Depends who is advertising I guess. May just be some kind of middleman firm who would be passing you on to someone else.

Are you "paying thousands" for the trust deed?

Or are your creditors?

You sign a trust deed, and give a commitment to pay into the trust deed 'pot'. You don't pay any other charges to the trustee.

How the money from the pot will be divvied up is agreed between the trustee and your creditors - when the creditors agree to the trust deed.

So, you can argue that the creditors are the ones who are "paying thousands". And that the trustee is not charging you for their service.

Then again, it's your money that's going into the pot...

Maybe the advertising watchdog should take a bite out of this one [:D]

I think it's irrelevant whether the payment to the trustee is directly from the individual or via the creditors. The bottom line is that the trustee in question provides a service and gets paid for it, however they wish to disguise it. The question is why they feel the need to make the statement in this particular way.

Mark

just to clarify - over the next five years i'm going to pay several thousand to my creditors via my TD but that's fine cause i owe them several thousand and i'm going to pay my IP company a few thousand and that too is fine cause there's no such thing as a free lunch but how can this advert say we won,t charge you or our service - i don,t get it and the advert is on clyde 1 every day at least once.

There are rules about this kind of thing - I think it is the OFT that police it. If you feel that it is misleading then you have the right to complain. Certainly, nobody should be stating that trust deeds are free of charge on their advertising.

I wonder whether they are just saying that their initial advice is free though?

The OFT rules are very simple.

Any claim to offer free advice should normally be accompanied by an equally prominent statement that the product itself involves costs. That's our understanding anyway.

Quote from the OFT's Debt Management Guidance which applies here. Examples of improper or unfair business practices include:

"falsely claiming or implying that help and debt advice is provided on a free, impartial or independent basis, where the provider has a profit- seeking motive".