal and outspoken defender of consumers against specific unfair and unlawful banking practitices and to see CCCS not hesitating from educating consumers publicly against bad financial practices by lenders, even if they do provide funding to CCCS.

In all fairness I don’t think that CCCS has engaged in any sort of intentional deception about their background, mission or allegiance. Much of the information that might raise concern can be found in their own words and interviews they have given. A lot of that material and links can be found in the Wikipedia discussion section regarding CCCS. 

The rest of the dots that someone might be able to connect become a bit more “the plot thickens” and require a bit more “conspiracy theory”.

If you have any thoughts or feedback about this article, please feel free to post it in the comments section below.

P.S. I would personally like to invite all readers and all CCCS executives and employees to please sign the online petition with 10 Downing Street to help stop  unfair consumer actions by creditors and to stand up to defend consumers.