Would love some advice!

miss_a_

Hey everyone, I'm just new to this as I have a question I really cannot come up with an answer for.

Basically as a student I was reckless with money and did the very juvenile thing of borrowing loads for my "champagne lifestyle" (mother's words, not mine!) and not thinking about the consequences. It is only now as I'm working full-time and clearing debts one by one that I have realised the detrimental effect my behaviour has had on my credit score.

With this in mind, I got my report from Experian and strangely it wasn't half as bad as I thought. Everything on there is settled (after 3 years of saving and chipping away!) and there isn't much time left on it until the debts are taken off the file so that's a big positive. HOWEVER, I still have one debt which needs to be paid off and this was an overdraft from Lloyds TSB. The limit was £2,000 and they managed to charge me over £2,000 in overdraft fees once I had graduated. I buried my head in the sand basically and the debt got passed from one collector to another, none of whom had a credit agreement they could use to enforce anything on me.

The strange thing is- the debt isn't showing up on my credit file at all and I'd had the account since I was 17 years old! There are other things on there from Lloyds which were satisfied a couple of years ago but no record of me having the current account at all. What I'm wondering is has anyone else had a similar experience? Is it common for accounts to just not appear whatsoever on a credit file?

From my knowledge I understand that Experian is a well-known and trusted source so it's totally baffling that the Lloyds account isn't on there.

Any help would be great. I've been offered a payment of £1,365 by Credit Security Limited (currently pursuing me for payment) as full and final settlement and don't know where to go from here without this on my record.

ADVICE PLEASE?
Many thanks in advance x

DarkConvict

have you checked the equifax credit report, maybe lloyds only report to them? There is Experian (aka CallCredit), Equlifax and CallCredit.

As to the overdraft, it is a service not a credit. As such their is no credit agreement and it can be enforced in court without that paperwork as it never existed. Im surprised you managed to keep the debt collectors away for so long as they know overdrafts do not have credit agreements.

If you have the cash for a F&F offer it is worth doing it, go between 20-50% of the balance. But use templates provided her or by national debtline to ensure all the required legal terms are included so they cannot chase you for future payments.

Hannah_10

You need to check all three credit reference agencies as the information will likely have major differences one to the other. The other two are Call Credit and Experian.

nikki2804

Have you checked all 3 credit agencies? The overdraft may be showing on them unfortunately.

You say that they have no credit agreement, have you tried to unenforcability route? I'm not so clued up on this however the user Never In Doubt is. Im sure he'll be along soon.

miss_a_

Thanks everyone for your comments- I'm checking out Equifax and call credit so we'll see.

My plan is to pay the reduced amount and put an end to the whole saga as they will declare it settled in full. I don't wait to go down any unenforceability routes or anything, I think (very cheesy but...) morally I have an obligation to pay things back and learn from the MASSIVE errors I made by being so self-indulgent.

I wasn't aware that they didn't have to have a credit agreement for an overdraft which now displays how incompetent some debt collection agencies are as they panicked when I asked for one. Oh well, you learn something new every day!

Thanks again,
L x