Remove Viking/Santander default

Semantic

Hi all,

I had a spot of bother last year when I lost my job and went two months behind on my Santander credit card. They passed me onto Viking who asked for the full amount, so I came to an arrangement to freeze interest and pay the full amount over 12 months as I received a settlement payment from my previous work.

I now have a great job, but looking at my credit score on checkmyfile recently I saw they'd defaulted me last year! I did not receive a letter of default and when I called them they told me that Santander always defaults credit cards before passing them over to Viking.

Now, I've paid down a huge amount of debt in the last year (despite a prolonged period of unemployment) and am nearly debt free :j But with this default I won't be able to get credit for 5 years

Is there any way to get this default removed? Should I stop paying (4 months left, £300) and send them a letter saying I will either pay off the full amount in exchange for the default being removed or make no further payments?

Any other ideas?