Black Horse loan - advice/help needed!

chezzers

I'm hoping someone can give me a little advice on a problem I have with Black Horse.

I have a loan with Black Horse and until I was made redundant a year ago, made my payments no problem. They were very helpful when I was made redundant (no PPI), and agreed to me making a reduced payment until I could afford the normal monthly payments again. This has lasted for around a year, until yesterday when I recieved a letter asking me to contact them on or before the 6th of January as I had defaulted on my account. The letter was dated the 18th of December but, due to the weather and christmas post, was not recieved until yesterday. I called the customer solution centre (who have been very helpful in the past), in the hope that I could maintain or slightly increase my reduced payments, only to be told that my account had now been passed to a debt collection agency, and that this had happened on the 20th of December. As you can imagine, I was furious, as even if the postal system had been of it's usual standard, I would not have recieved this letter until after they has assigned my loan to the collection agency. My last payment to them was on the 1st of December, so as far as I can see I had not defaulted on the agreement that was in place at that time.

Can anyone give me any advice on how to handle this. I have tried calling Black Horse but no-one at the solution centre can help and I cannot contact them at St William House.

Thanks in advance!

CHR15

Short of clearing the whole debt, I doubt there is much you could have done to avoid this going to DCA in December.

Although the agreement was in place, it wouldn't be forever so they were unlikley to continually extend the agreement.

You might want to check your credit file to see what damage may have been done whilst you were effectively defaulting for the last year.

chezzers

Thanks Chris.

I appreciate what you say, and yes I was technically in default most of last year, but this was in agreement with Black Horse.

I suppose my main question is, can Black Horse pass my debt on (20/12/2010) prior to a date that they have given me to contact them (06/01/2011). As I said the debt was passed on 2 days after the date on the letter (18/12/2010), and 16 days prior to my contact us by date?

CHR15

I think you do have some recourse with that agreement in place but I think the most likely outcome from that meeting would have been to clear the lot or make a significant contribution to bring it back on course.

It's a fair guess that you wouldn't have been in a position to satisfy them or I'm sure you would have been earlier so the DCA route would have been an unavoidable outcome.

I would still challenge them about it but not get too many hopes up.