My update on F&F settlements

Weggy

Settled three more accounts yesterday, all with Intrum Justitia.

Here's the details:

Natwest: Owed 10268.84. Settled 3500.00. A 34% settlement.
Natwest: Owed 1220.00. Settled 610.00. A 50% settlement.
Capital Bank: Owed 5482.06. Settled 3284. A 60% settlement.

Others already settled are:

Link Financial (MBNA) Owed 2790.85. Settled 1532.21. A 55% settlement.
CCS (Lloyds) Owed 2884.17. Settled 1400.00. A 49% settlement.
Buch Clark (Natwest) Owed 181.09. Settled 108.66. A 60% settlement.

Just two left now, both Barclaycard, and both with 1st Credit who, I have to say, are being real a***holes compared to the rest of them.

Anyhow, the purpose of this post is to show those of you currently negotiating F&F's that it can be done, and you can get down to a decent settlement and get those debts cleared. Good luck!

System

Well done, that's really good to hear!

Any tips for others in how you haggled with them?

Weggy

Just patience mostly. Dont accept their first offer and keep phoning them asking if a better offer is available yet.

Intrum also stated they could do more as the accounts were so old (they'd been with Intrum for nearly 5 years)

delaney22

Thats great weggy well done, How did you initially state the offer? by telephone or letter. I have a written letter here which I am going to post this week offering approx 40% of a loan with Lloyds.. do you think this is a good place to start?

Thanks

jamie304

Can I ask, when offering an amount in full and final settlement, did you give details of your finances, eg where the lump sum came from and how much you were allocating to each creditor?

mitcho_uk

How did you go about making a full and final offer. Did you start off at the bare minimum say 10% of what you owe or did you start off with something more realistic?

Did you reduce your monthly payments first?

Weggy

Sorry for the delay in responding.

I initially offered 25% on all debts, having already requested full and final figures from all the debtors (their offers ranged from 50% through to 90%). This offer was refused by all of them, but then the negotiating started. Just talk to them really. Most of sympathetic and are just as keen to settle the account as you are.

I told all of them that I had been offered a loan by a relative, and that these funds would not be available for very long. At no point did I tell them what any other DCA was getting...... or what was owed to anyone else.

The monthly payments had been reduced for about the last 5 years.

Most of them were fairly stubborn but stick with it. Since getting the funds together, i've managed to settle all the accounts within 3 months.

Good luck!

Thefunkygibbons

Well done.

I guess most of the balance was interest and charges so the banks did not lose big time anyway

Weggy

Thankfully not. Interest was frozen very early on - almost 5 years ago