Full and Final Settlement

From my experience (I'm no expert) I would F&F what you can and use the money saved in repayements to repay the others.

However, i would say if you are good at it and lucky, you could settle all your debts in the region of 25-35% so say roughly the amount you have. the key is to be persistent. Write and call them, again dont agree till it is in writing though.

Also a tip that worked for me was, say you can't make the repayment (cause if its too much you actually can't) then ask for them to remove your telephone number etc. They will panic and send out a lower settlement offer after a week or two, trust me!

But don't go for the other options. they can have longer effects on your credit file. Where possible, I'd say always f&F!

I have example off my F&F Settlements on my thread to give you an idea of the settlements that are possible....
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=71692647&posted=1#post71692647


Hope this helps!

And I am aware that my tactics are not exactly the most offical or ethical. But Needs must!

£20573 of debt and 11 years to pay off, so approx. £150 per month.

Is F&F an option? I got the impression you did not have a lump sum available and were reliant on your mum.

An IVA is an option at that level of payments (for 5 years if non-homeowner, 6 years if homeowner).

Or, if not a homeowner, maybe bankruptcy where you would get an IPO of £150 x 36 months?

Both options would affect your credit, and really should have been done earlier when the defaults were fresh.

Dorsetdave wrote: »

Thanks for the advice. I've had a look at your link and I'll follow it a bit further later on. I take it you chased all these payments yourself? I'm with SC and it's just a bit annoying that they don't seem to like people making one off payments. However I think I may now try and settle them all myself (as you suggest).

Sometimes when the crap hits the fan you don't have enough "Energy" to solve these problems, a few years down the line and I feel a lot more confident to start communicating with these people. One of my accounts has just been sold on, Again, do you know if this effects how much the new DCA will accept? I've read that the longer you have the debt the less they expect to receive for it?

Thanks for the support.

Paying off debts is much more stressful than being in debt i found! as strange as it sounds! Trying to hunt down who owns the debt, then if you have all the paperwork to make the payment. I was so eager to get everything paid off, I twas a nightmare having to wait for everything to get sorted. I'm still waiting for a new DCA contacting me, its been 8 weeks since it was moved on and i have no idea who too still!

I chased them all myself, I was looking into step change but i feel they are too eithical, wanting a repayment of the full amount, or as close to it. For me that would have meant many more years of debt which i wasn't willing to do. Totally agree with you. But go for it yourself! You can do it!

Thats good news for you, more it gets sold and passed on the better. Make sure it is sold and not just collected on behalf off. Cause if it has been actually "Sold" you could settle for crazy low amount - they only pennies in the pound for your debt so are just wanting an easy profit.


All the best of luck to you! you can do it! sit down with a coffee, a note pad, and your computer/phone and get cracking.

You might even start to enjoy it in a weird way, its like a hobby, gives you that rush every time you pay one off!

:money:

Thanks for the positive advice SH. Agree about SC and their ethical approach. They certainly helped keep the DCA from hassling me at the beginning and have my utter respect. BUT..... sometimes they do make some strange suggestions.

One advantage of being with SC is that I do know who owns all my debts and I'll seriously consider your advice to negotiate with them. I may be able to get £6000 together and doing the sums it works out at a 30% offer on all the accounts.

Congratulations on managing to sort your debts out. I can appreciate the Buzz that must have given you.

Hi, I need some help here from expert debt adviser, I am in debt with 10 different creditors 2 loans and 7 credit cards and one store card, worth total of 38k , i am paying one pound a month as a token payment since 2010 , now currently I do have one ccj with mbna(ARC) which was awarded early 2017, all the other accounts have default , interesting thing is that only one default is showing on my credit file (Noddle) which was awarded by link barclay credit card, as my credit file already damaged and most of the default is not showing on my credit file , but still i am paying £1 each to my debt collection agencies , apart from ccj which i am not paying since august 2016,
My question is that if i go for full and final settlement even though some of my defaults are not coming up on my credit file, if they settled through full and final settlement process, will they show again on my credit file as a partially settled or settled whichever is .Can I do full and final settlement on ccj , if not what will happen after 6 years of ccj, will my credit file updated and start fresh, please answer on both issue, Thanks in advance