catalogue debt

A question about : catalogue debt

Hi,
I currently owe a catalogue company Ј6000. I was managing the monthly payments just fine until the buy now pay later ended and the minimum payment jumped to over Ј300 a month!
I immediately contacted them in writing explaining my financial position but this got me nowhere. I am receiving letters every 2 weeks from different departments and phone calls constantly. I advised that until my financial situation improved I could only offer a payment of Ј10 a month which they did not accept but I have continued to pay since this started in February 2014. In september they wrote and offered 2 payments (October and November) of Ј10 with interest frozen to allow me time to fix things . Unfortunately I did not win the lottery and my situation has not changed.
I have a young child and work full time.
In every letter I have written to them I have asked for them to freeze interest and charges to stop my debt increasing. I am not trying to run away from this, it is my debt and I have to pay it.
I do have other debts, 2 loans with my bank and a credit card, all of which I am able to pay.
I do not want to do an iva or similar as I have a good relationship with all other creditor's and am able to make my payments with them.
I have asked also in my last few letters for a full and final advising I may be able to aquire funds from family to pay this. They refused.
I have just received a default notice from their in house collections department demanding payment or they will take further action. What does this mean?
I do not know what to do next. I have to reply to them by 29th December.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You.

Best answers:

• Further action = they will use red ink in their letters rather than black ink.
  Send this:
  Since making our previous agreement with you, my circumstances have changed considerably, resulting in my not being able to continue with the agreement previously arranged.
  I cannot now afford the previously agreed monthly payments because [your reasons added here].
  In view of my current situation, would you please accept a token offer of Ј1.00 per month to be reviewed in 6 months? If interest other charges are being added to the account, I'd be grateful if you would freeze these so that the debt does not increase. Should my circumstances improve, I will contact you immediately. In the meantime, I'd appreciate it if you could send me a paying-in book / standing order form to make it easier to pay.
  Thank you for your assistance, I look forward to hearing from you as soon as possible.
  Yours faithfully,
• Hi angel85, didn't want to read and run, sorry to hear you are having problems.
  Tomorrow I would suggest you call StepChange who look after me on my Debt Management Plan, you don't have to go down that route or an IVA if it isn't right for you but they will give you free unbiased advice about your situation and the options available to you.
  They are obviously hoping you can pay them back, it isn't usual for a company to accept full and final offers unless you have already defaulted, this means that you have failed to keep up an agreed repayment plan and it is likely to be a bit further down that route before they would admit you really can't repay them & look at offers!
  I have to say that although you might have a good relationship with your other creditors this catalogue debt has probably already started to hurt your credit rating and it will probably only get worse. Do you rent or have a mortgage? How are you doing with all of your other bills?
  It's worth posting an SOA here so that the good folks can help you with hopefully saving some pennies but honestly my first thought would be speak to SC and you will feel so much better! Good luck!!
• The Shatalogue company wont refuse an offer, they will just say it isn't acceptable.
  Stay off the phone too.
• Thank you for replying.
  I am concerned that even doing an dmp will mean I have contact all my other creditors and reduce my payments to them which I do not want to do.
  I manage just about paying all my other bills and do so every month but to in order to do this my partner has to almost empty his bank every month to put money into mine to do this.
  I will write that letter to them this evening harveybobbles but I'm worried that after receiving the default notice there next step will be to sell it on and send someone to knock at my door!
  I'm petrified I won't lie. I have always kept contact to be in writing only and always request that they do the same although the endless phonecalls seem to keep coming.
• Murphy2011 can you tell me what SOA is please?
• What did you spend the Ј6000 on - can you sell any of it?
• I have held this account for years with the catalogue. I didn't blow Ј6000 in one go. It amount is not just the goods, it's the interest the whacked on over the years and then once the buy now pay later finished the payments almost doubled. In the few months before I contacted them to say i was having difficulties finding the money to pay I was using a credit card to make the payments, stupid I know.
  After I had my baby I was on maternity for 10months. Statutory maternity pay is half my wages so we struggled and stupidly I purchased clothes and baby items that I needed maybe some I didn't need too. Then when Christmas came, instead of being sensible and telling people we were not in a position to give gifts I stupidly bought all of the gifts through the catalogue. My telly broke so I bought one through the catalogue. There is nothing I could sell now that would even touch the debt.
• Bleeding catalogue company's absolute nightmare to deal with not to mention a rip off.
  Hope op you can reach some sort agreement with them very soon
  Like the folks have said try contacting the free debt charities even if it just for a chat to see what options you have, and please dont worry they not worth it
  Take care
• Thank you all for replying.
  I have written another letter this evening so will send it off tomorrow. I'll also give step change a call after work.
• OP - the only people allowed to knock on your door are a Copper, a postal/courier worker and someone lost looking for directions.
  The account will get passed to a debt company who will send out scary looking letters.
  Send that letter off and wait for them to reply.
  Stay off the phone and have a good Christmas
• I agree with the above, when I had catalogue debt I sent the above letter and whilst they didn't "accept" the offer they still took it each month and I carried on paying that until the debt was clear
• Hi,
  You say you've had the account for years, how many years exactly ?
  Is it a shop direct account catalogue by any chance ?
  You have to have a little knowledge of the debt collection process here, what will most likely happen, is they will sell your account on to a DCA (debt collection agency), most likely to Lowell, who pick up a lot of these delinquent accounts.
  There is no need to panic here, this is actually good news for you.
  A DCA will be much more flexible on monthly payments than the cat company will be.
  You can offer them the Ј10 per month, they may at first refuse, but remember, these are all just moves in the dance, eventually they will accept your tenner, most unlikley a doorstep fetish man will ever turn up, if they do, simply ignore, or tell them to go away, as you will only deal with them in writing.
  It pays to know how the system works, i suggest you Google :
  debt collection,
  and gain some knowledge.
• Hi all. I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas.
  Well I sent yet another letter off to the catalogue company as advised above by harveybobbles.
  I mentioned in it that I was receiving letters from 3 different departments, could they advise who I should be addressing my correspondence too.
  I received a reply today saying they could not locate the letters I had mentioned receiving and could only assume this meant that NDR could not accept my offer and then went on to say I should contact step change.
  That's it! They didn't acknowledge or mention anything I had put into the letter.
  What should I do next?
  I wad going to photocopy every letter I had received from them including each of my replys and send them off?
  Thanks again.
• The only thing I can see them jumping on, is that all creditors are not been treated fairly.
• NDR are Shop Direct's own in-house DCA and, as the FCA are not happy with such arrangements, they are busy handing-back all the defaulted accounts to S/D.
  This is why NDR have yet to get invovled.
  I have a cataloge customer who is being difficult when it comes to payment and SD haven't passed-on this debt (yet),