Distraught Julia Horton is deep in debt, owing money to a load of banks and store cards.
Since April 2020 she has been paying £162 a month to a firm called Clear Start Accountants to supposedly deal with her money woes.
Her creditors get £122 of the monthly payments while Clear Start keeps £40, and Julia is struggling to see what the company does to justify the fee.
"I thought they would deal with my creditors but I've had to do it," said 51-year-old Julia from Cardiff.
"I've tried to leave Clear Start but they won't let me, they say it's a breach of contract after the work they've done but I don't really know what they've done, I've no idea if they even contacted my lenders.
"I could be doing this for the next 20 years, paying Clear Start £40 every month."
She's not alone in having serious money problems, new figures show 5.6m people missed a loan payment or other bill in the past six months.
Offering help to people with money issues like these is big business. Among the websites touting for their trade with Google adverts is changedebtline.com, which is run by Blackberry Finance Solutions Ltd and tempts: "Check if you qualify to reduce your debts".
The small print at the bottom of its website warns that it does not itself provide "debt solutions", it's a lead generation business that will sell my details to a third party, who might charge fees.
I completed its online form using a pseudonym and was phoned back by someone calling from its "debt counselling team".
He talked through my debts, income and outgoings, and was strangely anxious to inflate my spending, for instance by including £50 a month on medicines even though I said I didn't take any and adding a huge £100 for monthly internet costs. The reason for this became apparent later.
He then declared that I qualified for a "personal budgeting service" with Clear Start Accountants, the "number one company in the UK for setting up these plans".
"They charge monthly fees but they will be small and will be included in the monthly payment which means that apart from this payment you will not have to pay a single penny," he promised.
"This is the best and last option for you."
Moments later I was telephoned by a rep from Clear Start, Osman Farah, who went through my finances again and came up with a plan that would involve me paying £240 a month for the first three months, all of which would be kept by Clear Start, nothing going to my creditors.
From month four onwards my payments would be £200, with £150 going to the creditors and Clear Start keeping £50.
So that's £720 then 25% per month, not exactly the "small" fees I'd been promised.
Farah could not tell me how long this arrangement would last, which made me wonder if this was why my outgoings were inflated - it left minimal disposable income to pay my creditors and the longer I was still in debt, the longer I'd be paying Clear Start.
He said I must immediately stop paying everyone I owed money to.
"I need you to cancel all of your direct debits from today, you do not pay your creditors. You've got a couple of payday loan companies, the way they take their payments from the 16 digit credit card number, you need to cancel that bank card, report it as lost and order a new one, cancel the direct debit. With the cards and catalogues that you pay off via an app, do not log on and pay. Once you get a new credit card with a new long number these creditors cannot take the payment."
But won't my creditors start hounding me if I stop the payments? He promised this would not be a problem because he would set up new payment arrangements.
Despite all this talk about my debts, Clear Start is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority to charge for debt counselling services.
It says that it does not need to be.
Farah explained that their debt counselling was free, it came as a complementary part of the accountancy services that it is authorised to provide as a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
That's despite the fact I'd never asked for accountancy services and Farah hadn't offered any to me.
Clear Start Accountants is based in Manchester and a major shareholder is Fiaz Ashraf, 38, who I came across in 2020 when I exposed his company Debt Compare Ltd. He wasn't keen to talk to the Mirror.
"Last time we ended up in the Mirror with false accusations," he said. "We are not willing to discuss or engage with you."
I asked if his company's claim to provide accountancy services was a sham to get around the fact it is not authorised to provide debt counselling.
"It's not a sham, anything to do with debt is complementary because that's not what we do, we are a budgeting service," he replied.
"If someone has debt problems and they require us to facilitate between them and their creditors, it's for free, it's part of the service, our fee is an accountancy fee."
I asked if his fees were making the situation worse for people already in debt. He didn't seem to understand the question, saying "Put that to me again". I had to repeat it three times.
"The fee is irrelevant because if you had a debt problem or not the fee would be the same because we are engaging with you for an accountancy solution, our budgeting service," he eventually replied.
"We help thousands of people a year."
I asked him about the connection between Clear Start and Blackberry Finance Solutions - according to his LinkedIn profile, Ashraf worked at the latter for more than four years and they've shared the same address in Devonshire Street North, Manchester.
He denied that Clear Start bought leads from Blackberry, even though it was the Blackberry website changedebtline.com that had forwarded me to Clear Start.
So where does Clear Start get its leads from?
"Various different channels," was the reply.
He added: "If there is any false accusations or libel I will go after you with all my might."
Blackberry Finance Solutions did not respond to me.
As far as Julia Horton’s case goes, he said they engaged with her lenders to get interest and charges frozen and saved her more than £5,487, compared to the £2,762 it has so far charged in fees.
He insisted she was never told she could not exit the contract – and she has now done just that.
investigate@mirror.co.uk
