Advice on making settlement offers to 3rd parties

sourcrates

That`s quite an interesting situation, that they have bought non defaulted debts, have frozen interest on your accounts, and have made you modest settlement offers as well.

But I do agree with Manyways, they are unlikely to offer much more than 20% off, as what you are repaying now will settle the balance within a reasonable time frame.

These companies only tend to accept low ball offers if the option of regular monthly payments isn`t on the table for whatever reason, if you lose your job for example, or become ill and cannot work, you would need good reason why they should accept what you are offering.

np1v08

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82121641#Comment_82121641

Mmm, when you put it like that! I've clearly been too honest when completing my annual budget review with PayPlan. I take your point , which I'd not considered from that perspective. So, it's unlkely the companies will be incentivised to accept a low offer. However, I'll try anyway as nothing ventured, nothing gained 😉

np1v08

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82121753#Comment_82121753

Yes, that's a good summary of the situation, and as you and Manyways have pointed out, I'm making reasonable repayments every month. I'm almost a model customer in fact, lol. Maybe I'll go in with 50%-60% and see what the reponse is. Thanks for your comments.

bcs7

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6681566/advice-on-making-settlement-offers-to-3rd-parties

I can speak from experience as I had 1 debt with Intrum and 5 with Link of various quantities.
Intrum were fairly straightforward to deal with although it still took a year to get a decent settlement discount and that was paid off. Link on the other hand have been a right pain in the !!!!!! and seem to be intent on being as stubborn as possible to try and stick with high % settlements. You will see various other threads on here with others having the same kind of dealings with them. Those 5 debts are still in place.

With Intrum my debt was at about £850 when I first sent an offer of 20% to see what they'd say. They countered with 80% but it was still too much for me at the time. Over the next 9 months they then contacted me every so often reminding me of their offer and I got more offers of 80%, 78%, 78% and 60%. I then countered again with 30%, which was 10 months after my initial contact. They then seemed to want to stick at 60% with their counter, but a month later dropped that suddenly to 40%. They were also offering payment in 1,2 or 3 months rather than 1 big hit. So I took it at 40% and paid in 3 instalments of about £100 a month. That all happened over a course of 12 months.

With Link I tried the same with offering 20% and got varying counter offers:

£1200 - 90%, £1600 - 55%, £4600 - 77%, £9800 - 60%, £16600 - 90%.

I couldn't afford to even think about the percentages on the top 3 debts so I thought I'd concentrate on the lowest 2. I reduced my payments on all of them so I'm currently paying about £90 a month in total. It means it would take almost 31 years to pay all of them off. At the moment though this hasn't affected Link's offers.

For those 2 smallest debts, with the £1200 they have stuck stubbornly to 90% even though I increased my offer to 30% and the monthly payments are lower.
With the £1600 one though they offered 55% a few more times then just randomly upped it to 90%.

Now I'm going to leave it for a year or so and keep just paying £88 a month across the whole £32K debt and maybe try another offer next year.

np1v08

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82132293#Comment_82132293

Thank you for your detailed reply! Really interesting to read your experience of negotiating with Intrum and Link. Well done on your progress so far.

I received another letter from Intrum last week offering me a 20% discount to settle, which I will counter with an offer of my own. However, as others have pointed out in the thread, there isn't a huge incentive for either company to accept a low offer because I'm paying a reasonable amount each month towards the debt (not my personal choice, it's what PayPlan have dictated). However, I'm tempted to be a bit sneaky and tell them I'm going to have to reduce my monthly payments quite drastically from October onwards due to a cut in my working hours (not actually true) but that I have a small amount available to pay in full. I figure it's worth a try!