Credit Card debt abroad

Puypin

Having looked at this board for about a year now it seems the appropriate place to try and get some information PLEASE. So here goes.

A friend of mine who is now 56 years old retired and took an early pension in the UK, he has now moved to Thailand his pension being paid into a UK bank and then he draws it out via an ATM machine. He has sold all assets in the UK and has no intention of returning to live there now being married in Thai and happily settled in a village. In the UK he still has some credit card debts in all amounting to about 15,000 quid the largest single debt being 12,000. In Thailand he is not allowed to work (unlike UK where he has an extra job) so now he relies only on his civil service pension to live and is now finding it hard to keep up with the payments on the credit cards.
My question is what would the credit card companies course of action be should he just not pay the debts, and as he is no linger in UK how would the credit card companies chase the debt ?

idiot_3

there is a chance they could push for an attatchment of earnings. if they did this, then money would be deducted from the pension weekly/monthly as enforced by the court. your friend would have no control over this. it would be better for them to face the music and arrange payments, otherwise they could end up with an awful lot less to live on than they planned for.

Puypin

Attatchment of earnings I understand but how would they serve any papers in Thailand ? What I wonder is would a credit card company persue a debt that would be very difficult to collect ?

skintchick

They can serve papers anywhere in the world. Tell your friend to deal with it rather than ignore it.

johnsmith_4

Puypin wrote:

Having looked at this board for about a year now it seems the appropriate place to try and get some information PLEASE. So here goes.

A friend of mine who is now 56 years old retired and took an early pension in the UK, he has now moved to Thailand his pension being paid into a UK bank and then he draws it out via an ATM machine. He has sold all assets in the UK and has no intention of returning to live there now being married in Thai and happily settled in a village. In the UK he still has some credit card debts in all amounting to about 15,000 quid the largest single debt being 12,000. In Thailand he is not allowed to work (unlike UK where he has an extra job) so now he relies only on his civil service pension to live and is now finding it hard to keep up with the payments on the credit cards.
My question is what would the credit card companies course of action be should he just not pay the debts, and as he is no linger in UK how would the credit card companies chase the debt ?

Moral obligations aside, I would be very surprised if the credit card companies would chase such a small debt overseas, I doubt they would be able to take any money from his pension. If he was able to avoid contact with the creditors for at least 6 years then the Limitations Act 1980 would likely apply, preventing the creditor from persuing the debt after this time. If he doesn't want to be looking over his shoulder all the time then he could offer to pay 20p in the pound to clear the debt completely, they may be willing to accept something rather than nothing. If he accumulated the debt the just before he left the UK to go overseas then that may be considered as fraud.