westcot/moorcroft debt

jacen_cartwright

Hi all, this is my first post so bear with me.

I hope that one of you will be able to help, the problem i have is that i recently lent 4000 off a family member to clear my debts totaling around 7500. I planned to offer all the creditors part payments as settlement of the debt. All the creditors we very plased to accept my offers as they had no contact or money from me for nearly 3 years apart from Westcot and Moorcroft, these 2 companys are each dealing with a lloyds tsb loan and lloyds tsb credit card respectively.
The proble i have had with these companies is that i had a letter through the door about 6 months ago from a different firm called 'credit security ltd' which offered me a 70% discount on each of the debts. Unfortnatly that agency when i called them were no longer dealing with the account and passed me back to lloyds, who then put me on to west and moor. I asked each of these to honour the original settlement offer, but they refused saying that they are only authorised to discount upto 30%. I asked them why as it had already been offered to me so it must of been approved by lloyds. So i decidee to ring lloyds collection team in... India??? This is where it gets confusing as they have stated that they are no longer dealing with these debts and it is up to the collection agency to decide what to discount.
Upon calling moor/west back they both said to me that they are not authorised by lloyds to discount that much and need to speak to lloyds themselves, i told them that lloyds told me that they are no longer dealing with the debt an its up to you but they were adamant that they could not authorise it and it will take a week to get any kind of decision.
So this is my problem after 4 phone calls to each company and lloyds they are both saying that they are not responsible for authorising it.
Is there anything i can do to sort this out and get them to agree to the original settlement?

Thanks for any help.
W

Tixy

Hi

When reduced settlement offers are sent out they are usually for a very short period and they are certainly not obliged to honour them in the future.

If you have only made phone calls so far then I would suggest you send the 2 DCAs a reduced F&F settlement offer using a template like the one on this link - http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/england_wales/factsheet.php?page=24_full_and_final_settlement_offers
They don't have to accept but they may well choose to do so. As detailed in the link when doing reduced settlements it is very important to get written confirmation from the creditor/DCA before you pay that the payment will be accepted in full & final settlement, that you credit file will be updated and that nobody will chase you further for this debt. If they won't agree to it then I would just save up until you can afford to offer a slightly higher percentage and then try again.

If you don't have such a letter then if a new DCA decides to chase you 5years down the line for the remaining debt you'll have no proof of the deal. There have been a few cases of this happening recently and people ending up paying the rest of the debt off years later to avoid court action. If you didn't get something in writing for the other debts I would contact them asap and ask for something retrospectively such as a letter that confirms the debt is now settled.