Dealing with £39K debt

Rob5342

Www.debtcamel.co.uk has lots of information on affordability complaints. You need to complain within 6 years of the event happening or within 3 years of becoming aware you could complain. The latter is much more difficult to argue but i successfully argued it on one of my complaints. In all cases it gets harder to win as time goes on as it becomes harder to get information to back up your claim. Credit reports only go back 6 years so they might not cover the period when the event occurred, and bank statements might not be available. Complaints are always worth a try as they cost nothing, but don't pin your hopes on winning them. 

bcs7

Rob5342 said:

Www.debtcamel.co.uk has lots of information on affordability complaints. You need to complain within 6 years of the event happening or within 3 years of becoming aware you could complain. The latter is much more difficult to argue but i successfully argued it on one of my complaints. In all cases it gets harder to win as time goes on as it becomes harder to get information to back up your claim. Credit reports only go back 6 years so they might not cover the period when the event occurred, and bank statements might not be available. Complaints are always worth a try as they cost nothing, but don't pin your hopes on winning them. 

So the bank loan for example, which was taken out for about £22K in November 2018, is out of time?

sourcrates

bcs7 said:

So the bank loan for example, which was taken out for about £22K in November 2018, is out of time?

Lenders are only obligated to keep records for 6 years, so they may have destroyed records older than that.

Unless you have proof the loan/card was unaffordable, and can produce evidence to that effect, there is no way to determine whether a credit agreement was affordable to you or not.

Rob5342

bcs7 said:

Rob5342 said:

Www.debtcamel.co.uk has lots of information on affordability complaints. You need to complain within 6 years of the event happening or within 3 years of becoming aware you could complain. The latter is much more difficult to argue but i successfully argued it on one of my complaints. In all cases it gets harder to win as time goes on as it becomes harder to get information to back up your claim. Credit reports only go back 6 years so they might not cover the period when the event occurred, and bank statements might not be available. Complaints are always worth a try as they cost nothing, but don't pin your hopes on winning them. 

So the bank loan for example, which was taken out for about £22K in November 2018, is out of time?

It's possible, but unlikely, that they will uphold your complaint. If you don't and send it the the FOS then at it's over 6 years since the event occurred you would need to convince the FOS thst it's been less then three years since you became aware thst you could complain. That's possible but not always easy. In my case i had made a load of payday loan complaints the year before and they saw that and concluded that it was plausible that i had only become aware i could complain the test before.

Complaining is free and doesn't take much time so it's always worth a shot. 

bcs7

bcs7 said:

Bank overdraft - £1,137 - (monthly £3) - best offer 90%

With it being around 6 months (July 2025) since my last settlement offer (25%) on this debt I thought I'd make another offer and see if they'd reduce their counter.
No, they're still stubbornly sticking to asking for 90% of the debt. Grrrr!
So £3 monthly payments is all they'll be getting for the forseeable future.

Grumpelstiltskin

Explain that because of the increase of cost of living you are going to have to reduce your payments to £1 monthly and see if that makes any difference.

bcs7

Grumpelstiltskin said:

Explain that because of the increase of cost of living you are going to have to reduce your payments to £1 monthly and see if that makes any difference.

I think that's the route I'm going to need to go down, maybe with all 5 of the debts.

bcs7

bcs7 said:

Credit card 1 - £1,516 - (monthly £4) - best offer 55%

With them being stubborn on the lowest debt, I decided to make another offer on the next lowest debt which 6 months ago they had given me a counter for 55% of the debt.
This morning they've now upped it to 90%. Greedy !!!!!!!!
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to their offers. It's whatever they feel like at the time.