Stepchange to Self Managed - F&F Question

DJB343

Hey there,

I haven't been on these forums for quite some time, the last time I posted I was drowning in £34,500 worth of debt and absolutely lost.  This forum got me out of that hole, and I currently have just over £6,000 to pay back.  So if anyone is currently reading this and is losing sleep over their debt problems, please know there is always help out there to get you back on track!

So like most people here I used Stepchange for a number of years and they have been incredible.  However I'm now considering going self managed with the aim of negotiating a reduced F&F settlement down the line. I'm all set up on CAB Money, ready to cancel SC and send out letters to my creditors. 

I currently have 5 creditors remaining, out of the 5:
2 are now with PRA & 3 are with INTRUM - (All 5 accounts were transferred to these debt collection agencies - and are not the original creditors)

Here's to my question; Has anyone got any expierience negotiating a F&F settlement per account in which you have multiple accounts under? 

For eg -

I have 2 accounts with ITRUM | 1 - £2137.32 | 2 - £1868.22

If I were to say - I have a lump sum of £1000, I'd like to negotiate a final F&F settlement for account 2 .  Is there a likelyhood that they would already know I have another account with them and suggest I put that money toward account 1 ?  Thus making a F&F settlement less likely.

Hope my jibbering made some sort of sense, and someone else has been through this process already

Thanks

fatbelly

You can negotiate on individual debts.

You may get different settlement figures as each debt will be at a different stage and they may well have paid different percentages for each (though we'll never get that information)

Best of luck with clearing those debts. PRA can be hard work.

sourcrates

PRA and Intrum are debt purchasing companies, not debt collectors as such, they buy debts in bulk, for a very small fraction of their original face value.

PRA are notoriously difficult to negotiate with, many stories on here of failed attempts at obtaining a good discount, some have succeeded, but not many.

Intrum, not as big a player as say Cabot or Lowell, so not a lot of information available on them, debts can be dealt with separately, because as fatbelly says, all will be at different stages of collection, you may get somewhere, you may not, all you can do is try.

DJB343

Ah! you both are still here - great to see; just wanna say thank you for your help a few years back. Really got me out of a situation in which I thought I would never be able to fix.

Great advice as per guys - appreciate your time.  Will update if I have any news in the near future

Ta

Kakiste

I had two debts with HSBC- I managed to get the much larger one (around £7K) settled for 60% in a F&F offer- during the negotiation the fact that I had another debt with the same bank (around £2k) wasn't ever mentioned. 

DJB343

Kakiste said:

I had two debts with HSBC- I managed to get the much larger one (around £7K) settled for 60% in a F&F offer- during the negotiation the fact that I had another debt with the same bank (around £2k) wasn't ever mentioned. 

I wish I'd known this earlier! I've recently managed to clear both my HSBC debts oh well lol

Great negotiation skills!  40% off 7K is such a good result. 

Thanks for chipping in on this, I've cancelled my SC now and am awaiting a barrage of letters from both debt purchasers before I send off my CCA requests!

DJB343

I've been wondering - and maybe @sourcrates you can help answer this.  I've cancelled Stepchange now and preparing to go self managed - however I've not sent any letters to them telling them this is the case just yet.

From what I've read whilst lurking, is that it's beneficial to send out CCA requests first.  Should I be awaiting them to contact me before I send out the requests, or is it fine to go ahead and request them.  Which would hopefully put a freeze on my account thus avoiding a missed payment on my report.

sourcrates

DJB343 said:

I've been wondering - and maybe @sourcrates you can help answer this.  I've cancelled Stepchange now and preparing to go self managed - however I've not sent any letters to them telling them this is the case just yet.

From what I've read whilst lurking, is that it's beneficial to send out CCA requests first.  Should I be awaiting them to contact me before I send out the requests, or is it fine to go ahead and request them.  Which would hopefully put a freeze on my account thus avoiding a missed payment on my report.

OK, in debt management, your credit file is always going to take a hit, be it late or missed payments/defaults whatever it may be, your credit file should not be your number one priority here.

You are free to make CCA requests at any time, however, a reconstituted version of your credit agreement is perfectly acceptable and should not be hard to comply with.

CCA requests work best in your favour when the accounts in question are old (4/5 years or more) and have been sold on at least once, because you are relying on the creditor not been able to produce such an agreement, thus rendering your debt unenforceable.

So, if your accounts are fairly recent, do expect them to be able to comply.

flipflopflo

I was going to say that it’s the defaults that you want, not to delay them but get them as soon as possible. 

DJB343

sourcrates said:

DJB343 said:

I've been wondering - and maybe @sourcrates you can help answer this.  I've cancelled Stepchange now and preparing to go self managed - however I've not sent any letters to them telling them this is the case just yet.

From what I've read whilst lurking, is that it's beneficial to send out CCA requests first.  Should I be awaiting them to contact me before I send out the requests, or is it fine to go ahead and request them.  Which would hopefully put a freeze on my account thus avoiding a missed payment on my report.

OK, in debt management, your credit file is always going to take a hit, be it late or missed payments/defaults whatever it may be, your credit file should not be your number one priority here.

You are free to make CCA requests at any time, however, a reconstituted version of your credit agreement is perfectly acceptable and should not be hard to comply with.

CCA requests work best in your favour when the accounts in question are old (4/5 years or more) and have been sold on at least once, because you are relying on the creditor not been able to produce such an agreement, thus rendering your debt unenforceable.

So, if your accounts are fairly recent, do expect them to be able to comply.

Okay I feel I should of included a bit more information here.

I defaulted on all my accounts mid 2017, so would regard them as old.  They should also drop off my account mid next year.  All my accounts have been passed on to debt purchasers.

Though not a real concern, I'd like to keep my 'missed payments' on my report to a absolute minimum as I've not missed a payment since defaulting in 2017 and is one of the reasons why my score has been rising.

I feel it's probably safer then to inform them that I'm going self managed, and then follow up with a CCA request - rather than await any correspondence from them.

sourcrates

Though not a real concern, I'd like to keep my 'missed payments' on my report to a absolute minimum as I've not missed a payment since defaulting in 2017 and is one of the reasons why my score has been rising.

As your accounts have defaulted, that is what is recorded on file, default is the end game status, it won`t change now until it drops off your file, so no missed payments can be recorded, as you have already defaulted, although your balance over time may be shown in the form of a graph.

Think of the traffic light system -

Red -Default
Amber - Missed/late payment
Green - Tick, all good.

The payments you are currently making are not contractual, all that ended when you defaulted, so they are not recorded on your credit file, it will just show the default status now till it drops off naturally.

The balance of your account over a period of time may be shown by some CRA`s. but the default status trumps everything.

Your "score" rises and falls with any change and is only seen by you, and not used in lending decisions.
Lenders score you using their own internal scoring systems the public is not privy too.