defaulted avon debt

oufc1976

My wife and I have experienced difficulty in getting credit for the last few years.

We've never really been sure why, as we felt sure we had a history of always paying any credit agreements on time, and to the terms and conditions.

This week we decided to renew our membership to credit expert, to investigate why we may be having difficulties. My report looks ok, but my wife's is not so good.

She has a "defaulted" agreement with Avon (the cosmetic people) that has a start date of 01/02/2006 and a default date of 15/04/2008. The amount 'owed' is £255.

Couple of questions:

- given that this default is nearly four years old and of a low value, is this likely to be having a significant detrimental affect on our ability to get credit? I see on the Credit Expert site itself that a defaulted agreement becomes less of an issue as it ages. Is this right?

- given that Avon have made no written contact with us, and neither us to them, will this fall off my wife's credit file on 15/04/2014 and will the debt itself become statute barred?

- if we were to contact Avon and settle the agreement in full, would this change the status to "settled" on my wife's record, or will it be permenantly marked as "default" until it drops off after 6 years?

Thanks very much for the info. This is a new experience for us both!

fermi

oufc1976 wrote: »

- given that this default is nearly four years old and of a low value, is this likely to be having a significant detrimental affect on our ability to get credit? I see on the Credit Expert site itself that a defaulted agreement becomes less of an issue as it ages. Is this right?

Yes. It will still have some effect, but over 3 years old say is less.

The exact extent of the effect depends on the creditor who is checking your report and their criteria, so it's impossible to say for certain how much. Different creditors place different emphasis, and look at things differently depending on the product applied for.

oufc1976 wrote: »

- given that Avon have made no written contact with us, and neither us to them, will this fall off my wife's credit file on 15/04/2014 and will the debt itself become statute barred?

Yes, it should fall off then.

It may also be statute barred if it's been more than 6 years since it was last paid or acknowledged.

oufc1976 wrote: »

- if we were to contact Avon and settle the agreement in full, would this change the status to "settled" on my wife's record, or will it be permenantly marked as "default" until it drops off after 6 years?

It would still be marked as defaulted, but it would be change to a settled default.

Marginally better.

oufc1976

Thanks for the swift response fermi. Appreciated

oufc1976

Sorry, just one other thing. If we did settle it, noting that the status would change to "settled default" would the 6-year clock start again?

fermi

oufc1976 wrote: »

Sorry, just one other thing. If we did settle it, noting that the status would change to "settled default" would the 6-year clock start again?

No.

The default and ALL details of the account would still be removed from the credit reports in April 2014.

oufc1976

Great, thanks again!

fracturedsun

If there was some extenuating circumstance (such as not being aware of the debt perhaps) for the default you can put a note into your credit file too explaining it if you want. I'm not sure how much difference it actually makes, and probably not worth doing unless the debt is settled, but it may help a little bit.