Help please! Advice about a debt collection agency and their solicitors!

fefesaver

Hi. My partner currently has approximately £160,000 in unsecured debts due to the failure of a business. We both work and are determined to try to repay the debts as much as possible rather than to consider bankruptcy (although it has crossed our minds quite a few times!!).

We are slowly managing to pay off the debts but one of them is an old credit card debt owed to HSBC. There is about £3,200 owed. This is made up mainly of charges and interest which were added to the card when it was not paid by HSBC. The matter was being dealt with by MCS who have passed it on to D & G solicitors (not sure why?).

We are presently paying about £50 per month but have offered a full and final settlement. The solicitors seem extremely unwilling to accept anything less than the full amount and, after much negotiation, say they are only prepared to reduce it by £300. Does anyone have any advice on how they negotiated reduced settlements or have any experience of dealing with these solicitors? Any help would be much appreciated!!

file_wizzard

D&G are HSBC ! hence why they are trying to extract as much as possible from you, pay what you can afford and make clear that the amount offered has been calculated taking into out all of your other commitments. If you feel you would like to include an I&E ( income and expenditure) form to prove th then do so, however you are under no obligation to do this if you do not wish too.

D&G are not stupid, they know that if you can demonstrate that what you are offering is a true representation of your ability to re-pay then there is little else they can do about it.

fefesaver

Thank you for this. I have already sent them a list of our income and expenditure which shows we cannot afford more than we are paying a month!! The full and final offer money has come from the sale of a car and we hoped to use it to clear one debt totally. They just do not seem willing to neogiate and would rather wait 5 years for the debt to be paid in full.

I had wondered whether D & G were HSBC but they kept referring to 'their client' and having to take instructions from them so I was fooled!!

rog2

fefesaver wrote:

Thank you for this. I have already sent them a list of our income and expenditure which shows we cannot afford more than we are paying a month!! The full and final offer money has come from the sale of a car and we hoped to use it to clear one debt totally. They just do not seem willing to neogiate and would rather wait 5 years for the debt to be paid in full.

I had wondered whether D & G were HSBC but they kept referring to 'their client' and having to take instructions from them so I was fooled!!

Surely this is misleading - I am having a similar situation with Black Horse. I have received letters from a company called Nationwide Collection services, but they use suspiciously similar stationary, 0870 phone numbers and the SAME return address as BH on their envelopes. They refer to BH as 'their client' I am in written contact with BH. Could this be a 'legal?' way of avoiding my requests to BH?

file_wizzard

In real terms the letters are both telling the truth , when the solicitors refer to “their client” they are not actually lying, just stretching the truth a little.

The solicitors / DCA’s in question are of course a business in their own right, however when push comes to shove they sit under the same corporate umbrella as the “client” as thier in house solicitors / collection agent.

They just like to make themselves sound important and external to put the frighteners onto people.

Similar examples are the Bank of Scotland and their subsidiary businesses who will always use Blair Oliver & Scott ( note the same initials !) as their first line recovery option.

fefesaver

Does anyone have any experience of negotiating with these in-house firms or with D & G Solicitors in particular?

Thanks.

file_wizzard

fefesaver wrote:

Does anyone have any experience of negotiating with these in-house firms or with D & G Solicitors in particular?

Thanks.

Depending on the age of the debt and if any payments have been recently made D&G (amongst others) will normally accept 70% of outstanding value, start at 60% and go from there