Advice please on who to f&f first?

Twinkles08

Hello,I have a dmp which I set up myself with the help of cab 5 yrs ago.I have slowly beaten the debt down as we are on a low income so it is slow going.I have settled a few debts with full and finals.Yay!
My question is how much should I offer the debt company who deals with my loan?The balance is 1899.00.I was wondering if I saved up a thousand pounds that wd be enough to pay them off?If I can clear this debt it will make a huge difference to our dfd.
also I owe halifax credit card via a debt company 429.00.Do you think offering 140.00 is too cheeky?TIA

Tixy

Any debt with a third party debt collector, people suggest starting at maybe 25% of the balance, may need to work up to 33-50%.

A lot of people on here suggest not to pay more than 50% to any external DCA.

You may need to hold firm if you put in a low offer, make them sweat a bit, don't give in and increase too easily.

Twinkles08

Thanks Tixy,so lowest they would poss accept based on my figures is 475.00 for the loan and 105.00 for the credit card?The loan is with robinson and way as is the credit card.Even if they accepted 50% I wd be overjoyed.

Tixy

£105 would certainly be a good starting point. Robinson maybe paid only 10% or so for your debt, so if they get that from you they are still in profit. Exactly what deal they will accept from you depends on how quickly you are paying off the debt at the moment (so how long it will take for them to recover the amount). It could also depend on which advisor looks at your offer and what the date is (seriously!, well what date of the month you would be making the payment - sometimes they accept lower offers at a month or quarter to end as they want to meet their targets/bonuses).

Start at 25% and if you have to pay a bit more you'll still be pleased. Have you seen the factsheet and template letter on national debtline? http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/england_wales/factsheet.php?page=24_full_and_final_settlement_offers
The only change I'd recommend to the template letter is to give them a deadline to accept your offer (put a date maybe 2 weeks after you date your letter).

Good luck