Account marked as Bankruptcy - what should I do?

dreambig19

Hello all

A bit of a long one, so please bear with me.

In 2014 I entered into an IVA due to mounting debt (my own fault) and an inability to keep up with repayments. Around 6 months later due to a worsening financial situation, my payment failed and the IVA was cancelled.

Since then, most of my creditors have got back in touch with me. Six weeks ago I stopped burying my head in the sand and started making efforts to repay my debts - very slowly, but repay them nonetheless. When reviewing my credit reports to ensure I had not missed anyone out, I noticed an account for Onstride. On calling them it turns out they took the account over from QuickQuid (same overarching company).

For now, I'm totally ignoring the fact that the company have in the last few days gone into administration, because I understand I am still liable to pay them the debt.

I contacted Onstride at the start of September, updated my details, and asked to set up a repayment plan. The person I spoke to said the account was marked as in bankruptcy, and so was 'locked' and no payment arrangement could be made. I explained I had never been made bankrupt, but had been in an IVA for a short while, which this loan formed part of. They asked me to email their insolvency team to 'un-mark' the account, so that I could begin payments.

I have emailed and called once a week since this point. Nothing has been done on my account and I have received no response to my emails (I check spam folder and clear it out at least once a day so there's nothing lurking in there). I said to the person on the phone today that there is only so much more chasing I am going to do. I asked what will happen to the account six years after the bankruptcy marker was placed (July next year). She said that usually the account is closed down with nothing further to pay.

So, to the point of my post. What would you do?
Keep chasing them in the hopes that the account is rectified? Once this is done I will (at the moment) only be able to offer about £10 a month towards a 1K balance. Or do I hold off (I have chased enough) and try and contact them again once some of my smaller debts are paid off ni the new year, when I can offer a higher monthly payment? Or option C - do nothing more until the middle of next year and see if it drops off my credit file completely?

Please let me stress again - I am not hiding from this debt (any more). I have been actively trying to set up a payment plan for six weeks now. But I am beginning to wonder whether my efforts and (small amount of) money would be better spent elsewhere if this is going to become redundant in 8 months time anyway?

Thanks in advance.
R

sourcrates

Hi,
Seriously, its admirable you want to settle these debts, but I would not bother unless they start contacting you, you were not that far from all your debts being statute barred, if you had`nt started paying them.
Occasionally creditors confuse IVA with Bankrupcy, as they are both classed as being insolvent, if they have closed the account down, just let them get on with it, save your money for more important things.

dreambig19

Hi Sourcrates

Thanks for that. If only I'd known about statute barring before I started contacting them! Although most of them had contacted me long before, so I couldn't have claimed that for most I don't think. I'll leave the Onstride loan for now then. I haven't made any payments towards it yet and have chased enough since the beginning of Sept so I'll wait to hear from them!

Thanks again

mwarby

I think an IVA covers all creditors not excluded (eg student loan), so the debt would be unenforceable anyway

edit - sorry missed the bit about your IVA being cancelled, so above comment doesn't apply in your case