Full and Final Settlement Figures - My Experience

katic22

Hi,

I am in a lot of debt and have used this forum on and off for years and always found it to be really helpful and non judgemental.

I recently wrote to all my creditors asking them for full and final settlement figures on the money that I owed them. I did quite a lot of research before this trying to see the best way to approach this and I found it hard to get information on how much people had offered and whether this had been accepted. I appreciate everybody has a different experience with the creditors but I thought this post may help some people.

I offered all my creditors 35% of the original debt.

The following accepted:

KPR (debt for Nationwide loan and credit card)
MBNA
Metropolitan Collection Services (HSBC)

The following declined but accepted at the stated percentages (after negotiation):

Incasso (Tesco Loan) – 70%
AIC (MINT Credit Card) – 75%
Moorcroft Group (Next) – 50%
Iqor (Lloyds TSB Overdraft) – 70%

The others either declined any offer or have not got back to me.

jules1973

Hi, thanks for info. It is so useful to see what others are offering. I will be in a position to pay off most of debt within next 4-6months and am going to try and get f&f.

Out of interest, how long had you been on a reduced payment (I assume you were) before you asked, and did you use a template letter.

katic22

Hi,

I am really pleased this is helpful to someone!! I joined the CCCS September 2010 and was I think three months in arrears with each of these creditors when the plan started. I then stopped with the CCCS in December (another long story!) and the creditors have not been receiving regular payments from me since then. To be honest not all of them seem to have even noticed (I know they will soon) and others have been sold time and time again to other DCAs. The template I used was from the link below. I also attached a form which showed how I calculated what I was offering each creditor (again from link below). I found that the ones who did not accept the 35% did not respond with a counter offer until they had spoken to me as they wanted to ask me a few more questions. Good luck!!

http://www.insolvencyhelpline.co.uk/debt_factsheets/full_and_final_settlement_offers.php

DNW_2

Useful info, thanks for posting it.

I'm a long way off from F&Fs yet, but one day I hope to be in this position so it will be interesting to see how things change along the way.

jules1973

Did you have any trouble with Nationwide cc. They have been a nightmare with me. Most of the others are playing ball without too much hassle.

katic22

Hi,
I am very lucky in that my parents have loaned me the money to do this and allowed me to pay it back over so long. I will have to put the remaining debt back in a DMP though as my total debt was £40000 and I had £14000 to use and because not all my creditors accepted 35% some got paid and not others. I have been left with about £15000.
It is funny KPR (Nationwide’s in house DCA) were the first to respond and accepted my 35% offer on both my credit card and loan straight away. The total outstanding on these was approx £6000 each.

MBNA did also not quibble at all.

I have found Incasso to be the toughest. This was my highest debt and I tried so hard to bring them down but they would only go to 70% (for me anyway) I have learnt to not get too scared by the correspondence I receive but I found them to be particularly persistent which is why I used the chunk of the money my parents loaned me to pay them. They explained that any debt over £5000 they will go for a charging order on your house and also said they would only send three letters before they started to take action. I asked if this was the case even during our negotiations when a lot of the waiting was done by me and they said yes.

Mercers are dealing with my Barclaycard debt of £1000 and they offered me a settlement of only £920 so that was not great either.

All in all it took me about two months from when I wrote my first letter and I had to do a bit of chasing. Some of them did not respond to letters and then waited for me to contact them to discuss further.

Good luck to everyone doing this!