Full and Final Settlement Options

SeeTheDoughnut

Hello all, I’m hoping someone can offer some advice.

My husband and I have some old debts that we are paying via stepchange. All are over 6 years old, so defaults have dropped off credit files and our credit ratings are now both good. All of the debts have been sold on from original creditors, some of them more than once. The total left to pay is £8800.

We are possibly in a position to make full and final settlement offers, as we have £2,200 available, saved from some additional contract work that I have done. Is this enough and likely to be accepted?

If so, I’m not sure whether I should:

1. Approach Step Change and so them to manage this. I believe that they make offers to each creditor, based on the proportion of the total debt owed to them.

2. Make offers to individual creditors myself - would this mean cancelling the DMP?

3. Contact them all and ask for copies of the original agreements first - if I do this, what do I do next if they do/do not have them?

4. None of the above - suggestions welcome!

Thank you in advance for your help!

fatbelly

3 is a good move. Do it as a formal CCA request so it has to be a consumer credit debt like credit card or loan.

There is a template letter on National Debtline

If they can't provide the agreement, the debt is unenforceable and you can ignore it.

If all 4 come back enforceable then 2.2k may not be enough but start low anyway, say 20%

Again there is a template letter on National Debtline

SeeTheDoughnut

Thank you for that. It’s been about 7 years since we started the DMP, so I’m hoping we can get them to agree, but appreciate it’s quite a low offer 😬

m00npig

I don't think I've ever replied on this forum as others always have a quicker and better answer than me but I am going through a very similar process so my experience could be worth mentioning.  It sounds like the CCA request is a good place to start (and I wish I had) but I can tell you about the DMP if it comes to that.

Stepchange have a dedicated Settlements team who are really helpful.  It's a slightly slow process (mine has taken a couple of months so far) but I haven't had the success I'd hoped for.  I've being paying my DMP at over £700 per month since 2018.  I was made redundant in February and worked out an amount I thought I could afford from my payout to finally get my debts cleared.  I wanted to offer 50% of the outstanding amount but the first person I spoke to said we'll start at 40% most creditors will accept that so I took their advice.

I naively thought that having paid almost £40000 back and being out of work would work in my favour but it wasn't as favourable as I hoped for.  Out of the 12 I had one accept my 40% offer.  After that the accepted amounts were 2x50%, 68%, 70% and 75%.  Some are still being considered but four of them were not prepared to accept any offer so will be receiving CCA requests.  In case you're wondering the hold outs are PRA and Wescot.

I hope that helps but, ultimately, it's a long winded way of saying 25% is probably not going to be accepted but I do wish you luck 🤞

RAS

Hi SeeTheDoughnut and m00npig

I haven't done f&fs but I think the general advice here is that you are better negotiating yourself. Do your CCAs, self-manage the DMP, pay a reduced rate to those who are compliant and wait for the creditor to make an offer. Try to counter offer less, but certainly don't let them up it. For the rest, don't let them know you've got a sum to share between creditors, as they don't see why they can't have their lot.

PRA have a bit of a reputation for being difficult to deal with. Rather fast on the draw with CCJs, so if they have the CCA don't reduce your payment unless you've share a good rationale. And very hard to get useful F&fs from, 75% would be a very good outcome with them.

m00npig

I used Stepchange for the settlement offers as it took me half a day just to get the outstanding balances from all 12 creditors so I thought it would be a bit of a nightmare to deal with the whole process x 12.  I've found them helpful but I agree that they probably didn't do anything more than I could have other than save me some time.

The annoying thing with PRA is that they did offer me a discount and said they would accept 98.7% of the outstanding amount 😂  I'd have almost preferred them to say no deal than offer me £30 off a £3000 debt.  I am hoping they won't have the CCA for a card I took out in 2011.

RAS

The standard for PRA seems to start at 95% for people who've been paying much lower percentages of their minimum payment, based on posts here.

SeeTheDoughnut

Eeek! We have 3 with PRA!  Does anyone know whether they can still do a CCJ if the debt has already dropped off the credit file? 

Thank you all for your advice.  I’ll get the letters out to request credit agreements and see where we go from there. Will stay with the DMP for the moment until I see how many can produce the credit ageeement. 

sourcrates

SeeTheDoughnut said:

Eeek! We have 3 with PRA!  Does anyone know whether they can still do a CCJ if the debt has already dropped off the credit file? 

Thank you all for your advice.  I’ll get the letters out to request credit agreements and see where we go from there. Will stay with the DMP for the moment until I see how many can produce the credit ageement. 

Creditors can pursue legal action at any time they wish, although its usually a last resort, and unlikely if you are already paying the debt off.

Whether it shows on your credit file or not is completely irrelevant.

They must follow civil procedure rules, and send a letter before action first, you also have the chance to defend any claim made against you.

SeeTheDoughnut

Thank you sourcrates.  We will be continuing payment to StepChange while we await responses to the requests for original credit agreements, so I’m not expecting any further action from anyone at this point - we have made regular payments all along to stepchange. 

I was just wondering what would happen if they can’t produce the agreements. If we then stop paying, could we end up with a CCJ? Or is this not something they can do if there is no credit agreement?  

I think PRA will be able to produce them, as the debt has only ever gone from Barclaycard to them.  The other debts have been on a national tour of debt collectors, so less likely they will have them!

stu12345_2

if they can't find the cca and statement, they can't enforce it in court.

when you apply for cca requests, the creditors put your account on hold, they don't expect payments in that period 

but as you are with step change, the payments you make to them will continue and be distributed to creditors, step change don't care about CCa requests.

pra offered me 25% off when they found mines payable in 6 monthly amounts or one amount