Full & Final Settlement - Is this the answer to all my prayers?

fingerscrossedfor2014

Having been tied down by debt for the past 10 years, in 2012 I entered into a Debt Management Plan with Harrington Brooks (BIG MISTAKE.) I thought that I could finally get everything under control. My credit rating was great, I'd never missed a payment - mainly because I was robbing one credit card to pay another. Since starting the DMP I have 4 defaults on my credit account. Not great.

I'm 30 now, I need to get myself out of this so I finally admitted to (my extremely disappointed) father the situation I am in - he was looking after £10k for me from inheritance and the money was intended to go towards the purchase of a house - with my credit rating, this was never going to happen so I decided to bite the bullet and tell him. Thankfully he has agreed that I can have the funds and spread them across my creditors as full and final settlements.

I've written my letters all ready to post and dropped some calls in to my creditors.

So here is the situation and what is owed:

HSBC Loan £8,529.99 (Managed by Metropolitan Collection Services)
Leaseplan Car £7,855.97
HSBC Credit Card £3,547.58
Virgin MBNA Credit Card £2,701.30 (Passed to Link Financial Outsourcing)
John Lewis Partnership Credit Card £2,039.68
Egg Loan £1,760.17 (Later passed to Moorgate)
Very Catalogue £875.98 (Passed to Cabot)

Total £27,310.67

I have worked out the percentage of total debt that I owe to each creditor and divided the £10k up based on that percentage. The offers are about 35% of the total I owe each creditor. For leverage, I've whacked in a copy of my prescriptions for ADs.

So, Metropolitan and Very/RMA Resolve/Cabot (or whoever the hell is managing this currently) have informed me that if my offers are accepted, they will be marked as "settled" with a balance of "£0" on my credit file but will not be marked as "satisfied."

Does anyone have experience of this? I guess my questions are:

1) Can I push them to mark as satisfied? Have any of you done this?

2)I already have defaults that aren't going to drop off my file for 6 years - is there any point in pushing for "Satisfied" status?

3) Will mortgage lenders take into account that the balances are £0 and are closed or will the "settled" status work against me?

Would be great to hear of other's experiences!

SRT81

I've just put in 13 F&F settlement offers to my creditors, had three accepted so far.

But I only got one to accept my initial 30% offer, and that was on a balance of about £450.

The other two have been 50% and 75%.

Your total debt is quite a lot to try and clear with £10k from what I've read on these boards, but best of luck with your offers!