Debt, But some Bank Responsibility ??

puffty

Anyone have some advice? I have a £10,000 debt to Barclaycard, taken out as a personal card for use with my now, defunct Company. The debt has been taken over by Link Services and because of my financial position during the failing company, I negotiated a minimal monthly payment of £1.00 and frozen interest. So far so good. This arrangement occurred in 2011. I am now in the position to try and negotiate a Full and Final, but before I do, was wondering if there was any leverage in the fact that whilst I was in obvious financial hardship with my company(late or missed payments), Barclaycard continued to increase my credit limit to more than the above figure, without my requesting it. i.e. irresponsible lending ??
Anyone been in this position??

National_Debtline

Hi Puffty, welcome to MSE.

Realistically, this could be quite a difficult thing for you to argue. Because this was something that happened quite a long time ago - did you challenge the lender at the time and raise concerns about their responsible lending practice? If not, then it is quite late to be raising it now.


Another point is that whilst the lender may have increased your credit limit without you requesting it, and that could be seen as irresponsible lending, it could also be argued that you did not need to spend that money if you knew you may struggle to repay it - I am afraid it normally becomes 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. However, you can raise the matter as a complaint and escalate it to the Financial Ombudsman Service,


Laura
@natdebtline

ReadingTim

50% irresponsible lending.

And 50% irresponsible borrowing. But 2 wrongs don't make a right.

puffty

Thank you for advice, always good to have a second opinion.

andyfromotley

But you will have leverage to try and make a full and final settlement because they have probably given up hope of ever collecting on this debt. If you can scrape up the money why not ring and offer them a cheeky 20% of the balance. They probably wont go for that but may well settle for 50 -70%. There is a full and final settlement thread on here, check it out.