PayPal credit debt and credit file

Star_dust_24

Hi,

Just for a bit of background I suffer with various mental heath conditions and was sectioned in hospital for several months, twice last year following a series of bipolar manic and depressive episodes. During the biggest manic episode I ended up with a very large amount of debts and whilst in hospital my care team and citizens advice were dealing with the debts, however were unable to locate the PayPal credit account despite writting to them multiple times with all the information I had. 

All the other debts were dealt with in November 2023. And I hadn’t heard anything from PayPal credit over this time and couldn’t even log into the app to get an account number to pass on to citizens advise.

Randomly about a week ago I received an email from PayPal credit saying ‘your breathing space has now come to an end’ which was confusing as this would of been requested potentially back in February 2023 when I first went into hospital and didn’t think they lasted this long. 

Anyway, it’s a relatively small debt compared to the overall £75,000 that I had run up whilst manic in the space of a week or 2. With family’s help to pay this small PayPal debt off, I called them to pay asap because 1. It’s causing me a lot of stress having recently come out of hospital I having a lot of other things to deal with because of the last 2 years and 2. It’s the last debt left to try and start building my life back up again after the last 2 years of episodes. 

My problem is that when I rang to try and pay for this the person on the phone said that my account would still continue to be report as defaulted which I didn’t fully understand. I know there is an official default date that can’t be changed and I’m fine with that but the way he said it, it sounded like even after paying the full amount (assuming then for the balance to show as £0 on my credit file and status to be ‘settled’) that they would continue to report defaults monthly to that part on my credit file rather than showing as settled and the account closed. 

Has anyone had any dealings with PayPal Credit accounts that have defaulted and then payed off later on? And how this would show on a credit file?

Also apparently some PayPal Credit products aren’t regulated by the FCA? So not sure if this affects how they report to credit agencies. 

Any advice/help would be appreciated! 

fatbelly

Mental Health Breathing Space is open-ended but I wouldn't worry about it.

As this is an email, I'd ignore it. Anything important comes by post.

If anything does come by post, ask for a write-off on mental heath grounds, with the help of any support worker you have