Credit Default

carn38

Hi, Hoping someone can help me here, bit of a long story so bear with me
I was recently turned down for a loan so did a credit check on myself and found I had a default listed on my account from 2009 for £470 (wasn't there 4 months ago), seems it was an old loan I had from 2004 which has been sold on to Arrow Global.
I rang them and was told to contact their solicitors "Restons" so to clear it up I sent them an email offering £300 to clear the debt but with 2 conditions:

"If you will accept this amount then I would like to includethe following conditions as part of my settlement offer:

· My account will be showing as “paid in full”with no future liability or involvement
· All negative information related to the accountwill be removed from my credit report"
They replied by letter stating "Our client is in a position to accept £300 in settlement of this account" so I made payment, they are now telling me that the default will stay on my credit history and that it will be listed as a partial settlement :mad:
Surely they have broken the agreement as I have in writing that they would accept the payment as settlement.....Any Ideas??

Rosco32

When did you default? 2009? I doubt they ever would have honoured this agreement to remove all the data from your credit files as they are well within their rights, including marking the record as partial settlement. however that said, did the original company who you took the loan out with also report this data to the CRA's?

carn38

The default was 2009 and no the original company didn't report it to the CRA.

rizla_king

When did you actually default? Arrow often play dirty by recording false default dates to suit themselves.

Ant.Evs

If the actual default date was indeed 2004 then it shouldnt be on your report anyway. It would have dropped of in 2010.

If this is the case you may have coughed up £300 to these cowboys for nothing. :-(

carn38

I've rang the original creditors and the first default was recorded in Sept 2009 and was the last payment on a 60 month loan believe it or not......

Tixy

Unfortunately by using email and more importantly by not getting a full wording from the debt collector/solicitor to say that they agreed to your settlement offer or agreed to your terms you may struggle to successfully challenge this.

You could try writing (mail not email) to challenge this but I suspect you won't have much success, and they will likely fall back on the fact that they have to accurately report the history of the account.

sirwiggum

Tixy wrote: »

Unfortunately by using email and more importantly by not getting a full wording from the debt collector/solicitor to say that they agreed to your settlement offer or agreed to your terms you may struggle to successfully challenge this.

You could try writing (mail not email) to challenge this but I suspect you won't have much success, and they will likely fall back on the fact that they have to accurately report the history of the account.

How is the email worth less than a physical mail?

- The sender has an instant copy
- The email can be printed as hard copy evidence
- The mail headers show who it was sent to, the date and time of sending
- The response via mail shows that the company received the email

They could've sent a physical letter with the same correspondence, same response, and still be in the same situation.

carn38

My thinking exactly, email is actually easier to prove as you can get more information from headers than you can with a posted letter.

Received a very long winded email from the solicitors today basically saying that they didn't agree to the terms as it impossible to remove default once entered (which I don't believe)

CAB are ringing me on Monday

Tixy

It is possible to remove the default if they wanted to. They are choosing not to.

The fact is they didn't accept your offer. If the email had been along the lines of

"Our client agrees to your full & final settlement offer dated xdate and will accept £300 in settlement of this account."

Or "Our client agrees to accept your offer of xdate and will accept £200 in full & final settlement of the debt and confirms that the your credit file entry will be shown as fully settled and the default entry removed from your file."

then they would have been accepting the terms of your offer, they do not refer to your offer at all in the email to you.

Tixy

I don't think a posted letter would have changed the situation in this case. However my understanding is that in court emails are still not viewed in the same way as posted mail.

If the letter from the solicitor had had the correct wording/confirmation of them accepting the OPs offer then I believe there would have been better chance of forcing the alteration to the file with a written letter than with an email.

I'd also suspect that a written letter in reply from the creditor may have been worded differently to an email, although that is just a supposition.