debt collectors whats the best way out?

dmd12577

what are my rights when it comes to debts with online catalogues when I have not signed any agreements with them. Both me and my partner are having financial difficulties at the moment and have buried our heads in the sand for a while now and not paid anything since we have not been able to afford to repay apart from priority debts like mortage ect..finally we have come out and faced them head on, but I want to know if there is any way of paying back the full amounts owed. We have quite a few threatening letters from most of the debt collectors threatening court action if payment isnt made in full by a certain date etc or visits by reps wanting to know our financial situation.
Also some advice on my credit card I took out over 5 years ago for a 500 pound limit. I made all minimum payments ontime and the limit went up without me asking for more or agreeing to this. I also made payment protection till a mix up halifax cancelled this on me which I found out and got in touch and was told I had asked for it to be cancelled. After the company went through phone records they reinstated this again for me. I then lost my job and still made payments as it wasnt all that high amount at the time, it was only when my partner lost his job too and I had a baby we began to fall behind with alot of payments, he then got a job but i wanted to call in my protection payments that I had been paying for 5 years or so, to which I got told the protection wasnt available because i had missed a payment and they next payment wasnt enough to cover the minimum payments on the card. Now the card stands at 2,335 or somehwere in that region which has gained interest since the card was cancelled. I had explained my circumstances but they will not freeze it and its still going up. I simply cant keep up with more than 12 creditors on my back now mainly catalogues or my partners loans and cards plus we have a threat of redundancy over our heads again and will find out probably the 2 week in august what our future will hold when it comes to work. I just want to know where we stand when it comes to debt collectors with catalogues and if i have a claim for ppi maybe? Or if i can possibly ask for the credit card debt to be written off to the amount of 500 that it was originally signed for?