sofa on finance - what happens

russfred1

Hi again - another question!

Going bankrupt in the next couple of months and have a sofa on finance with dfs, 2 years left
Would the OR allow us to keep this as we can afford the 40 quid a month or would we be told to stop paying it. Thing is we haven't got the money to buy a sofa outright and with 2 young kids would have nowhere to sit.
Also if we didn't pay it would the sofa get taken back or would we keep it and the debt just fall under the BR?

Cheers again folks

Louk

Hi, I'm going BR on Monday and asked the same question when I first contacted stepchange. The sofa should be safe. It's not a hire purchase product, the money (mine was provided by Hitachi Capital) is an unsecured loan. As such it therefore gets included in you debts so you won't need to make any payments on it.

Just a word of preparation if yours was funded by Hitachi too, I stopped paying my creditors to put the money towards raising the bankruptcy fee, they have been by far and away the worst of my creditors to deal with (despite the fact I owe them the least amount of money) so many phone calls, letters etc.... In the past two days I have received 5 copies of the same letter!

Louk

Saying that when I first stopped paying them I did send a letter telling them I was experiencing financial trouble, was working with stepchange to find a solution and could they please stop any activity or charges from being put on the account for a period of time... And they did give me 30 days before contacting me again.

wharty

We were made bankrupt in June 2013 and we had bought a Sofa from DFS in December 2012 with Hitachi Capital. (6 month old sofa) We were able to keep the sofa with no issues. My experience with Hitachi was great. Within 2 months of the Bankruptcy they had marked our account as settled!

If i remember right we had put a £500 deposit down but still owed around £1500.

alastairq

wharty wrote: »

If i remember right we had put a £500 deposit down but still owed around £1500.

An excellent example of where a finance company has already built such an occurrence into their business model? So don't feel aggrieved [slightly less profit, but, oh, well?]
I also guess that, with such a large deposit, DFS have already made their whack out of the sale [and a nice one too?} which might suggest how much their goods are so over-priced?

Still, if folk wanna spend, they wanna spend? [nothing untoward intended, wharty...]