Full and final settlement help thread

nextavailable

What are Lowell like with F & F? They're claiming I owe £2700 on a mobile phone contract (£707 airtime debt and £2010 for early termination fee which I think is utterly ludicrous - the contract length was 24 months and apparently I was 9 months in to???).

fatbelly

nextavailable wrote: »

What are Lowell like with F & F? They're claiming I owe £2700 on a mobile phone contract (£707 airtime debt and £2010 for early termination fee which I think is utterly ludicrous - the contract length was 24 months and apparently I was 9 months in to???).

They do them - I've seen them offer to settle at everything between 10 and 90%. For a recent debt, expect them to want the upper end.

nextavailable

They claim the debt is from 2012. They're going to send me paperwork, well they have requested this from Orange. I do want to clear it, I just don't know how aggressive they are. I do think the figures they have broken down is ridiculous though. I'm quite new to this process so I'm unsure as to what I have to do.

moomoo73

Hello there! I currently have £36k in debt, managed by Stepchange. I'm currently paying off £294 a month, which is all I can afford with my current salary and outgoings. However, I will finish paying off my student loan in less than a year, and plan to put that £150 per month into savings along with any workplace bonuses or extra cash from eBaying, selling holiday etc. I can get to go toward a F+F settlement.

My current debts look like this:
CARD 1 - sold to DCA - £8700
CARD 2 - sold to DCA - £7300
CARD 3 - sold to DCA - £5700
CARD 4 - sold to DCA - £5000
CARD 5 - min payments somehow still being covered by DMP - £4100
CARD 6 - sold to DCA - £3700

What would be a sensible minimum amount to aim for in terms of a F+F offer, and do I need to go through Stepchange to do this? I don't want to self-manage at this point in time for a number of reasons, but I'm also aware that it will take ten years to clear my debts at the current rate and this is significantly affecting my mental health as well as my general finances. Would it also be worth waiting until some of these debts have been sold on more than once to DCAs? This may well happen whilst I save anyway - but would it give me a better chance of negotiating?

I can't enter into bankruptcy or any insolvency proceedings to clear the debt as I rent in the private sector and many landlords will not rent to people in these circumstances - it's not even a case of not passing the credit checks, but it's written into the contract in some private rentals. We have a place we like now, and hope to stay there for as long as we can afford, but I'm conscious that having this much debt on my plate will make it harder to look for another place to live if we go through a letting agency - and I'd like to pay off my debt as soon as I can so that I can start saving toward a flat deposit with the money I'm now paying out toward my debt as I wait for my credit file to get better.

DrWatson1

Firstly, CCA your debts. Find out which are enforceable, and which are not.

Secondly, if you want to negotiate better F&F settlements, tell stepchange you have had your hours cut and do a SOA with them showing you can only afford £5pm, per creditor.

In my opinion and experience, your creditors will be fairly satisfied to be receiving a regular payment that will see them receive 100% within 10 years. This gives them little/no incentive to offer you a significant discount to settle. If they are receiving £5pm, they may well take a different view.

Save the money you are no longer paying to each creditor, begin negotiating when your student loans run out, and good luck!

moomoo73

They are all enforceable - taken out since 2012.

So effectively I should be giving Stepchange false information? I'm not sure how that would work - I work full time in a salaried position and they know what my wages are. I don't know how I could realistically cut £295 per month down to £35.

Some of my creditors are already receiving a fraction of the monthly payment I should be making, contractually speaking, on the cards.

DrWatson1

You can always Increase your outgoings at your next budget review. To be fair, I don't lie about my income, but I do err on the higher end of my expenses. I could probably pay £200pm to Stepchange instead of the £40 I currently pay, but to what end? I'm also trying F&F settlements, and money that I save instead of paying to my creditors increases my leverage while decreasing theirs.

farmeress

In my bid to negotiate F&F's to clear my debts, I have CCA's Barclaycard (I owe them £6000). I took this credit card out in appx 1989 and have today received a reconstituted agreement... now how do i know if it is enforceable? There is no signature on the agreement and no credit limit. Any advice about how I know if it's enforceable or not?

Thanks in advance.

erskineman

Has anyone offered or been offered a F&F by Cabot?
My old Natwest debt has just been sold to Cabot.

fatbelly

erskineman wrote: »

Has anyone offered or been offered a F&F by Cabot?
My old Natwest debt has just been sold to Cabot.

I sometimes refer to an old post from whambam, as he had a huge number of debts settled and helpfully shared the results. Three were with Cabot:

Cabot - 30%
Cabot 1.8K 60%
Cabot - 44%