Help with Lowell please

someone's_Mum · 21 August 2017 at 4:51PM

Hi.
Please bear with me and use simple language thanks.
I am on a DMP with Stepchange and have been since March 2016.

I have £34k unsecured debts.

One was with Creation finance for a sofa we bought.
In June this year, I noticed Lowell's name against my DMP instead of Creation.

We received no notification of this transfer of debt until I rang both companies. A letter then followed from Lowell saying they had bought the debt from Creation.

So, payments from DMP have been made to Lowell.

Now I made a one off payment of £600 to Lowell 3 weeks ago as we received some unexpected money and as we owe least to them and would like a "closed account" on credit file.

The outstanding amount is now £740 to Lowell.

I have just emailed Lowell with a final settlement offer of £100 as I am more than aware that they will have bought the previous £1400 debt owing to Creation for peanuts.

They have had £700 off me in 2 months.

So, email response from Lowell is that they won't accept offer of £100 as final settlement as they believe the outstanding debt to be true.

I replied and asked that they send the letter to a manager as "Bryan" did not even provide his surname on response turning down my offer. Bryan replied and said "Thanks for your response.I appreciate your comments however we would not look to provide the full name for you to contact our management directly.

I can advise however that this has been reviewed with management for you and they have also advised that we would not look to accept your settlement offer.

As advised, we are happy to assist you in setting an affordable repayment plan towards the account, or you can continue paying via StepChange as it appears you are at present. If you are going to do this, please let me know and I can note this for you.

I look forward to your reply.

Kind regards,

Bryan
Lowell Financial, part of Lowell"

Please help as how do I handle this now?

I am considering contacting a manager at Lowell.

Is the fact that I made payments to them acceptance of debt to them when I actually took agreement out with Creation?

Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance

National_Debtline · 21 August 2017 at 5:18PM

Hi someone's Mum

Welcome to MSE. I’m sorry to hear your offer was not accepted but Lowell are within their rights to insist on payment of the full balance, regardless of how much they bought the debt for. Although you can ask them to reconsider there is no obligation for them to agree and it sounds unlikely they are going to change their minds. Be cautious about trying to clear your smaller debts first, as other creditors could be unhappy about that and less likely to negotiate or continue with the DMP.

It is legal for a company to sell a debt on to a debt collection agency (DCA) like Lowell. The new DCA should inform you this happened and all the original terms and conditions of the agreement will still apply.

Susie
@natdebtline

fatbelly · 21 August 2017 at 5:32PM

Tactically you have not handled this well. You owed £1340, paid £600, then 3 weeks later asked them to accept £100 as a 13% full & final settlement of the remaining £740. Why would they accept that?

If you had carried on with minimal payments for a bit then offered £700 against £1340 probably they would have accepted that.

I can only suggest you go back to paying through Stepchange.

sourcrates · 21 August 2017 at 5:49PM

Agree with Fatbelly.

Ideally you should of asked here for help before paying Lowell anything.

They are usually open to offers, and you may of got the settlement you wanted, but you have to go about it in the right way.

Sadly now your chance seems to of gone.

someone's_Mum · 21 August 2017 at 8:04PM

Thanks guys.

Yes I thought I'd shot myself in the foot by paying the £600 off to Lowell.

Hind sight is a wonderful thing....I should have offered them £700 as final settlement as would have been nearly 50% of debt. I didn't know about offering an amount for final settlement until 2 days ago.

I thought my only option would be to continue paying Lowell via DMP.
Thanks alot

StopIt · 22 August 2017 at 8:02AM

Good morning.

As a couple of questions have been left in the air a bit, I'll clarify a bit.

When you operate a DMP via people like Stepchange, they try to take over all management of the plan. Creditors selling on defaulted debts is commonplace, so Creation would've notified Stepchange, as per your DMP. As you continue payments to Stepchange, you do not need to be contacted directly as no change is required.

Sometimes you'll receive the notifications also, but you can always ask the status of any debts managed by Stepchange at any time.

It's still worth requesting a F&F figure, but it'll likely be approx. 50% of the outstanding balance. Yes, it could've been 50% of the balance before the lump sum payment also, but if you just paid it without context, Lowell may well assume you can do that again.

Payments of any amount constitute full acceptance of debt, and resets the Limitations Act clock. However, in your case, payments to your DMP would've covered this anyway, and as Lowell bought full ownership of the debt, they take on the rights Creation have. The right to sell the debt is in the T&Cs of all CCA regulated debts upon final breach of contract via default.

Help with Lowell please

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free