Full & Final advise Required with Link Financial

Want2BeDebtFree

Hi Guys;

First post on this site, so here goes --

So I currently owe £4,000.00 to LINK Financial. I have been paying it off at £67 per month for several years now and got it down to £4,000.00 -- and am with the Step Change Charity, (altogether I owe 34K over 8 different DCA's)...

Anyway, recently I luckily got £17.5 thousand from mis-sold PPI. So that has boosted me into kicking some !!! with regards to these 8 DCA's.. I sent letters to ALL of them asking for the original contracts, and so far only 4 of them have managed to supply me with a contract.

Link have written to me saying the debt is currently UNENFORCEABLE.. I wrote to them in December; and here we are now in April, and they still have not found the original contract (from the early 2000's) buy hey, maybe they will find it at a later date??? Who knows???

So I then offered them a Full & Final Settlement of £1,100.00 but they have come back with an F&F of £2 thousand, which is 50% of what is left of the debt...

Seeing as they do not have the contract -- and the debt is unenforceable, I don't know whether to accept (and pay them the 50% and just be done with it), or try to beat them down further (so i can pay more to the DCA's who DO HAVE the contracts) ???? .

By the way; the reason I am asking this is because the 4 DCA's who HAVE found the original paperwork/contracts are not going to be quite so generous with me at offering 50% you see -- so I'm trying to KEEP as much of the £17.5K to pay THEM off as soon as possible... In other words the 4 who DO NOT have the paperwork (as per LINK Financial) I am thinking to myself "Why should I give them 50% when they have no ammunition against me??" I even have it in writing that they cannot take any court action against me...

Whereas at the same time -- I have a conscience and just WANT to be debt free so i can begin saving, and having nice holidays etc...

sourcrates

Hi,

Rule of thumb, this is purely business, leave your conscience outside, if a creditor is unable to comply with your CCA request, and cannot provide anything remotely resembling a credit agreement, then that agreement cannot be enforced through the courts.

Concentrate on the ones that are enforceable, leave the other ones alone, you will just be wasting 2k if you pay Link, and they will be laughing all the way to the bank.

Unenforceable means just that.

Want2BeDebtFree

Yes; I am very tempted to just STOP paying the 4 DCA's who have been unable to find the contracts/paperwork, but what would that mean?? The "Statute Barred" process surely would never end, because every time LINK sent me another letter the Statute Barred (six years) would start afresh all over again would't it??...

sourcrates

Want2BeDebtFree wrote: »

Yes; I am very tempted to just STOP paying the 4 DCA's who have been unable to find the contracts/paperwork, but what would that mean?? The "Statute Barred" process surely would never end, because every time LINK sent me another letter the Statute Barred (six years) would start afresh all over again would't it??...

No, not at all, the clock runs from the date of your last payment or written acknowledgement of the debt, they can write to you as much as they like, it will have no effect on the debts statute barred status.

Usually, once you have told them you are not paying, they just go quite and concentrate on someone else, or they may sell on the debt, and you will have to remind the debts new owner of its unenforceable status, eventually the debt will go statute barred, and drop off your file.

Want2BeDebtFree

Thanks SO much Sourcrates. So I want to go ahead with your advice, swing my attention to ONLY paying off the DCA's who do have the paperwork/contracts, and just letting the ones who are unenforceable go-to-the-dogs. Now then; What do I tell the Step-Change Charity??????? Surely I cannot just ring them up and say "Oh -- can you send me those 4 accounts back to me, as I'm gonna let them go Statute Barredf" -- because if I say that they might try to talk me out of it?????

Would it be better to say something else to them?? Maybe I could fib to them and say "Oh those 4 have agreed a 50% Final Settlement so can you stop paying them immediately and take them off your programme"..

What do you think Sourcrates?? (Lovely name btw!! Is it a "take-off" of Socrates" ???)

Want2BeDebtFree

The plot thickens..... Part 2 of my [above] question is this... (because I have just been checking out my personal credit file on Equifax...

So I checked out Equifax just now, and was very surprised to find out that out of the 8 creditors (all of which are STILL being paid via Step Change), only one of them is still showing on my credit file (IDEM) and that is the only one showing as being "IN DEFAULT" (for one more month.) (The default was issued on the 28th May 2012 and is due to expire on 28th May 2018) -- in other words on 28th May (next month) I shall have NO defaults on my credit file...

(All of the seven others -- even though there is monies outstanding -- have been taken off my credit file) By the way, I started paying these installments with Step Change in 2011.

So; this now brings up the question, of whether or not to just stop paying ALL eight of the DCA's (on May 28th 2018)???? Because if all eight of them are going to show as NOT in default, then can I stop paying them???? Or will they just issue yet another brand new default????

You have to remember, that three of them have found the original paperwork/contracts from the early 2000's... Only five of them have written back providing me with a letter telling me that the debt is unenforceable and that court action CANNOT be taken against me...

By the way IDEM is the biggest debt of all -- with just over £9 thousand outstanding.

Once again; Thanks so much in advance...

StokieBecks

Do not stop paying the enforceable ones as even though the default has dropped off your file, they could if they wish still persue for a CCJ which will then further ruin your file for another six years. They can't issue a second default for the same debt but if they did issue court proceedings and got a CCJ that would be a separate entry and would appear

StokieBecks

With your 17.5k - can you clear all of the enforceable ones? If not then there is a calculation somewhere to show how much to offer each debt on a pro rata basis so they can see they are being treated fairly

sourcrates

Want2BeDebtFree wrote: »

Thanks SO much Sourcrates. So I want to go ahead with your advice, swing my attention to ONLY paying off the DCA's who do have the paperwork/contracts, and just letting the ones who are unenforceable go-to-the-dogs.

What do you think Sourcrates?? (Lovely name btw!! Is it a "take-off" of Socrates" ???)

Want2BeDebtFree wrote: »

So; this now brings up the question, of whether or not to just stop paying ALL eight of the DCA's (on May 28th 2018)???? Because if all eight of them are going to show as NOT in default, then can I stop paying them???? Or will they just issue yet another brand new default????

You have to remember, that three of them have found the original paperwork/contracts from the early 2000's... Only five of them have written back providing me with a letter telling me that the debt is unenforceable and that court action CANNOT be taken against me...

By the way IDEM is the biggest debt of all -- with just over £9 thousand outstanding.

Once again; Thanks so much in advance...

Hi,

Just because the default drops off your credit file, does not mean legal action cannot be taken against you, it can.

If you only have 3 enforceable debts left to service, why not go self managed ?

Do not tell fibs to stepchange, that can have far reaching consequences that you do not want to get into, better to just dispense with their service altogether.

My username is a take off of socrates yes, i was a big Bill and Ted fan back in the day !!

Want2BeDebtFree

oh WOW!!!!! I LURVE that movie!! "Bill and Teds Adventure!" !!
EXCELLLENT!!!

Yes -- i can pay off the 3 debts that are enforceable. But only just! Those 3 debts come to just under £17K so if I paid them in full I would have about £500 pounds left over...

Ideally I'd like to offer them F&F's and have them all 3 say "yes" but so far this has not happened. I think I'm paying them too much for them to say "yes" to an F&F.

What I did last month (on the 9th March) independently of Step Change, was this... I pretended that "a relative" had offered me £10 grand (for a limited period only) and I wrote to all EIGHT of the DCA's offering them the correct percentage of the £10 grand equally to what percentage I owed them. (In other words each DCA was offered the correct percentage in relation to the total amount of money owed).

IDEM and Capital One wrote back saying "No!" and they did not even offer me a bargaining chip for me to barter with!!

The PRA GROUP (which is unenforceable) came back with "No, but we WILL take 85% to clear the debt"

Cabot have not replied yet - I have three of my debts with them... 2 of them are unenforceable and the third one they have been "Searching for the paperwork" since December!!!!!!

Cabot DID in fact ring me on my mobile - but I hung up on them immediately. I'm sorry, but I just REFUSE to do ANY dealings on the phone with these blood suckers, because I've been bullied in the past to such a degree, that now i will NO longer take any calls, full stop!!! Never!! In fact I immediately barred the Cabot number from ringing again on my phone, and also barred them from leaving answer machine messages. (And I will do the same with any other DCA's who ring me). Ypu have to remember that this has been going on since 2011, and these debts are ALL made up of interest and charges, certainly NOT goods that I bought on a credit card. At one point I was being charged £200 per month interest by Capital one, but only paying £150 per month.

The only ones who came back with an offer I could afford was LINK, with 50% (also one of the unenforceable ones), so I was going to pay them $2 grand as F&F, but now I know better of course....

The other thing I have not told you is that I was paying £570 per month to ALL of these 8 DCA's up until last week... It was every last penny I had. This was with Step Change. Then i thought "Hmmmm if I change it to the LEAST they will accept, then maybe in a few months with these DCA's only being given a small amount, maybe that will kick them into accepting an F&F offer??

So Step Change altered the amount to £390 per month (spread over the 8 DCA's) but that was the lowest they would go down to... Of course now I'm ALL READY to ring them again (this week), to ask them to hand over the four unenforceable ones back to me... So this now means the £390 will be spread over 4 DCA's -- so there won't in effect be much change -- I'm now wondering if Step Change will lower it again (?) seeing as I'm taking four of them off their hands?? Oh I hope they will -- because someone said "If you lower the amount, they are more likely to come to an F&F"

As you can see -- its a nightmare!

Want2BeDebtFree

Another quickie question... My partner is asking me this with regards to the four I am ceasing paying (the ones who do not have the original paperwork); is it possible that (for example) a £4 thousand pound debt (which we stop paying now) could not quite make the 6 years "Statute Barred" -- and could possibly, in 5 and three-quarter years, suddenly re-appear showing as a massive £20-Grand debt because they have found the original contract (after those five and three-quarter years), and have stuck compound interest on it; and massive charges. Thanks...