settlement fee, lower?

mikeadams

i recently took out a loan for 6600 with virgin.
ive made one payment on the loan of 175 and my monethly repayments have started.

but unfortunatly i have be made redundant, I rang virgin and asked for a settlement figure and they returned it back of 6625
unfortunatly all i have is 6000

i have been given redundancy money of 3,000.

i will be able to raise some extra cash by selling my car (3,000)

so in total i will be left with 6000.

if i rang virgin and explained my situation that i can pay them 6000, how do i go about asking them to accept that as a settlement figure as it is all i am able to repay them?

enjoyincubus

You didn't take out payment protection did you? That may cover you for redundancy.

I have never experienced this one personally, but I presume if you ask them they will just say "tough" and tell you you have to pay the settlement figure anyway as there is nothing they can do. However, there is no harm in asking...

mikeadams

no payment protection nope. -

ill just have to ask and see what they say :S

wish me luck.

enjoyincubus

it is worth a go, however I feel they may not agree to any reduced settlement fee until you have been through the whole debt collection process (then the motivation is to try and recover as much money as possible, so if you offered £6k of the original 6625 then they would probably bite your hand off). However I would not recommend going down that route as you would incur late payment charges, extra interest charges, impaired credit history etc etc

If you think about this though, it would make sense on the part of Virgin to take your lower settlement offer as it would save you and them the hassle of going through the whole debt collection route, as it is clear that you would not be able to pay them back. However I don't believe they would think like that!

You're best hope probably is that they waive the two month interest charge (which I presume is the £200 extra on top of what you have paid off the loan), however that still leaves you £425 short...

Fingers crossed you get the best solution for you though!