Full and Final offers

Heffi1

Recently I sent three letters to companies with offers of full and final settlements, which I copied from the National Debtline website, all of them have replied and I am not sure what to do next.

Company 1 - Owed £749.14 Offered £250 they replied saying they would accept £561.86 and offered 6 monthly instalments.

Company 2 - Owed £892.91 Offered £250 they replied saying they would accept £446.48, no instalments offered.

Company 3 - Owed £227.82 Offered £80 they replied saying they would accept £204

Now I only have £650 saved to send to these companies and I wanted to get the figure as low as I could.

Can I counter offer against these letters or is that not really acceptable, if so how do I word the new letter.

I am a bit annoyed at Company 3 as they have messed me about from the start, first by not updating my account with a default, that I had to get the FOS to look at, so they eventually added a default and the account has dropped off my credit file, so I am not too concerned about paying them their £5 per month which is all they have recently been getting, and I said that if they did not want to accept my offer then I would have to continue with the £5 payment.

To be honest I want rid of these, I am not that concerned about a partial settlement either as it no longer exists, and also I still have other debts which I am slowly paying back, but I see this as an opportunity to reduce the amount I owe so that I can one day be debt free.

Has anyone been in this position and if so how did you resolve it.

National_Debtline

Hello there.

It's good to see that all companies have entertained the idea of reducing the amount you pay via a full & final settlement. You certainly can counter their offer - and often we have clients that obtain further reductions with a bit of negotiation. Do consider sticking to your guns and writing again to see if you can get more of the debt written-off.

Best wishes,

David @ NDL.

Heffi1

Hi David,

Many thanks for your reply, do you have any more template letters on the site that I might be able to use, I feel I need to pitch it just right so that they will be more agreeable, at least if I try and they say no I can rest easy about it.

National_Debtline

Hello again,

I think you may have already seen the only full & final settlement letter that we have on the website. Usually we would urge our clients just to amend it to meet their specific needs.

In your case you should highlight that you only have a finite amount of money available, and possibly that paying the debt via affordable monthly instalments would take a very long time indeed. If your financial statement reinforces that fact, do consider sending it along to show the creditors. Some of our clients have highlighted to their creditors that the alternative option may be one of the insolvency routes - such as bankruptcy; creditors generally would rather get *something* than nothing. Hope that makes sense!

David.

Heffi1

Hi again David,

I have reworked the F&F letter on your site to say that the money is from a relative and conditional on them accepting or the money will not be available, also it is time limited, I am not sure it will work, but I will try and see, even if one of them accepts then that helps me out, so definitely worth doing.

As is said where I live, 'shy bairns get nowt' so I am being a bit cheeky I think.

I will update once I hear back from them again, in case anyone else is in this position one day.

National_Debtline

Best of luck with it - I hope you get a good deal. As I mentioned earlier, we do often have clients who succeed in getting a decent reduction with a bit of negotiation. I'm sure it'll be a simialr situation for you!

David.

ValHaller

Heffi1 wrote: »

Company 1 - Owed £749.14 Offered £250 they replied saying they would accept £561.86 and offered 6 monthly instalments.
Discount = £187.28

Company 2 - Owed £892.91 Offered £250 they replied saying they would accept £446.48, no instalments offered.
Discount = £446.43

Company 3 - Owed £227.82 Offered £80 they replied saying they would accept £204
Discount = £23.82

Now I only have £650 saved to send to these companies and I wanted to get the figure as low as I could.

To me, fairly obvious to accept company 2. 50% might not be the best offer ever, but it is still pretty good

This will leave you with £200. If you can find £250 more over the next 6 months, you will be able to pay off company 1. If you can't quite make that, I would suggest you go with a counter offer of what you can afford over 6 months. Something like

Dear <company 1>

Thank you for your recent full and final settlement offer dated <date>. Unfortunately, I received a bigger settlement discount from another of my creditors. However, I am now able to offer £<amount> for 6 months in full and final settlement

Yours faithfully

<Heffi>

Be aware that they may want the amount for more than 6 months.

happy_bunny_2

Depends who the companies are?

As valhaller says, 2 sounds like its worth paying, then see what sense you can get out of 1.

Monkeyballs

I'd counter offer, and as bad as it sounds - I would expect company 2 in particular to drop a bit further as they're obviously keen to work with you and get rid of your debt...

It's worth shot, good luck and keep us posted!

MB