I've been paying Moorcroft and Westcroft a nominal amount of money for two debts I defaulted on sixt-ish years ago. I posted previously here about something else and got the impression I was being an idiot to have paid them anything. I was pregnant at the time and couldn't deal with the stress of stopping and then coming after me so I left it. However, -a year or two down the line and I'm wondering if I should continue to pay them. If not, what should I do? Make a settlement offer? I'm completely clueless. I will be buying a house next year so am slightly scared of upsetting the apple cart when they've pretty much left me alone. I know they can't default me as you can only be defaulted for a debt once but I also don't trust them and worry about what they will do. Thank you for any advice.

Thanks for such a quick response. I will look into CCAs. I currently pay a small amount to two debt collection agencies via direct debit. They occasionally send me settlement offers which I have ignored having never been in the position to satisfy them before. They haven't got in touch with me a couple of years now and I've just kept paying the agreed amount (£12 and £20). Can they take any action to try to recover more from me once the six years are up? I am keen to eventually settle the debt with them and would likely be in a position once being on the poperty ladder as due to the area we live in, any mortgage is likely to be £400-£600 cheaper than our rent is per month. I'm definitely looking forward to the improved report!

Hi all and thanks in advance for your help. I defaulted on some debt after losing my job. The defaults were for a credit card and a loan and were in June 2011 and July 2011. Am I right to think that these will fall off my credit file automatically shortly after June and July 2017? Or will they stay on but just show the last six years of credit history associated with them? In the meantime I have managed to maintain and pay credit that has appeared on my credit reports as well. These include a Barclays credit card, a Lloyds credit card and an O2 phone agreement. The minimum payment for each of these has been made each month (other than three occasions in 2014 where there were late payments) and often much more than the minimum payment has been made (e.g £400 instead of £30). The Lloyds credit card has now been paid off in full and I have no intention of using it again but I have kept it open. My remaining credit card has a limit which is being raised to £4500 some time this month (by the bank not at my request) with a balance of about £200 which I am planning to clear on payday at the end of May. My question is, if the defaults disappear from my file next year, what is likely to happen to my credit score? At the moment on my Noddle report it sits at something like 560. Once the defaults have gone is my score likely to shoot up if mY credit rating is considered satisfactory or will it take time to build back up? I appreciate Noddle is just a free report and will buy my Experian report closer to the time. I ask as my husband and I hope to be in a position to buy a property within the next two years and am wondering if we would be best leaving it for a while after the defaults have come off before looking seriously or if we can just get cracking once the defaults have gone.

Thanks for your advice Rainbowtears. Yes, deposit is fully protected luckily so I guess we'll just have to dispute if they get funny about anything. We also have the emails we sent as we thought this would ve back to bite us. I seem to remember that a lot of changes we made were to do with cleanliness (there was no way there had been a professional clean before we moved in) and the state of the garden which had not been maintained for a while, plus marks on walls which had apparently been decorated. Re: our new property, we will check carefully for workman damage but from what we've seen on our trips to it it all looks pretty perfect. This may be the first time we've moved into an undamaged property! Mariner -I'm not sure what you are talking about. We did keep it and had made amends. I think you missed the point of my post. The inventory man never agreed the amended version despite repeated chasing. There wasn't much more we could do about that other than contact the letting agent, which we did and that also got us no where.

Thank you. We did take photos of this one but I have a feeling it may only be where we felt things differed on the inventory. My husband needs to dig them out. We will definitely take photos of our new place, although this one is so pristine (the landlord had renovated it for a family member who no longer wanted it) that I think any damage will be our fault! We will check properly first though, just in case there are a few bits of damage that have been done by workmen.

Hi all, I hope you can help. We are moving out of our rented property. At the time of moving in, an inventory check in company was employed by the letting agent to conduct the check in. He basically went round the property very quickly and told us to mark any changes on it in our own time but within seven days and email him. We did this and heard nothing back. I chased for approximately two months on numerous occasions. The only response I received was one quite early on to say he was sorry and would respond properly the next day. He never did. The final email I sent was to the letting agent explaining that he had not come back to us. The letting agent apologised and said she would check. I heard nothing else and we did not get a signed final copy of the inventory. We are now moving out and the letting agent has asked us to make arrangements to conduct the inventory check with the same man and to arrange to pay him the money for the inventory. I fail to see how we can do this given we did not agree a final copy of the inventory and I am reluctant to pay him money when he will have nothing to mark it against. Any suggestions as to what we should do?

Sorry, one more question. I have found our original contract which states: '4.1.17 pay the Sam of £70 plus VAT in respect of the costs in preparation of any renewal agreement'. To me this would mean renewing a contract rather than going on to a rolling/periodic tenancy. Am I correct? Is there any legislation/case law I could quote at them about this? Many thanks

Thank you for the reply. I thought that was the case. I have never come across this before and there seems to be pretty much no information online about it. One more question. Our original contract stated that our rent would increase once per year by be rate of the RPI. Now we are on a periodic contract, can they increase it by more than the RPI? This is another trick they seem to be trying (or their maths may be poor).

Thank you. I will take a look at ehow. So I should accept the calls by the sound of it rather than just ignore them? Lloyds are driving me mad - at least Mint have agreed my repayment with relative ease where as Lloyds are just being unbelievable.

Thank you. I was sure I read that once upon a time but I wasn't sure if that was 1 or 2 times where they actually got through and I've been ignoring their calls this week. It's probably not the right thing to do to ignore the calls but I see no point in speaking to them when they don't know what is going on and haven't responded to my letter. I actually was asked a month or so ago by the call centre who were calling me to bring into a branch a letter that they had sent to me to prove that they had sent it because they didn't have a record of it their system. It's bad enough having to prove I sent letters to them without having to prove they've sent letters to me as well! Thanks for your help by the way and sorry for the rant.

I'm having problems with Lloyds. I lost my job and have been unable to maintain payments on my loan and credit card. I have written to them with my income and expenditure twice and they haven't responded. Meanwhile I keep getting calls from their call centre in India. I usually take them. As one part of Lloyds don't talk to the other part and haven't a clue what's going on, they get confused and eventually put the calls on hold for 7 days usually. I can't take it anymore though! This week I have had the following calls: 4 on Friday 5 on Saturday 1 so far today I haven't answered these ones as I can't bare to try and explain again to a very confused person on the phone who hasn't got a record of half of what's gone on on her computer system and is only interested in taking payment All well and good but when I don't have the money, I can't pay. I also got a letter from Excel Counselling Services last week which I posted on here about. I have written to them telling them I do not wish them to visit me and taking away their implied rights of access. Has anyone got any advice please? I am at the end of my tether. Also apologies if this in the wrong place.

I sent a statement of my outgoings and incomings to Lloyds last month and have not yet had a response. Yesterday I received a letter from their debt collection company (Excel) requesting that I arrange a home visit with them. I got some very kind help and a letter to send to Excel from someone on this forum already. That is ready to be taken to the post office. I was just wondering what to do about Lloyds? Any advise appreciated greatly!

Thank you. I really appreciate your advise.

Thank you. Do you think it's best just to leave Lloyds for now? It'd be nice if they bothered getting back to me re: my suggested payment!

Thank you. Do I also send this to Lloyds?

I received a letter yesterday from Excel Counselling Services requesting that they meet with me at my address to discuss my borrowings. It says I have 48 hours to contact them or they will visit me. I assume it is 48 hours from the date of the letter which was dated 29/03/11. I obviously have no desire to meet with them. I'm also a bit annoyed as I have written to Lloyds and provided a record of my outgoings and incomings and they seem to have chosen to ignore this, passed on my details to Excel and also continued to send me harassing letters, as well as call me every few days from their call centre in India. As an aside, the Indian call centre has no record of what is going on in the other areas of Lloyds and had no record of a letter that Lloyds sent to me a couple of months back in response to me requesting that they put my account on hold for 28 days! Anyway, my question is what do I do next with regards to Excel and with regards to Lloyds as well. I have access to a printer for about the next 3 hours so am hoping to get anything I need typed up and printed by then. Thanks for your help.

I'm hoping someone can help me. I had a car on HP which I bought in 2006. In 2008 I got a new job and with that came a company car. As a result I no longer needed my car and so used the VT right to return the car. The car was returned and surprise, surprise, the company manged to find 'damage' to the car which was almost worth the value of the amount I had remaining on the HP loan. I kid you not - it was almost to the penny! Anyway, I tried to contest this amount owed. I spoke to someone repeatedly on the phone, I emailed lots. Eventually I wrote to them asking if they could tell me officially how I can appeal. They responded with a long winded letter but ignoring the question. So I wrote back, thanking them for the letter and pointing out to them that they had still not answered my question. They failed to respond so two months later I wrote to them again and then wrote to them whenever I received any correspondence (reminding me that I owed money) again reminding them that I wanted to appeal but no one had responded. All of these were sent recorded delivery. Since then I have moved house and have failed to tell the company that I had moved. I was going to as I didn't want to be seen as the one in the wrong and had planned to write to them shortly. I just haven't got round to it yet. last week I checked my credit report and this debt was marked as 'settled'. There is no default or anything on there. The exact information present is: Current balance - £0 Date satisfied - £29/05/2009 Date last updated - 08/10/2009 Then on the grid underneath it is marked as settled in April (so different from what they have said above). Is this truly settled or are they able to come after me at a later date and mark it with a default? I am wondering if I need to bother telling them I have moved? I have never received any correspondence informing me that it is settled. Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks...yes, a mortgage if what I mean. I have no intention of getting credit again for anything other than a mortgage. If it hadn't been for all the credit myself and my partner built up at uni, when I was working we would have been quite comfortable and even have savings. Instead we were forever paying off debts - not a trap I want to get into agin.

Thanks Caro. Yes - you are right - £10 a month is not a lot over a long period of time and I wouldn't usually consider it but the balance is only £300ish and I figure that once I start earning again or when I get my settlement from my old company (fingers crossed), that I can pay it off and then have a 'clean' credit card. Of course I don't want to get into debt again but I wonder if I was to keep this going, if it may benefit me in the long run. E.G When all these defaults finally dissapear from my file, perhaps I can build up my credit rating once again without having to apply for credit cards aimed at 'risky' people!

Thanks Caro. Can I just ask a question please? Your budget spreadsheet has outgoings such as credit card payments in the main outgoings section (A). All the other ones I have seen have not had this in - only in the debt repayment section (D). Is there a reason for this difference? I was under the impression that I had to treat all my creditors equally so for example, even if I can pay a smaller debt off, I have to group this with the ones I can't pay and split the money equally. Is this correct? I'm very curious to the answer to this as my Egg card, the payment is minimal (£5/month) and if I could maintain this without defaulting I would rather do this. Thanks.

Thanks Tingy. I will do that. I'm in the process of firing of the letters to everyone at the moment about this whole silly mess.

Still need advice if anyone can help. Many thanks.

Thanks for the help so far. I really appreciate it. Can anyone advise on my HP arrangement query above please? I'm a bit worried. After speaking to Lloyds yesterday as well, about my loan, they have called again today. I missed the call and am reluctant to call back as it is an 0845 number and I can't really afford it at the moment. Now the woman yesterday sounded so disinterested with what I told her that I don't even think she has put notes on my account. I'm quite worried.

Hello, We bought a TV with HFC in April 2008. It was on a buy now pay later scheme. We had the money to pay it off right up until the month before the 12 months were up then sadly our financial circumstances changed and so were unable to pay the balance. We have made the payments on time up until last month and now this month we are unable to pay. I cannot find the original contract and was wondering if this is likely to be an HP agreement that we took the loan out on? I ask because I am trying to prioritise my debts whilst times are tough and read that HP debts should be prioritised seperately. Also has anyone been in a situation with HFC where they are unable to pay before? Could you tell me what the response was when you spoke to them about it? Many thanks.

Hi both and thank you for your help. I will do both those things. I spoke to Lloyds re: my loan today and Mint re: credit card. Lloyds was odd. I got through to the wrong department at first. They transferred me to the debt collection department. I explained my situation and that I'd been to citizens advice (I went last week but am still waiting to hear back) and was seeking help due to my situation. The woman sounded uninterested and said they would put notes on my accounts and see if they can come to an arrangement when they receive a letter from CAB. I asked if she would put notes on my account now and she agreed. Mint - the woman said she would send me papers to put my outgoings and incomings on and that once they'd received that back that they would see what they can do to freeze interest and things. She did keep pointing out to me that it would be a default and would prevent me getting credit in the future. My other debt that is due right now is with HFC for a TV I bought on a Buy now Pay Later deal. I cannot find the paperwork now (2 house moves since) and am a bit confused. Does anyone know if this is likely to be an HP agreement or something different? I ask as I've read HP debt should be prioritised differently from other debt. Thanks all.