unpaid loan due to Loan payments cancelled by credit company???

shell2008

A query that i have decided to follow up from a shocked friend at work who told me that she took out a 5 year credit loan to buy herself a new car back in 2003. I assume wasnt any free period of interest given with this, i think she said the interest rate back on the loan was set at 6.5 %. She repaid via direct debit until 11 months ago, the company merged with another , they did tell her about the merge and that she woudl not have to do anything everything would be transferred over, but she did not check her monthly bank statements there on where the direct debit payments of £270.00 should have continued to be going out, but the merged company without telling her, cancelled her direct debit payments for some 'unknown' reason 11 months ago ! Now she is in a situation where this has now been passed over to a debt collection service, to recollect the 11 months outstanding and she is having nightmares of debt collectors knockin on her door. She has no monetary funds to pay off the amount which approx comes to 4 K i guess. But i wonder if she can be given any advice that would be able to give her some negotiation skills, seems she is the innocent party, had faith in thme with teh direct debit being set up, never thought in a month of Sunday's that it woudl become cancelled by them and that she be in this situation. I advised her to negotiate with them some kind of free interest period, say '9 months', as a form of compensation for the mess up and seems most credit companies give away the first year as free interest these days, and it was their mistake, she is happy to repay the direct debit payments to pay off the balance. But is anyone able to give better advice on what to advise her on than me would be helpful as she is not good at coming up with hard bargaining ideas.
Thank you.

jonesMUFCforever

If she knew that the direct debit was due then surely she should would have had funds in her account to meet it, these funds would have accumulated until she would have noticed something was wrong.
If she has spent the money then I don't see how she can be an innocent party?

She can certainly try to bargain with them to extend the debt or turn it into a new loan citing the merger as mitigating circumstances.