Credit cards, Defaults and Existing Customer 0% offers

ElleCDF42 · 19 May 2020 at 9:39AM

One of my Covid-19 personal jobs is to sort out my finances. I have gotten myself into a rutt I really want to get myself out of. I was amazing with money, had brilliant credit score then I stupidly spent more money than I had due to a bout of depression.

1. I applied for extra money on my mortgage when I discovered I had a default on my credit file. On investigating I found it was from one of my credit cards. It is an account I has locked out of nearly 2 years ago, I did not receive any new cards etc. I must have lost track of time and missed a few payments. I did not receive any notification etc as every time they say my account link is fixed, it still will not allow me to access it to know what is going on or that there was actually an account number I could pay into from my bank. I have made a complaint (they are useless no one can tell me about the progress and every time I call they have to submit a new complaint as not one knows what is going on. I will be going to FOS.

2. Due to a bout of stupidly spending when depressed I now have 3 other credit cards that the 0% has run out and a 4th with nothing on (but no offers). There are no 0% offers to swap them round and I am scared to apply for another card due to the default.

3. I also have a card linked to the flat I owned over 10 years ago that I forgot about until I applied for a new bank account. It has nothing on it, in fact it is in £4.00 credit! I have tried to swap it to my current address but without the card or account number they will not do anything.

The only thing I can think of if to take all the payment holidays, build up enough money to hopefully pay the card off that has an existing customer rate and work from there. Any other options or advice would be welcome.