Jun 6 2007
(London, 07/06/07) IVA.co.uk, the UK’s biggest online IVA community for information and advice about Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs), today revealed that its site had been inundated with controversial discussion about debt solutions providers, resulting in complaints that the IVA.co.uk forum contains slanderous comments about Insolvency Practitioners.

The community site was alerted to the fact that its forum posters had begun to have slanderous conversations about named Insolvency Practitioners and debt solutions companies when some of those named stepped forward to complain. The individuals concerned contacted the site to demand that administrators remove the offensive threads from the community forum, or face legal action. The remarks objected to included implications that quality of their service and regulated standards were not being met, as well as name calling such as ‘she-devil’ and ‘dogs-breath’.

As a result, IVA.co.uk decided to remove the specific defamatory references from the threads about which specific complaints had been received, but left the bulk of the thread in tact in order to improve transparency in the market and to restore calm to their community site. In keeping with the community ethos of the site, those who felt slandered by the threads in question were also invited to post responses themselves and to enter into reasoned discussion with the users who had questioned the quality of their service.

IVA.co.uk has also been proactive in posting additional guidelines, warning forum posters against making offensive or defamatory statements. Nevertheless, moderating the posts of outspoken debtors continues to be a major challenge for the site moderators.

Andy Davie, site manager for IVA.co.uk, commented,

“The forum is helping to bring more transparency to an opaque market. There have long been rumours of mis-selling and poor customer service in this industry.

We have many examples of people who felt that their cases were being poorly handled who then were able to get advice from the forum and then improve their situation. The fact that this forum allows people to get second opinions and highlight poor service will hopefully mean that in the long run, poor service will become a rarity in the industry.“