Dealing with £39K debt

bcs7

fatbelly said:

If you can save on the side you can make full & final offers from your savings pot and reduce that timescale hugely.

Remember when a debt purchaser buys your debt they pay around 10p in the pound, which gives room for negotiation. Also they do not get proper paperwork so somewhere down the line you may be able to challenge them.

If i genuinely thought you were in this for 15 years i would suggest insolvency. But i don't think you need that

I think this may be the way to go as I'll be able to put some money aside each month even if the quantity varies depending on what I'm selling or extra work I'm doing.

I was wondering if it may be worth making a full and final offer on the £920 (maybe something like £300), then that gets it out of the way and all the other debts are then with one company?

I also had a question about defaults. It appears I have 16 on my credit file although some of these are the different companies for the same debt where they've handed them on. Do these just drop off after a certain amount of time? Or should they go once a debt is paid?

For instance the small debt I had for £109 has been through 3 different companies, however I paid it in full in September last year but the defaults are still showing for all 3 companies, the first 2 with zero balance and the 3rd with £109 balance. I confirmed with Intrum over the phone yesterday that it was paid although they did say it only appeared with them in June this year, I suspect because the collection company (Resolvecall) took ages to pass it on.

sourcrates

Defaults stay on your credit file for 6 years, regardless of what actions you may take.

When a debt gets sold, sometimes more than once, there can be numerous entries from different owners, but it still remains just one default per account, the older entries should show a zero balance, with the entry by the current owner showing any outstanding or settled balance.

The date of default should be the same on all entries, and all will automatically disappear on the 6th anniversary of the default date.

bcs7

sourcrates said:

Defaults stay on your credit file for 6 years, regardless of what actions you may take.

When a debt gets sold, sometimes more than once, there can be numerous entries from different owners, but it still remains just one default per account, the older entries should show a zero balance, with the entry by the current owner showing any outstanding or settled balance.

The date of default should be the same on all entries, and all will automatically disappear on the 6th anniversary of the default date.

It looks like all the default dates are between February and May 2021.
I assume they'll only disappear if the balance is zero AND it's been 6 years?

fatbelly

All entries disappear in full six years after the default, whether they're paid off or not.

And yes, a £300 offer agains t £900 debt is sensible. Use the national debtline template letter as a starting point

x_raphael_xx

bcs7 said:

I was wondering if it may be worth making a full and final offer on the £920 (maybe something like £300), then that gets it out of the way and all the other debts are then with one company?

It won't hurt to offer and see what they say. You'll free up that little bit more to save up for the next one.
And the mental boost/relief of getting rid of one will be great.

bcs7

x_raphael_xx said:

bcs7 said:

I was wondering if it may be worth making a full and final offer on the £920 (maybe something like £300), then that gets it out of the way and all the other debts are then with one company?

It won't hurt to offer and see what they say. You'll free up that little bit more to save up for the next one.
And the mental boost/relief of getting rid of one will be great.

Yes, I think it's worth just seeing if they'll consider it. They could say no, but having 2.5 years of payments up front instead of waiting 7.5 years for the whole debt to be paid may tempt them.

Looking a bit further forward to the other debts I'm wondering if making settlement offers on individual debts might be harder as they are all with one company. I mean if I had some kind of lump sum that I wanted to use as a settlement for one of the debts are they likely to say that they'd rather I split it between all debts and then carry on the usual payments?

fatbelly

In an ideal world you would have a significant lump sum and offer it to your creditors proportionately. The National Debtline resources sort of assume that. But it doesn't always work like that.

RAS

Since Link own all the other debts except your smallest, you might be best building up your emergency fund and then building a fighting fund.

Ideally, you'd want those debts sold on to different companies so you can handle them one by one. I'd reduce what you pay over time if inflation continues.

Rob5342

As suggested making full and final offers could reduce the time to clear it. I'd put some money aside each month and then use that to make full and final offers on one of them. Once you've cleared one you can put the payment for that aside as well and use it for your next offer.

Nobody has mentioned it yet but you might also want to make CCA requests to them to see if any are unenforcable, if they are then you can just stop paying completely. I have a £7000 debt with PRA but they couldn't produce the CCA so I'm ignoring it completely now.

bcs7

Rob5342 said:

As suggested making full and final offers could reduce the time to clear it. I'd put some money aside each month and then use that to make full and final offers on one of them. Once you've cleared one you can put the payment for that aside as well and use it for your next offer.

Nobody has mentioned it yet but you might also want to make CCA requests to them to see if any are unenforcable, if they are then you can just stop paying completely. I have a £7000 debt with PRA but they couldn't produce the CCA so I'm ignoring it completely now.

Thanks for this advice. I had a look how this works last night and will look into it further but I'm not sure how successful it will be as most of the debts have only just been bought from the original creditor in the last few months so I'd have thought it would be easier for them to get the CCA's.