Ful and final settlement offers

D1lan

Hello friends,
Long time lurker on this forum, and have picked up some cracking advice from you all, thanks.
I have 4 debts (3xcredit cards and 1xbank) all of which have been passed to collection agencies and the interest frozen. Balances are roughly £6.5k, £6.7k, £1.2k and £2.5k respectively, and I have been paying them each a nominal payment (less than 0.5%) per month for the past 4 years. I could pay more, but I would sooner pay them each a lump sum providing they accept it as full and final settlement.
My questions are as follows:
1. Given that these agencies have purchased the debts for a certain percentage of the actual amounts above, what should my first offer be (percentage-wise), and what should I be prepared to go up to?
2. Can I insist that acceptance is conditional on them completely removing any record of the debt on my file?

Thanks in anticipation

bottleofred

Hi Ian and welcome to the forum,

As the debts have been passed on to credit agencies, I'd start with cheeky full and final settlement offers of 20% on each debt. I don't know how many will accept this (if any), but it's worth a try and they can always make a counter offer of say 50%, after which point you could then make another counteroffer of say 25%. As they've had the debts 4 years, I'd want to pay no more than 50%, but that's easy for me to say and they all have there different rules on how much they'll accept. However, make all offers in writing and make sure whatever fee you agree on you receive in writing with the words as a full and final settlement offer. Regarding them removing the defaults etc from your credit file, this is very unlikely to happen as partial settlements are listed on your file as exactly that. However, they'll fall off your credit file in another 2 years (6 years in total from date of default etc), so you'll probably have to be patient in that regard.

Good luck

D1lan

Briliant - thanks for such a quick reply.

bottleofred

Hi Ian,

I also forgot to mention that there are full and final settlement offer template letters on nationaldebtline.

D1lan

Again, thanks very much - I will go and lok for those now.:beer: