catalogue debt - don't know where to turn

angel85

Thank you all for replying.
I have written another letter this evening so will send it off tomorrow. I'll also give step change a call after work.

Rooster01

angel85 wrote: »

Hi,
I currently owe a catalogue company £6000. I was managing the monthly payments just fine until the buy now pay later ended and the minimum payment jumped to over £300 a month!
I immediately contacted them in writing explaining my financial position but this got me nowhere. I am receiving letters every 2 weeks from different departments and phone calls constantly. I advised that until my financial situation improved I could only offer a payment of £10 a month which they did not accept but I have continued to pay since this started in February 2014. In september they wrote and offered 2 payments (October and November) of £10 with interest frozen to allow me time to "fix things" . Unfortunately I did not win the lottery and my situation has not changed.
I have a young child and work full time.
In every letter I have written to them I have asked for them to freeze interest and charges to stop my debt increasing. I am not trying to run away from this, it is my debt and I have to pay it.
I do have other debts, 2 loans with my bank and a credit card, all of which I am able to pay.
I do not want to do an iva or similar as I have a good relationship with all other creditor's and am able to make my payments with them.
I have asked also in my last few letters for a full and final advising I may be able to aquire funds from family to pay this. They refused.
I have just received a default notice from their in house collections department demanding payment or they will take further action. What does this mean?
I do not know what to do next. I have to reply to them by 29th December.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You.

I have catalogue debt and in the same boat as yourself. Was managing other debts but just couldn't afford the minimum payments from both Very and Littlewoods. I decided enough was enough and got in contact with Stepchange who were fab, did not judge me once. Prior to contacting Stepchange Shop direct were very understanding to the point of convincing me Stepchange was the right decision to make. They have since past both my accounts over to RMA Recoveries who have been extremely supportive and informed me whatever Stepchange offer they will accept regardless of how small the amount is. As long as they receive payment they won't contact me and all contact will be made only with Stepchange. As for my other creditors the main high street banks have been great but still waiting for Quickquid, Sunny and Springcoin which I'm expecting to be problematic. I never want to deal with payday loans ever again....

harveybobbles

OP - the only people allowed to knock on your door are a Copper, a postal/courier worker and someone lost looking for directions.

The account will get passed to a debt company who will send out scary looking letters.

Send that letter off and wait for them to reply.

Stay off the phone and have a good Christmas

katy_ann

I agree with the above, when I had catalogue debt I sent the above letter and whilst they didn't "accept" the offer they still took it each month and I carried on paying that until the debt was clear

sourcrates

Hi,
You say you've had the account for years, how many years exactly ?
Is it a shop direct account catalogue by any chance ?

You have to have a little knowledge of the debt collection process here, what will most likely happen, is they will sell your account on to a DCA (debt collection agency), most likely to Lowell, who pick up a lot of these delinquent accounts.

There is no need to panic here, this is actually good news for you.
A DCA will be much more flexible on monthly payments than the cat company will be.

You can offer them the £10 per month, they may at first refuse, but remember, these are all just moves in the dance, eventually they will accept your tenner, most unlikley a doorstep fetish man will ever turn up, if they do, simply ignore, or tell them to go away, as you will only deal with them in writing.

It pays to know how the system works, i suggest you Google :

debt collection,

and gain some knowledge.

angel85

Hi all. I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas.
Well I sent yet another letter off to the catalogue company as advised above by harveybobbles.
I mentioned in it that I was receiving letters from 3 different departments, could they advise who I should be addressing my correspondence too.
I received a reply today saying they could not locate the letters I had mentioned receiving and could only assume this meant that NDR could not accept my offer and then went on to say I should contact step change.
That's it! They didn't acknowledge or mention anything I had put into the letter.
What should I do next?
I wad going to photocopy every letter I had received from them including each of my replys and send them off?
Thanks again.

sourcrates

angel85 wrote: »

What should I do next?
I wad going to photocopy every letter I had received from them including each of my replys and send them off?
Thanks again.

The assumption here then, is that they wont accept the £1 a month.
You should start paying the £1 anyway, you will then find the account will get sold on, most likely to Lowell Group, or some such DCA, then the dance will start all over again.
Just stick to your guns, they cant have what you haven't got, stepchange would advise a similar course of action, you will find the debt gets passed around quiet a bit, this is normal when the DCA is not getting the monthly amount they require, it will just go round in circles for quiet a while I would say.

chanz4

The only thing I can see them jumping on, is that all creditors are not been treated fairly.

patman99

NDR are Shop Direct's own in-house DCA and, as the FCA are not happy with such arrangements, they are busy handing-back all the defaulted accounts to S/D.
This is why NDR have yet to get invovled.

I have a cataloge customer who is being difficult when it comes to payment and SD haven't passed-on this debt (yet),

StressedSteph

Hi

I have struggled with Littlewoods catalogue debt this year also. No amount of letters made them agree with the amount I said I could pay, so i just continued paying them what I could afford and ignored any letters or phone calls.

This has been going on for 12 months now and they haven't passed my debt onto anyone.

I hoped that as long as they received something every month then they kind of knew I intended to eventually pay it back.

Does you phone show you the number that is calling?. Mine does and I just make a habit of not answering any call that isn't a local number.

They are pretty much a toothless dog, so don't stress, pay back what you can each month and as soon as you kill off other debts then up the amount you pay to the catalogue.

You will get there eventually xxxx