persistent debt letters

Teflon80

Hi 

We are at the start of our DFW journey. My wife and I are on the same page and she knows about all of the debt. She suffers with anxiety and in order to support her, I will deal with the day to day money stuff. We have agreed to have one sit down conversation each month to look at the figures etc. 

My issue is persistent debt... One of our accounts is in this position. I have received a letter telling me that I need to pay more. These sort of letters put the dear of god into my wife and I would much prefer to recieve these via email.        

Is there anything legal that means that these have to be sent via post, or could I ask to recieve these electronically?

MorningcoffeeIV

You can ask, but they will probably continue to send by post, unless they offer that level of flexibility. 

It's also much simpler for them to demonstrate compliance to the regulator.

jlfrs01

Why do they want you to pay more, are you paying less than the minimum or is it they're charging such a high interest rate that your debt is growing faster than you're paying it off? 

sourcrates

Try to explain to your wife that these letters are a statutory requirement, the lender must send them by post, they may swap to email if asked, but that is entirely at their discretion or what FCA regulation will allow.

Please also try to reassure her that there is nothing to worry about here, they are just letters, debts can and are, re-paid, by affordable means, all the time, when its not possible to continue with contractual re-payments.

Debt management or whatever option you choose, will be acceptable so please don`t lose any sleep over it.

fatbelly

The idea of 'persistent debt' is that creditors should identify those who are struggling, and help them.

There's a factsheet here

https://nationaldebtline.org/fact-sheet-library/persistent-debt-ew/

enthusiasticsaver

Legally these companies need to make people aware that they consider them to be in persistent debt. Are the accounts set to paperless?