Credit Reports, Defaults, Debts passed to agencies, queries!

CrispyUK

Evening!

I've offered to help a friend who's got himself into a bit of a mess and been hiding from it for a while, we've got the whole day on Sunday planned to assess his situation, draw up a proper budget and look at putting together a plan of the best way to start paying off the debts.

I think we're in problem debt rather than crisis territory, estimating the debts to be approx a third of annual take-home salary. He's struggling with rent this month but I believe this is short-term cashflow problem that we can find a solution for, rather than an on-going crisis situation between income/outgoings.

Getting to the point, we've grabbed a £2 Equifax report online tonight in preparation, having never been in a default situation before myself - some of how it works confuses me and I'm wondering if anyone can offer some clues as to interpreting the following:

Eon UK (Utilities) - one of these accounts is showing the following history which doesn't seem to make sense...
Aug 12 - 6 payments late
Sep 12 - 4 payments late
Oct 12 - 5 payments late
Nov 12 - up to date
Dec 12 - up to date
Jan 13 - 6 payments late
The flow of that doesn't look right to me! Also the account shows a current balance, plus a larger default/delinquent balance - is it likely that the total owed is the total of these two figures? (As this is a current/active account I'm hoping we'll find a good paper trail on Sunday for this one to help decipher!)

LloydsTSB (current account) - this is the biggest debt, overdraft and associated charges. Status wise it has
Jan 12 - 1 payment late
Feb 12 - defaulted account
Aug 12 - settled
The settled entry is strange, but could this be the result of the debt being sold on to a collection agency? Do some collection agencies not report the debts they're pursuing onto the credit agencies?
Also with this one, and considering the above - is it possible / worth trying to reclaim the bank charges on this account?

There's also a pair of Mobile contract accounts, Orange and Arrow Global (who I understand to be a collection agency). The Orange account shows a history of up-to-date, then late payments and finally the default in Nov 2011. The Arrow account has a single defaulted history in Nov 2011. Both accounts show the same start date, same balance, same Defaulted status. Should the Orange account not have been marked as Settled if/when the debt was passed to Arrow?

Any help, thoughts, suggestions greatly appreciated

Tixy

Hi

With the Eon debt its likely that the default balance is the amount of the original default, but that some money has been paid towards it and so now the current balance is reduced. It should only be the current balance that is owed now.
The payment history does look odd though, almost as though Nov & Dec are incorrectly reports. As you say hopefully you'll make sense of it from the paperwork.

Current account - yes sometimes creditors do show an account as settled when its sold to a debt collector, and then if the debt collector doesn't report to that agency (or any of the credit ref agencies) then they never remove their entry.
Might be worth getting his experian and or noddle reports as well to see if its reported on there.
Presumably you are fairly certain its not been paid off by him? E.g had his wages paid in to it and they used it all to repay the overdraft. Hopefully he'll have some paperwork from a debt collector.

Regarding the bank charges - you'd need to look in to the financial hardship guidance to see if he is likely to have a chance.

Re orange and arrow, both should not be showing. Arrow should only put on an entry and default if Orange remove theirs first. He should write to arrow and copy in orange stating that he has noticed they have added a duplicate entry even though the Orange entry remains, and that he requires them to remove their entry from his credit file.

Good luck

CrispyUK

Thanks Tixy,

Yeah hopefully the Eon debt will become clearer at the weekend when we tackle the paperwork.

The LloydsTSB account definitely hasn't be paid off and I understand he is getting letters about this one so perhaps just not being reported to the agencies (or at least not Equifax).

Unfortunately he tends to give all his letters / payslips / etc to his partner/ex-partner (complicated!) and leave her to manage them. Given that she's currently in the moratorium period of a Debt Relief Order, perhaps not the best person to be doing it for him?!

I'm assured absolutely everything has been kept so fingers crossed it will all start making more sense on Sunday and we can start sorting it out and work towards getting him back on track