Cannot pay loan in Australia

redrobin33

Hello
My husband and I took a loan out with Evergreen Finance in Australia while we were living there. Unfortunately his mother was taken ill with cancer and we returned to live in the UK very suddenly, and although we continued the payments for 6 months or so when we came back, we have now run out of money.
Evergreen have contacted us this week to say we didn't make our last payment and that they will contact their UK collection agents if we don't get in contact with them.
Please can you let me know where we stand and the consequences if we cannot pay.
Thank you

DCFC79

You will have the collection agents after you, why can you not make the last payment ? Is the last payment last as in the final 1 ?

HappyMJ

redrobin33 wrote: »

Hello
My husband and I took a loan out with Evergreen Finance in Australia while we were living there. Unfortunately his mother was taken ill with cancer and we returned to live in the UK very suddenly, and although we continued the payments for 6 months or so when we came back, we have now run out of money.
Evergreen have contacted us this week to say we didn't make our last payment and that they will contact their UK collection agents if we don't get in contact with them.
Please can you let me know where we stand and the consequences if we cannot pay.
Thank you

Consequences are that they may take court action against you and it will affect your ability to get credit if they get a judgment and you fail to make the payment.

redrobin33

Sorry I meant the last payment that was due, i.e. January. There is about AUS8k left on it. So they CAN chase us here? Id read elsewhere online that there is nothing they can do but obviously after finding this forum it sounds very obvious that they can!

DCFC79

redrobin33 wrote: »

Sorry I meant the last payment that was due, i.e. January. There is about AUS8k left on it. So they CAN chase us here? Id read elsewhere online that there is nothing they can do but obviously after finding this forum it sounds very obvious that they can!

Depends if the loan company has collection agents who work in the respective country and in this case it looks like they do, maybe some dont.

redrobin33

Ok thank you - so if they are saying they have, they probably have ..... do you know if its worth trying to come to some compromise, i.e. can we pay less per month?

DCFC79

redrobin33 wrote: »

Ok thank you - so if they are saying they have, they probably have ..... do you know if its worth trying to come to some compromise, i.e. can we pay less per month?

I cant answer the question directly, all I can say is to ask them, depends how much your wanting to compromise by.

Clive_Woody

redrobin33 wrote: »

Ok thank you - so if they are saying they have, they probably have ..... do you know if its worth trying to come to some compromise, i.e. can we pay less per month?

It is certainly worth trying to make them an offer of reduced payment, do it in writing (recorded delivery) in case this does end up in court and at least you can demonstrate that you tried to deal with this debt and didn't just bury your head in the sand and ignore them.

Ignoring them will most likely involve extra charges, late fees, recovery fees etc which will just be added to the original debt.

Contact one of the debt charities such as Stepchange who will be able to offer free advice on dealing with this.

redrobin33

Thanks all for your help with this

Thrugelmir

Debt collection is now an international business. Surprisingly easy to track people as well in this technological world. Most business contracts are based on English Contract law.

iolanthe07

I'm sure this doesn't apply to you, OP, but lots of people think they can dodge their debts by going abroad. This is increasingly hard to do with first world countries as international debt collection becomes more sophisticated.