Haggling on paying off a cc? What sort of offer should I make?

JoJoB

I'm hoping to have a bit of a windfall of maybe £2 grand this July (small inheritance) and want to use it to pay off the balance on one of my ccs. The one I want to pay off is egg as I was one of the banished customers, so at least i won't run up the bill again!

I've seen in passing that some negotiations can be made with cc companies in terms of making an offer below what you actually owe to pay off the total debt. Has anyone tried this with egg? I owe them 3000 and wonder if they will take 2000 if I offer. Or am I just being very naive?

Any input appreciated!

Penny-Pincher!!

Hi

My sister owed Egg £3500 and I negotiated a F&F 2 years ago for £500 which they accepted. She had been in a payment plan for 12 months with them though.

HTH

PP
xx

JoJoB

Wow, you did well there. Yes, a payment plan of some sort would probably be good to negotiate first I guess. Try and get them to freeze/lower the interest on the monthly payments and do that for a few months before making them an offer?

I am so clueless at all this.

JoJoB

Penny, was the payment plan part of an "official" dmp through the likes of cccs or cab, or just something you and your sister negotiated yourselves? I sort of want to put together my own dmp, negotiating with each creditor myself but not sure if I will get fobbed off without some sort of officialdom representing me in the negotiations iyswim.

lilac_lady

Why should you not have to pay for the goods you obtained via the credit cards?

sammyjammy

JoJoB, you don't indicate that you're in financial difficulties at all, why would you want to wreck your credit record by going into a repayment plan unnecessarily just so that you can con the credit card provider out of a few hundred pounds that you rightly owe them?

If you are in financial difficulties then yes you could negotiate a payment plan for less than the monthly amount due, they may agree to stop interest if you sent them a statement of your income and outgoings but the chances of them accepting a F&F after a few months are slim to none.

JoJoB

I'm not in crisis at the moment but in the situation where one thing could set off the "house of cards" scenario, so just trying to look into my options and be prepared. While I can just about manage my monthly minimum repayments at the moment it will be many many years before I can get the whole debt paid off (at the rate I am currently able to pay towards it). All the extra money I get I want to put onto paying off my debts - it will just be so much easier if I can negotiate lower interest that's all. otherwise out of every £100 I pay a month maybe £20 goes into paying off the actual bill. I don't have a problem with paying off the full amount, just want to find out ways of doing it faster!

JoJoB

lilac_lady wrote: »

Why should you not have to pay for the goods you obtained via the credit cards?

I've paid for the "goods" many times over. It's the continual interest payments that I am keen to avoid.

lilac_lady

That's what you signed up for if you take a credit card and don't pay it off each month. Whether it's fair or not is another matter.

JoJoB

I don't deny I'm being a bit of a chancer, like. I'm aware of what I signed up for and aware that life's not always fair. But I'm still going to try and get myself out of debt using all the available options rather than dragging the ball and chain around with me longer than I actually need to. The important thing is to get out of debt and not repeat the same mistakes.

jonesMUFCforever

The thing is do you want to apply for any new credit for the next 6 years or so?
If you don't then take a chance.

If you do need / want credit then you need to pay off what you owe.