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Can I reclaim my credit card charges if I defaulted on the card?
superclio
Posts: 21 Forumite
I have a slightly unusual situation. Bear with me...I moved to the US whilst still having credit card debt in the UK. For over a year I sent the payments every month to my Abbey bank account which then had direct debits to my cards, no problems. One month the money left but apparently didn't arrive at Abbey. I did not know this because a) the money left my account in the US and b) I was unable to check my Abbey account online as my debit card had expired (the number on the card was my log in) and Abbey refused to send me a new card in the US unless I transferred all my details to a US address (at the time I was going back and forth between countries and not yet sure I would be leaving England permanently, thus I was hesitant to change this officially with my bank account). So all I knew was that the money had left the US end, and not that it hadn't arrived at the UK end.
About 6 weeks after sending the money I collected my mail that was forwarded from the UK and found letter after letter from the credit card companies charging me late fees, bounced direct debit fees, and resulting from these missed payments my low / zero APRs had now shot up making my minimum payments an unmanageable amount. I had over £500 in charges and the new monthly payments were now impossible for me to pay. This was compounded by the fact that the bank in the US refused to arrange a loan of the missing amount ($1000, no small amount to me) and that between Abbey and the US bank it took six months to track down the missing money (I think it was a combined fault of both banks. The US took forever took actually contact Abbey and it seems they had mistyped one digit somewhere in the wire form, and then Abbey kept insisting they didn't have the money only to admit in August that they had a credit of "$1000 sitting on a ledger" and despite their global advice line recognising my voice because I had been calling for so many months no one seemed to connect the $1000 that they "didn't know who to credit to" and the girl calling from the US for six months asking if $1000 had been deposited into her account yet.
The end result is I was utterly unable to make the new payments (the lowering every month of the dollar /pound conversion didn't exactly help either) and want to declare myself bankrupt, but can only do this in person which requires funds to fly back and pay the bankruptcy charges that I don't yet have. The CCCS advised me not to worry, I have no assets, no way of paying the money, and there's little the companies can do to me in the US, but that doesn't make me feel good when I receive threatening phone calls and am unable to declare bankruptcy yet, even though that's what I want to do. Every little would help.
SO - Bearing in mind the charges were what led me to default on the debt, can I claim back any of these charges, or does the fact that I defaulted on the debt and they have mostly been passed on to debt collectors negate that??
:(:cry::huh::exclamati:confused:
About 6 weeks after sending the money I collected my mail that was forwarded from the UK and found letter after letter from the credit card companies charging me late fees, bounced direct debit fees, and resulting from these missed payments my low / zero APRs had now shot up making my minimum payments an unmanageable amount. I had over £500 in charges and the new monthly payments were now impossible for me to pay. This was compounded by the fact that the bank in the US refused to arrange a loan of the missing amount ($1000, no small amount to me) and that between Abbey and the US bank it took six months to track down the missing money (I think it was a combined fault of both banks. The US took forever took actually contact Abbey and it seems they had mistyped one digit somewhere in the wire form, and then Abbey kept insisting they didn't have the money only to admit in August that they had a credit of "$1000 sitting on a ledger" and despite their global advice line recognising my voice because I had been calling for so many months no one seemed to connect the $1000 that they "didn't know who to credit to" and the girl calling from the US for six months asking if $1000 had been deposited into her account yet.
The end result is I was utterly unable to make the new payments (the lowering every month of the dollar /pound conversion didn't exactly help either) and want to declare myself bankrupt, but can only do this in person which requires funds to fly back and pay the bankruptcy charges that I don't yet have. The CCCS advised me not to worry, I have no assets, no way of paying the money, and there's little the companies can do to me in the US, but that doesn't make me feel good when I receive threatening phone calls and am unable to declare bankruptcy yet, even though that's what I want to do. Every little would help.
SO - Bearing in mind the charges were what led me to default on the debt, can I claim back any of these charges, or does the fact that I defaulted on the debt and they have mostly been passed on to debt collectors negate that??
:(:cry::huh::exclamati:confused: 0
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