Nearly Debt Free & then Lowell Financial turned up!

Topaz711

Hello everybody - my first post on this site.

I decided to become Debt Free when debts ruined my life, broke up my relationship and I lost my home 18 months ago. I was £48,000 in debt with credit cards, store cards, loans and overdrafts. It only took me 5 years to get into that state but I'm doing my best now to get out of it. With the equity I got from my partner buying me out of our home I managed (with the help of a "specialist" mortgage company) to buy a small street house to enable me to start again, I paid off almost all of my debt, cut up all but one emergency credit card and have got the debt down to £8,000. I pay everything from my salary and small pension and have several No Spend Days a month and live simply on about £100 a month. THEN out of the blue I was contacted by Lowell Finance who demanded £760 from me for a debt which they said they had bought from CompuCredit. I had no idea what this was for and finally after a lot of searching realised that a small debt to a credit card had been overlooked when I paid everyone else off. The debt outstanding at the time was for £349 and I had contacted them to offer a reduced full and final payment. They said they would accept £250 and I added it to a list of others to pay off. Unfortunately I forgot to send it and now Lowell are demanding £760! I have written to them demanding they justify this hike in the amount owed but so far have not received a response, except several telephone calls asking for payment and offering me a settlement figure of £550!

I am devastated by this - I know its my fault and I should have paid it at the time but even a small increase in payments at the moment is going to hit me hard. How can they possibly justify this? And has anyone else had this experience?

By the way I am in the process of asking for my bank charges back and hope to be £3000 better off when it does get sorted out - all on hold at the moment - and all will be used to reduce my debt!

Ames

Did you have any credit card charges? That's not on hold like the bank ones, so you can get onto that straight away. I'm not sure what to do about the Lowell's debt, if you post an SOA (statement of affairs, there's a sticky at the top of the forum page) then people will have a clearer idea of where you're at.

And well done for getting your debt down so much, it must be a great feeling!

McKneff

when was the debt for. If it was over 6 years it would have been statute barred. No debt can be chased after 6 years. Mind you i dont know whether you have blown it seeing as you have offered to pay it.

LunarTic

You may be interested to read the following guidelines from the Office of Fair Trading by which debt collection agencies must abide: http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/consumer_credit/oft664.pdf

I would recommend reading this document so you can clarify if this case has met all relevant guidelines.

Further information is available here, http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/legal/cca/debt-collection

LunarTic

anniehanlon wrote: »

when was the debt for. If it was over 6 years it would have been statute barred. No debt can be chased after 6 years. Mind you i dont know whether you have blown it seeing as you have offered to pay it.

I believe that the statute barred clock gets reset only if you have acknowledged the debt in writing, or made any payment, within the last 6 years. In which case, any telephone contact with the debt collection agency should not apply.