Link Financial Settlement - has anyone managed to settle with them?

tayajade

My husband and were in a DMP with multiple creditors from 2014 until January of this year.  We decided to sell our house and use the equity to make partial settlements to be able to put the debts behind us and move on. 

All creditors accepted 20-30% with the exception of link (for an old Barclay card) who will not budge from 70%. We made £1 token payments for 2 years running up to making offers and all accounts were defaulted and dropped of our credit files. 

We requested the CCA from link in January and we received the reconstituted agreement this week. We have enough money left to pay 50% which they refused today, they’ve asked to set up a repayment plan. We can’t afford to pay them anything monthly now that we are paying rent which is significantly more than our mortgage was costing us - the idea was that we could afford to rent as we would no longer be paying into a DMP. 

At a loss really - has anyone had any success with this DCA in getting a settlement??

Suseka97

From reading various threads I understand Link are quite stubborn to deal with.  

You say they sent you the reconstituted agreement this week, but does this contain all of the following?

• your name and address when the account was opened;
• the creditor’s name and address when the account was opened;
• the terms and conditions of the account at that time, including the cost of credit (the Annual Percentage Rate), when you have to make payments and your cancellation rights; and
• any other documents that were mentioned in the Terms and Conditions.

It also needs to be legible.

Have you also had this checked out to ensure its compliant?  I'm not sure if we can share other forum details, but if you google checking CCA documents you'll see there are a couple of forums that you can do that on.

If all the above is accurate and you're certain its enforceable, then all you can do is stick to your guns and maybe keep paying tokens for 6 months or so and try again.

tayajade

Suseka97 said:

From reading various threads I understand Link are quite stubborn to deal with.  

You say they sent you the reconstituted agreement this week, but does this contain all of the following?

• your name and address when the account was opened;
• the creditor’s name and address when the account was opened;
• the terms and conditions of the account at that time, including the cost of credit (the Annual Percentage Rate), when you have to make payments and your cancellation rights; and
• any other documents that were mentioned in the Terms and Conditions.

It also needs to be legible.

Have you also had this checked out to ensure its compliant?  I'm not sure if we can share other forum details, but if you google checking CCA documents you'll see there are a couple of forums that you can do that on.

If all the above is accurate and you're certain its enforceable, then all you can do is stick to your guns and maybe keep paying tokens for 6 months or so and try again.

Thank you for replying. 

We have checked the CCA and unfortunately it does contain all of the required information. It doesn’t state the credit limit that we were initially given but this doesn’t appear to be required. It does however have our original address and the relevant Ts and Cs.

Suseka97

To be honest, I'm not sure you'll get very far with this one - but you can but try.  Stop making any payments and see how long you can go on doing so, then see if they are willing to consider a more favourable F&F.   Or just sit back and pay them a token payment for how ever long it takes to clear.  If they are happy accepting £1 for the next, who knows, 10 years or more then it really won't impact you.

Fidelia

I'm sorry you are having such a frustrating and worrying time with Link, especially as it looks as if you've negotiated really good settlements with your other creditors.  Congratulations on all that you've achieved on your journey to debt freedom.


From my own experience, Link were diabolical to deal with.  They had 2 of my debts, both 'old' MBNA credit card debts, starting balances of about £11.5k and £10k respectively when they took them over.  I paid them religiously for over 4 years via Stepchange. paying far more than was comfortable for me and life on a DMP was penury.  My fault entirely, I wasn't too savvy then and just wanted to get the debts repaid in the shortest possible time.  I was very late to send for CCA information and when it did come I was surprised that one of the Link debts was unenforceable.   Link kept hassling me to set up a repayment plan for both debts as by then I'd decided to leave Stepchange (who had been a lifesaver to me) purely to negotiate F&Fs myself after reading about people's successes on MSE.  Thanks to a couple of small inheritances and  PPI repayments I'd settled practically all my sizeable debts with other creditors at between 22% and a max of 30%. Eventually one of the main High Street banks who I owed £11k to and were renowned for being intransigent settled at 32%. Just Link remained and they weren't budging!


Whatever settlement figure I offered Link was refused and they insisted on 75%, eventually down to 65.  The outstanding balances were by then around £6.5k and £5k and there was no way I could settle at the level they insisted on, even just the enforceable debt.  So many letter passed to and fro and they phoned several times although I asked them not to.  I was already paying them a token £1 a month anyway, had been for about 18 months.  I stopped paying the unenforceable debt altogether but they still gave me endless grief over it.


After a couple of years of this they eventually agreed to settle the enforceable debt for 35% which I accepted. It might have been possible to get them down further but so much time had gone by struggling to get them to play ball and I was mentally exhausted and totally stressed by it all.  All things considered, 35% was a pretty good outcome from what others who battled with them said. I'd just received what was to be my last sizeable PPI reclaim payment otherwise even 35% would have been beyond me. They still kept banging on about the unenforceable one (sending me a form to update my income and expenditure every year ) and in sheer desperation I wrote and told them that, although legally I need pay them nothing further on an unenforceable debt, I wanted the whole sorry business finished and offered a final settlement of 2% just to have it consigned to history.  They accepted it!  I just couldn't believe it but it had been a long, frustrating and anxious few years getting to that stage.  My circumstances may be different to yours, I was already retired at the time and a 'pensioner' with, at the time, health issues, so in all reality they would never be repaid during my lifetime.


The only advice I can offer is 'stick to your guns'.  Don't give in because you can only pay money you actually have.  Your rent payment on your home is a legitimate expense and as a result you don't have 'spare' money to pay Link with.  Have they asked for an Interest and Expenditure form to be completed?  It's easy enough to massage the figures, they won't ask you to send bank statements and even if they do you don't have to oblige!  I never sent them anything like that.  If your budget shows you can only afford £1 a month they'll have to accept it. Incidentally, I did I&E updates etc by post through the forms they sent me and not by talking to anyone at Link on the phone.  I get easily flustered in such circumstances and would have easily been swayed to commit to money I couldn't afford. I can appreciate how you want the debt to be totally gone but try to forget about it and put it on the back burner. for now  So long as you maintain contact with them and have notified them what you are doing they won't be doing anything dire like trying to take you to court or anything.


Wishing you the very best of luck.  Congratulations again on your success in clearing all your other debts.  It feels good, doesn't it?  Keep us posted on developments.  Take care xx