full and final settlement

living_to_regret_it

hello all

i have recently sold my house and been left with £30000 available cash to pay off my creditors. My debt total is £53000 approx over 8 creditors of varying amounts. i currently have a dmp set up at £102 per week through payplan. this is the third year it has been in place

my case worker has contacted my creditors on my behalf but has come back and said most want the full amount with the remaining ones only willing to accept 80%.

obviously this means i would not be able to pay off the debts in full but what i want more than anything is to be debt free and start afresh (my marriage has broken up because of my debts)

can anyone give me any advice whatsoever and would it help, do you think, if i contacted my creditors myself?

thanks in advance

Julie

MusicalLawyer

You would probably be able to come to a better settlement offer if you were to write to the creditors yourself, especially if it has gone to a Debt Collection Agency.

geeka

Hi i'm sure there is some more information, have they gone to third party debt collection agencies yet? or are they in house? have you defaulted? I would assume so if its 3 years. I will have a look on the site and try and find some guidence as it has been posted before.

geeka

there is some good guidence on this thread
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/115430

if you can get the money to be paid by a family member saying its a one off amount you have been offered and they are with 3rd party debt collectors you could start at 25%. There are standard letters you can send (in the link above).

I'm sure someone else will be along to add to this!

geeka

Just found this courtesy of an post i made abit ago. Thanks to original poster

"well here is a ROUGH guide on what companies have been known to accept,

please remember some people get lower amounts other have to pay much more than this,

these things depend on so many variables including what side of the bed the person in the company got out off

anyways rough guide is below

Debt still with original creditor NO default = 90% or more
Debt with original creditor but with a default = 75% or more
Debt with 'in house' debt collectors of the original creditor = 60% or more
Debt with external debt collector however still property of original credit = 40% or more
Debt owned(purchased) by external debt collectors = 25% or more "

vax2002

If they get wind of the lump sum they will dash for CCJ to grab as big a share as possible before the others.

living_to_regret_it

thankyou all for your advice

some are still with original lenders, others are with debt collectors (but unsure if in-house or separate)

Apex £12000 (barclaycard)
Arrow Global £11223 (mbna)
Moorcroft £5700 (hbos)
NCO £8977 Egg, £1554 American express

still with original:

Barclays £4593 & £1990
Creation £4600

i have paid regularly for just under 3 years as a dmp

i have told payplan that the money is an offer from my dad (as suggested by posters on here), she has made the offer but came back saying 80 - 100 % for majority of the creditors

thankyou again for advice

pure_dead_dopey

write to your creditors yourself and open a dialogue, start offering at around 20% and bargain with them, Payplan do DMPs, this is your finances and you have to fight hard to get the best deal, and the best person to do the fighting is you.
keep everything in writing, make sure you use a foolproof letter and ask for a full and final settlement, if they say no, back off for a couple of months. Always helps to to it so they get the letter in the middle of the month, they have collection targets to meet, and sometimes to meet that target, they'll agree a lesser amount.

living_to_regret_it

pure_dead_dopey wrote: »

write to your creditors yourself and open a dialogue, start offering at around 20% and bargain with them, Payplan do DMPs, this is your finances and you have to fight hard to get the best deal, and the best person to do the fighting is you.
keep everything in writing, make sure you use a foolproof letter and ask for a full and final settlement, if they say no, back off for a couple of months. Always helps to to it so they get the letter in the middle of the month, they have collection targets to meet, and sometimes to meet that target, they'll agree a lesser amount.

thank you so much for your advice, i was beginning to stress again but now i know there is a chance, thank you!

bombini

You could also try phoning in the last week of the month. Sometimes the call operators can get a better deal on F&F especially if they have targets as mentioned above.

sickasachip13

Hi,

Go in low, don't let them get a tiny sniff of what you do have available...this is the process I went through recently:

"I settled with Cap One and Ikea (Ikano finance) for around 40% of what was owed. These weren't huge debts and I am on a DMP so I was happy to go forward on that amount.

The process I undertook:
I phoned them to see if, hypothetically, they were open to a F&F offer and both said they were.
I mentioned it to CCCS.
I wrote, using the template letter from the National Debtline website, adding in a few lines about being on a DMP and it being years before these debts would be paid on the DMP.
They wrote back, each looking for around 60% of the debt.
We wrote back to them with a counter offer.
They wrote back. I rang National Debtline and read the letters down the phone to them to ensure all the bases were covered in the wording.
I contacted CCCS to inform them that the F&Fs were going ahead, this was fine with them.
Sent a cheque and covering letter back to creditors.
Reduced to £0 the amount owing to these two on the CCCS file.

Job done. Stress free, just a bit of to-ing and fro-ing.
SAAC "