Struggling with debt? Ask a debt advisor a question

Dave2145

Thanks! Great service and very helpful information.

dizzyknickers

i don't know whether this is the right forum but my house sale isjust going through and i am going to use the equity to clear the debts which are quite big. i will have money left over thankfully and i am going to rent for a while to get my credit rating back up. i am worried that my current debt might stop me renting even though it will be cleared. has anyone got any advice?

MRRICKER79

Hi guys, after a bit of advice. I went travelling a few years go and rented my house out. I moved in with my sister a few weeks before and had some of my correspondence changed to her address. Whilst I was away my sister opened up a catalogue account using my name and d.o.b, ordered a few things and was paying back the minimum repayments. I found out about this debt when I received a phone call chasing up nearly £600. I didn't know anything about this and asked them to send a breakdown of the debt. There were items of children's clothing/games (my sister has kids, i do not)It was opened at my sisters address. I have since fallen out with my sister and she is refusing to pay this. It is appearing on my credit file as a default and I'm wanting to get a new mortgage soon and am worried how this would affect the outcome. I have been in contact with Lowell and provided copies of my visas whilst travelling(it was opened whilst I was
Away and payments were also made through a bank in the uk) and saying that this is not my debt and I won't be paying it. What else can I do?.

StepChange_James

dizzyknickers wrote: »

i don't know whether this is the right forum but my house sale isjust going through and i am going to use the equity to clear the debts which are quite big. i will have money left over thankfully and i am going to rent for a while to get my credit rating back up. i am worried that my current debt might stop me renting even though it will be cleared. has anyone got any advice?

Hi there,

If the debt is cleared then your credit history will be updated to show that there are no current balances on them, so that will make you look like less of a risk to potential landlords.

If you've got negative information on your history from regularly missing payments or getting default notices then that's likely to reduce your credit worthiness. Apart from paying the debts off there's not much that you can do about things that have happened in the past but they do matter less as they drift further into your history and then eventually drop off (your credit history contains information from the last 6 years, so events from further back don't appear).

If negative information is accurately reported then you're usually stuck with it for a while, but you can improve other things about your credit rating. This guide is very thorough and a useful place to start: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/credit-rating-credit-score#improve.

Also, if you've not looked at your credit report recently, you might want to give noddle a go: https://www.noddle.co.uk/. It's free and gives you a report based on the Call Credit system. The other credit reference agencies have similar services but they charge a fee after their free trial period, but noddle says they'll keep their service free forever.

Hope this helps.

James

StepChange_James

MRRICKER79 wrote: »

Hi guys, after a bit of advice. I went travelling a few years go and rented my house out. I moved in with my sister a few weeks before and had some of my correspondence changed to her address. Whilst I was away my sister opened up a catalogue account using my name and d.o.b, ordered a few things and was paying back the minimum repayments. I found out about this debt when I received a phone call chasing up nearly £600. I didn't know anything about this and asked them to send a breakdown of the debt. There were items of children's clothing/games (my sister has kids, i do not)It was opened at my sisters address. I have since fallen out with my sister and she is refusing to pay this. It is appearing on my credit file as a default and I'm wanting to get a new mortgage soon and am worried how this would affect the outcome. I have been in contact with Lowell and provided copies of my visas whilst travelling(it was opened whilst I was
Away and payments were also made through a bank in the uk) and saying that this is not my debt and I won't be paying it. What else can I do?.

Hello,

Thanks for posting. I've spoken to people in similar situations in the past and know that it can be very difficult to deal with.

I don't know how Lowell have responded to you sending them proof you couldn't have taken out the debt but in the past I've heard debt collectors insist on a crime number or contact form the police before they'll consider a debt to have been taken out fraudulently.

You might want to call the Police non-emergency line http://www.police.uk/101 and they should be able to tell you more about the formal route of reporting what happened.

If the debt is proven to be fraudulent then you can ask the catalogue company/debt collectors to remove negative information they've registered about this debt.

Alternatively you could put a notice of correction onto your credit file, which would basically mean you can put a short explanatory message that will pop up when you credit file is searched (though I've heard it said that not every lender looks at this information). You can read more about this here: http://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/faq/AR5.html.

Kind regards

James

Roger_Rampant

Need some advice, please. My wife had to give up work due to health problems, and we went to a "professional" debt advice service, Community Law Service in Northampton. They advised us that our top priorities should be our mortgage, of course, but also a Reading company of debt collectors that are administering a very old credit card debt, and have a charge against the property that we live in.

Because the house is solely in my name, not joint names, if I declared myself bankrupt we would lose the house. We had essentially ignored this Reading company for donkeys years because they are so obstructive and unhelpful, and they would never accept any compromise suggestions.

So for a year the Reading company agreed to Community Law Service's suggestion that they charge no interest, providing that I paid them far more than anybody else. So whereas the banks that we owed money to were being paid four, five or ten pounds per month, they were being paid £150 per month.

Anyway, after one year I offered an increased monthly payment if they would continue not to charge interest, but again they went back to their usual belligerent and unhelpful approach, stating that they would be charging interest at 11%, regardless of how much I agreed to pay them.

At that point I just went back to paying them a nominal £20 per month, and made more helpful and sympathetic creditors my top priority, because their aggressive attitude really annoys me.

Is there any way that I can sort this out through somebody more reasonable, such as the courts, perhaps? The balance is about £22,000 and there is no way that I can pay that off in one go, as I am totally uncreditworthy. 11% interest means that anything that I pay will just disappear immediately in interest, and I will never be able to reduce the sum outstanding.

Any constructive suggestions, please?

StepChange_James

Roger_Rampant wrote: »

Need some advice, please. My wife had to give up work due to health problems, and we went to a "professional" debt advice service, Community Law Service in Northampton. They advised us that our top priorities should be our mortgage, of course, but also a Reading company of debt collectors that are administering a very old credit card debt, and have a charge against the property that we live in.

Because the house is solely in my name, not joint names, if I declared myself bankrupt we would lose the house. We had essentially ignored this Reading company for donkeys years because they are so obstructive and unhelpful, and they would never accept any compromise suggestions.

So for a year the Reading company agreed to Community Law Service's suggestion that they charge no interest, providing that I paid them far more than anybody else. So whereas the banks that we owed money to were being paid four, five or ten pounds per month, they were being paid £150 per month.

Anyway, after one year I offered an increased monthly payment if they would continue not to charge interest, but again they went back to their usual belligerent and unhelpful approach, stating that they would be charging interest at 11%, regardless of how much I agreed to pay them.

At that point I just went back to paying them a nominal £20 per month, and made more helpful and sympathetic creditors my top priority, because their aggressive attitude really annoys me.

Is there any way that I can sort this out through somebody more reasonable, such as the courts, perhaps? The balance is about £22,000 and there is no way that I can pay that off in one go, as I am totally uncreditworthy. 11% interest means that anything that I pay will just disappear immediately in interest, and I will never be able to reduce the sum outstanding.

Any constructive suggestions, please?

Hi Roger,

Thanks for posting.

That level of interest is going to make it very hard to make progress with this debt. There are a few avenues that you could look to deal with this.

Given that the debt collector has responded to reasonable offers in the past you could try to do something similar and we can help. You can get debt advice from us online in under 20 minutes using our Debt Remedy service: http://www.stepchange.org/msehelp.

You'll get a personal budget which you could use as a starting point to negotiate payments and request interest be stopped on this charging order debt (as well as the other debts too).

Given your recent experiences with this company it might be a bit optimistic to expect them to start co-operating and stopping interest but it's certainly worth giving it a go.

If this doesn't work I'd suggest looking at the small print of your original agreement to see what's in there. If you've not got your copy you can request to see from the original company you took the card out with.

Once you get a copy of the agreement I'd suggest looking for anything that suggests you agree to interest being charged after a county court judgment has been obtained (I'm assuming a county court judgment was obtained first before the charging order).

If there is nothing explicitly stating this then you could make a formal complaint and see how they defend it. If you're not happy with their response you could then escalate the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Another potential option would be to look at going to court and applying for a Time Order. This is quite a complex process which involves using the courts to change the terms (including interest) of an agreement.

There are risks of incurring the costs from the other side if the application is unsuccessful and there isn't a great deal of financial assistance available to fight this sort of case. For these reasons, it's probably better to pursue the other strategies I've suggested above.

I apologise if this is all a little complicated. If you go through the Debt Remedy process you'll then be able to call through to our support team who can give you more in depth advice about all this stuff.

I hope this helps and good luck.

James

Roger_Rampant

I have a copy of the original 1998 credit card application with Beneficial Bank, not really legible but all it appears to show is Payment Protection Proposal (which I declined) and Card Protection Plan (which I also declined). They sold their UK operations to HFC. When you say to make a formal complaint, who would I be making that to, please: HFC, the court or to the Reading finance company themselves?

The budget that Community Law Service prepared for me is still applicable, as my circumstances haven't really changed.

Thanks for your help

StepChange_James

Roger_Rampant wrote: »

I have a copy of the original 1998 credit card application with Beneficial Bank, not really legible but all it appears to show is Payment Protection Proposal (which I declined) and Card Protection Plan (which I also declined). They sold their UK operations to HFC. When you say to make a formal complaint, who would I be making that to, please: HFC, the court or to the Reading finance company themselves?

The budget that Community Law Service prepared for me is still applicable, as my circumstances haven't really changed.

Thanks for your help

Hi Roger,

I'd suggest putting the complaint to the company currently dealing with the debt, the Reading Finance company. It doesn't need to be anything fancy, just a letter that makes it clear you're making a complaint and you'd like a response that lays out your issues.

If nothing has changed with your budget you could just change the dates on your old one and send them in again. If they insist on a new one you can input your old figures into the Debt Remedy tool I linked to above but the old form with a new date on should suffice.

Regards

James

Roger_Rampant

OK thanks, I'll give that a try.

I might also mention that I will consider applying for a Time Order if they are unable to be a little more constructive in their approach.