Lowell’s offering discount

Dottydoolay

Sorry really new to all this so it’s a Very debt sold to Lowell’s I took advice on here originally. I have made no contact or offer of payment at all to Lowell’s despite receiving a few letters and have now  received a letter offering a 20% discount if I set up a payment plan by the beginning of January.
To be honest I was leaving it to sort until after Xmas anyway at some point.
I have also not contacted Lowell’s to see if they have the correct documentation to enforce the debt(sorry forgot the name of it).
Do I accept this initial offer? 
Thankyou very much for your advice/input as I said I just don’t have a clue about these things and learn on here.

fatbelly

I think you know the answer to your question as you called it an 'initial offer.'

As you know you have two broad choices - to engage or not engage.

If you do engage then a CCA request should be your opening shot.

Dottydoolay

Thanks Fatbelly, yes thought that would be the case but from what I have read I didn’t realise they did such discounts without interaction or requests for a suitable final balance agreement to clear the debt in full.
Just find it strange to offer discount with no interaction so hoping the balls in my court but didn’t want to push that luck too far or miss the boat with the discount.

Suseka97

There's no real sense when it comes to DCAs offering discounts and is often driven by how much profit they are happy to 'earn' from the debts they purchase.  You don't mention how long the account has been with Lowell, or how old the original debt is - but I suspect your account number has been picked out by a computer (among many others) and they've offered a discount simply to a) test the water or b) make a quick earner.

As fatbelly says - the next step is yours to make.  Accept and set up a payment plan, see how far you can push it and send off the CCA request or ignore them for a while longer and see what their next move/offer is.

Dottydoolay

Thanks for that, it’s a debt since June after I couldn’t come to an agreement with Very as they basically froze my accounts/payment holiday but then rolled those frozen payments into one so not doable At all, and Lowell’s got it in Sept I believe.
I was furloughed at the time but wasn’t paid properly I have a new job now and although manageable it’s around half of what I used to earn.
I was thinking they appear quite happy to knock off a chunk with basically nothing to work on so hoping that’s the way forward. At the same time didn’t want to kick myself if I missed that limited time offer discount if that’s all it is.

ceremony

Lowell occasionally offer discounts, but they also aggressively pursue CCJs so you have to tread carefully. 
They are one of the 'nicer' DCAs, though. You can use their online portal to set up payment arrangements. If you offer a nominal payment per month, and stick to it, that will help you avoid a CCJ and show a willingness to pay off the debt. Every six months they'll ask you to redo an income and expenditure, and they might sometimes offer another full and final settlement. You can also fire back another offer to them and they might accept it.
Be aware that full and final settlements show up differently on your credit file to debts that were paid off in full. Any default is bad, but a fully satisfied default is less damaging than a default that is reported as settled, so if you're concerned about getting credit in the next few years it is worth trying to pay it off in full.
I'm in the process of paying off some defaults with Lowell myself and they once offered me 40% off a very old debt, so they do go higher than 20%.

[Deleted User]

They do higher than 40% too as I’ve just received a letter offering 60% off a debt standing at approx £1250. I have until 12th Jan to get in touch and accept. It doesn’t have a CCJ attached and has a payment plan in place already.