Also, depite my lack of knowledge, I managed to get MBNA to agree to accept £4500 on £16000 debt in partial settlement with written guarantee that they won't chase for the money in the future, simply by being persistent and using the CCA letter etc from this site. Some you win, some you lose but at least some of his debts are being sorted. I am a lot poorer as a result and now have no savings but the extent of debt when it is too high becomes absolutely crippling and you can't live your life - he is better to owe me and repay at a reasonable rate - I expect I shall die before he pays me back but hey, what are mum's for???

Well, I took letters from here re harassing phone calls - had to send these twice and Fredricksons returned the £1 postal order, third time of writing, they agreed to stop! Sent letter giving them permission to deal with me and emphasised that I did not own the debt but would try to help my son. Asked for CCA and got stuff from Capital but to be honest I don't really understand any of it so don't understand how to get bank charge refund or if the debt is enforceable. I think I must be a bit thick sometimes but all this is new to me. Still, I will see what happens next? Cap One originally agreed to accept £1500, but then reneged and handed it to Fredricksons!!

Please can you help me? Capital One gave my son's debt of £4K to fredricksons debt collection agency. They agreed both by letter and email, 'on behalf of their client Capital One' to accept £1654 in full and final settlement. I asked for them to include a sentence - "That the sum of £1654 was in full and final settlemnt of the account and neither they, Frdricksons, nor Capital One, nor any other collection agency acting on Capital One's behalf would try to recover further monies in the future". Within minutes of me sending this email I received an emailed reply to say "Capital One had recalled the account as the placement period has expired. We are no longer dealing with the account. Please now contact the client direct to discuss payment." I emailed back to ask what this means and for it to be confirmed in writing and received the following reply within minutes: "Our client, Capital One have recalled the account as the period of time they placed the account with us to collect on, has now expired. A letter has been sent in the post today. We are no longer dealing with the account. You will need to contact them direct." The agreed date for the repayment was 4 June 2009 so no breach on my son's part there. Does anyone else have any experience of this?? We ar at a loss to know what to do for the best. So far, this has been a long ongoing since last July battle! Any advice would be greatly applreciated. Thank you

It might be worth your while writing to ask for it - this is what I did on advice from here and received a photocopy of the original application and a photocopy of T&Cs which had the higher credit limit in it - not the one applicable when RBS Advanta changed to MINT. This indicates to me that people in the office will 'doctor' paperwork which I find incredible, but it is not the copy of the signed CCA and indicates they don't have it. It appears that without being able to produce the signed cca in court, the debt collector/'bank has a much weaker case, some say unenforceable. I don't know but I do think it makes you have a much stronger case for negotiating either a smaller monthly sum or F&F settlement, funds permitting, good luck

Hi, I wote to ask if the debt had been sold or whether the DCA was acting as an agent and received reply in each case for my son that the debts were not sold. If you ask the direct question in writing, they do appear to respond, especially if you follow up within a 2 or 3 week period with a reminder. This is just based on my experience. I wrote to MINT to ask if they had sold my son's debt to Triton in the letter asking for SAR, mind you I am not too sure what the implications are if it is sold or just being managed??

From the advice I received on this site, do the following to each creditor: there are standard letter templates on here and the letters I sent are: 1) to stop DCA or banks or credit cards phoning or turning up on doorstep you need the following which yousend to the debt chaser: Dear Sir/Madam Your Ref: put you account number here Following a number of calls from your company relating to an alleged debt, I now write to inform you that I require all communications in writing. Please do not telephone me again and remove any telephone numbers you hold for me from your systems. Your telephone calls are in breach of the Office of Fair Trading guidelines. If you continue to telephone me after the receipt of this letter an official complaint, together with a log recording the times and frequency of the calls, will be passed both to that office and to the Trading Standards office. For your information note that all telephone calls are recorded. This type of debt collection method is contrary to the ‘Administration of Justice Act 1970’ in that it is intended to cause alarm and distress to the recipient. Your methods will not be tolerated. Should the telephone calls not cease immediately a formal complaint, containing copies of all correspondence including yours, will be submitted to the relevant authorities. This will be relevant to questions of your fitness to hold a licence under the Consumer Credit Act, whether or not it results in a prosecution. Take further note that continued telephone calls after the receipt of a request not to call may constitute a criminal offence under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. I trust that I have made myself understood on this matter. Yours faithfully It works, believe me. Letter 2 - Then you need to ensure they actually have a signed copy of the consumer credit agreement (CCA) not just the application form, so this letter next to all debt chasers including DCAs: Dear Sirs, CCA Request: Your ref: put your account number here I thank you for your recent correspondence regarding the above reference. Please be advised: I do not acknowledge ANY debt to your company. I require you to supply the following documentation before I will correspond further on this matter. 1. You must supply me with a true copy of the alleged agreement you refer to. This is my right under your obligation to supply a copy of the agreement under the legislation contained within s.78 (1) Consumer Credit Act 1974 (s.77 (1) for fixed sum credit) - your obligation also extends to providing a statement of account. I enclose a £1 postal order in payment of the statutory fee, PO Serial Number xxxxxxx 2. A signed true copy of the deed of assignment of the above referenced agreement that you allege exists should this debt be sold or assigned to your company. 3. You are notified that you are obliged to supply these documents, whether you are the original creditor or not under S189 of the CCA 1974. Non-compliance with my request is a criminal offence under the above Act and will result in a report being submitted to the relevant statutory authorities. As you are aware, a credit agreement that is not properly documented and signed by the customer is totally unenforceable under the CCA and therefore is a complete defence to any court claim that is issued. Take note at this stage, that any legal action you may contemplate will be both vigorously defended and contested. Yours Faithfully Whatever you do, don't forget to enclose the £1 postal order and they say on here not to sign it, They have 12+2 workingdays to respond and if they don't answer this letter they can't enforce the debt but you are not in the clear yet. They may send you a photocopy of the terms and conditions but this is not a signed and dated CCA, so seek advice again. Letter 3 - Then at the same time - Subject to Access Letter Include the details and letter below: Data Protection Act 1998 Subject Access Request Dear Sir/Madam ACCOUNT NUMBER: put your account number Please supply me with a complete list of transactions and charges relating to my banking history with your organisation. Alternatively, a complete set of statements for that period will be acceptable. Additionally, where there has been any event in my account history over this period which has required manual intervention by any member of your staff, or any other person, I require disclosure of any indication or notes which have either caused or resulted in that manual intervention, or other evidence of that manual intervention in relation to my banking business with you. If you are unable to supply this data because there has been no such manual intervention, then please be so kind as to confirm this in your response. I enclose the statutory maximum fee of £10. You have 40 days in which to comply. Furthermore, if I discover that you have levied disproportionate penalties against me, then I shall be reclaiming them, and also reclaiming the enclosed £10 Data Protection Act subject access request fee. If there is specific information which you require in order to satisfy yourself as to my identity, please let me know by return. However, please note that the above address is the one which you normally use to communicate my private business to me and which you have hitherto found to be acceptable. I would be happy to collect the Data from my local branch. Yours faithfully, Don't forget the £10 postal order which I believe is deducted from your account. Sit back and wait till they respond to you - they have 40 days. Check through what they send - a copy of the application form is not a CCA so check carefully. Then come back here and you will get good advice - this site has proved a lifesaver for my son. Good luck ALL LETTERS TO GO RECORDED DELIVERY so I had prooof of sending the 3 letters to each DCA or bank. A lot to take in I know but worth doing, good luck

CAP1 sent letter to my son saying interest suspended for 28 days - they must be telepathic! He now homeless as a result of debt problems - how much worse can it get??? Still at least we are dealing with it now, wish he had confided in me earlier, might possibly have been able to help him with saving his flat! Good luck to everyone and again thanks for the help.

Hi, when you get the response from them, probably photocopies of all statements and a photcopy of the application and phtocopy of the CCA, check every piece of paper for the signed and dated CCA because it seems without it, they can't enforce the debt! Then you have a much stronger basis for negotiating - I found all this on this site! If this is not included, then it is highly likely they don't have the original, so good luck!

Is there a letter to ask for interest to b stopped as Cap1 are still adding that monthly. Many thanks

Well, the CCA is definitely not signed - it is a photocopy of their current T&Cs, so maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel!! I do hope so as my son is severely depressed and I don't have much money (bring on the violins) but I must try to help him because there is no one else. I don't know how you all manage to cope with all this, good luck to you all, and my sincere thanks, I couldn't do this without this site

I found this on the net - I just copied the bit about MINT - Extract from presentation document for RBS Retail Direct - 4 October 2004 Iain Clink (MD, Cards Business): Now moving on to when we have accounts on board, we want to make sure the accounts maintain the quality they initially showed when we brought them on board, and so we have an ongoing credit scoring of active accounts. This is based on the account behaviour and it is calculated monthly for all accounts we have. We base it on factors such as the credit limit utilisation, how much of the credit they are using, the type of spending - if someone starts actually going to an ATM and withdrawing cash on their credit card it is indicative of higher risk - and also the pattern of repayments which is fairly obvious. The next stage is when someone actually gets into trouble and starts missing payments on their credit card. We split this into early stage and late stage. The early stage is when they have missed their first payment and that triggers the process. At this stage we are still focusing on maintaining the relationship. A lot of customers just miss their first payment for reasons like they have gone on holiday; they have paid for years, no problem, it just so happens they have gone on holiday and forgot to pay their credit card balance. It is very important we differentiate the types of customers here that are making payments, so we prioritise the risks between amount at risk and using our behavioural score. We make early contact - this is key here! - through outbound power dialling, and we do that at times we are likely to get customers in, which generally is early evening when they have come back from work or Saturday mornings before they are heading out for the day. Late stage is where they have missed three consecutive payments. At this stage we are focusing on recovering the debt, we pass the amount to a debt collection agency initially in-house, it is still in Southend, and then further down the track to an external agency. We close the account at that stage and clearly try to recover the debt, but again I would like to stress here we do it in a way which is very cognisant of the individual’s circumstances and it is not heavy-handed. Looking at our strategies, we have over a hundred strategies covering collections, re-issue, amount of credit limit and so on. As shown on this slide, this is just an example of one in the collection site. I am not going to run through it but its really to get across that we have a very defined process here, our operations centres are working to these processes, and we are continually refining these and feeding them back in from our learning’s and we have champion/challenger approaches in all these areas. Looking at our delinquency experience, a fairly standard measure, and you could get this data in the market place. It is looking at how much of your customers have missed repayments, that is three payments delinquent as we call it. You can see that the cards business in RBS is significantly lower than the industry as a whole and that is due to what I have been talking about in terms of how we select customers, what we do when they are on board and the collections process. If you look at the percentage of our portfolio balances greater than three payments delinquent, you cannot compare this with the market because it is not available on a like for like basis, but you can see from this slide again that is coming down, and that is indicative again of the strength of our processes over the last few years. Looking at provisions, they are automated. We based them on the amount of delinquent balances and the expected loss rate depending on the number of missed payments you have. You have seen from the graphs I have given you, the loss rates will be relatively stable over time; we provide for expected loss at all stages of delinquency and we feed the trends back into the scorecards again, so it is a cycle that continues. Looking at our balance sheet provisions as a percentage of delinquent balances greater than 90 days, there was a blip in 2001 as we changed systems and also we wrote off accounts one month earlier which just reduced the coverage there. Generally it is falling a little bit and that again is just coming back to the strength of our processes. The quality of our delinquent balances has improved, there is more of them in the early stages of delinquency as opposed to previously because we are catching them Shows how they actually get these things up and running!!

I have done the FORMAL NOTICE - ACCOUNT IN DISPUTE letter to Triton and they are out of time 12+2 days form the first letter, so I shall see what happens. The only thing I can find about RBS Advanta changing to MINT is on a January 2004 statement saying 'Welcome to MINT' paragraph saying 'same great benefits' and 'use the RBS Advanta card as normal and they will send new MINT card when current card expires'. ]Something very odd though, enclosed with that statement is a photocopy of CCA, unsigned and undated (do you have to sign them) but stating that the credit limit is £8,900 when on the statement it clearly states £6900 and stayed at this limit until August 2004 when it was raised to £8900. The covering letter which is also 1 day outside the 12+2 limit, ie Isent the letter SAR on 23rd July and the response is dated 11 August, makes no mention of the CCA, just says 'Please fine enclosed copies of your statements which detail any charges that may have been applied to your clients account, as requested. Should any months be missing, please note tha this would be due to inactivity on your account. I trust the enclosed is of assistance to you. He is the account holder so who they mean by client's account I don't know. Any comments and guidance greatly appreciated, thank you!!

Thank you so much, I think it is an application form and I will try to scan this for you to see and perhaps be kind enough to advise (not sure how to do it but I will work it out!!). Mint refuse to deal with me cos it is handled by Triton but it looks as if they will have to. I will send the account in dispute letter to Triton today and then see what occurs. Do you think I should contact Mint to say this isn't a cca, assuming it isn't? Thank goodness for this site!!!

Sorry to take up so much time, but one more thing which may be relevant although I don't understand the significance of it. - The debt has not been sold to Triton, so they are acting as agents, what does this mean? Thanks again

Thank you - I wrote a letter to Triton and MINT 23rd July asking for the CCA etc. No response from Triton on this but MINT sent copies of statements + copy of signed Credit Agreement but with RBS Advnta not MINT and dated asfar as I can see either January or June 2001. Are RBS Advanta MINT?? Does this CCA mean they can just change the name of the credit card company?? How do we stand - can anyone help please? Should I send the letter in Berrylover's reply to Triton since they have not come up with the goods and until I get advice from you, I am not sure if MINT have. Mint say 'We are obliged to provide you with a 'true' copy of the credit agreement and a statement of financial information relating to the accout, namely, the state of the account, amount currently due, with amounts and due dates of future payments that still require to be made. In terms of CCA copy document regulations, the 'true' copy requirement can be satisfied by providing a copy agreement at the date the card agreement was made and providing that plus a copy of the current terms of the card agreement.' I am not sure if they are trying to fool me into accepting this because nowhere on the cca is MINT mentioned. What do you think? I wrote to Triton and Mint on 23rd July - Mint replied 6th August. Triton have not replied to the 23rd July letter but sent the following on 27th August: 'The RBS plc instructs us not to accept your offer of £3K in f&f settlement of the debt owed to them. In the circumstances and on their instruction, we are prepared to accept an amount of £7386 as settlement of the above outstanding balance, provided this payment is received at our office within 14 days from the date of this letter. Alternatively if you are unable to make this payment we require your proposals for monthly repayment and a full up to date financial statement. This document must include proof of your income, a list of all essential monthly outgoings, a list of names and balances for all creditors and a pro rata payment offer. Our records confirm that you recently telephoned our office on 15th August and stated you do not have a monthly income. If you are not working, we require clarification as to why you are not currently in receipt of state benefits.' Can they reqlly insist on all this?? so Many many thanks

I will do the same SAR and CCA letters to CAP1 and see what happens, thanks for your help and support! My heart goes out to people in debt - this is my son's and is worrying enough - the stress effects on people far outweigh the money they owe and the charges are exorbitant to say the least! Thank you

Thanks for reminding me - I did this letter to Triton and they have not replied to it. They have replied to the letter offering £3K to say Mint refused the offer and want £7500. Does this mean he doesn't have to pay the DCA? Does this mean the bank will simply give it to another DCA? I sent SAR to Mint and received a lot of statements which I intend to go through to see if the charges are exorbitant, any advice on what to do next? Thank you so much for your help.

I am sorting out my sons debts c£30K. I have paid £4500 in partial settlement to MBNA on £11K so am happy with that. Triton DCA for MINT wanted £10K, offered £3k, they refused apparently on MINTs instruction, they want £7500 within 28 days. Does my son have to provide financial breakdown? I can't see why - I thought if I let them wait till 28 days is up and then offer £4500 on a take it or leave it basis. What do you think. I have very limited funds but can't watch my son sinking into oblivion without trying to help. He owes £4K to Cap1 - they refused offer of £1500 an want financial income expenditure too. They are still charging intrest. I will write and ask for interest to be stopped - what he can pay will be les than the interest if they go for monthly payments. Any advice here? All help gratefully received, thak goodness for this site.

Thanks for your response. I have phoned Triton today and made an offer £3000 whichis approximately 30% of the total outstanding - they refused and offered to accept £7300. This is not possible so I said the only thing I can advise my son is bankruptcy in which case since he has no assets, they would be lucky to see £30. They don't care so it is now a waiting game. I will send a letter repeating this offer and see what happens. MINT refused to deal with it and said Triton are now dealing with the debt. I went round in circles but got absolutely nowhere and they said the offer must be made to Triton. I did that, no good. I am at a complete loss here, I think if I was a DCA I would grab the £3K especially since the offer is from the mother of the person who owes them the money as he has none!! But I can play a waiting game, we'll see! I have already done the no phone calls letter and the SAR to MINT. Do I need to repeat this to Triton, I have done the no phone calls to Triton and disputed that he owes Triton any money - he doesn't does he?Any other help appreciated, many thanks, Sheila

Hi I wold be so graeful if anyone could help me. I am trying to help my son deal with his debts - he is now unwell and clearly in need of help. He owes 3 different credit cards, MBNA have met with me and agreed a partial settlement with a letter stating they will not chase for the rest. Triton Credit Services (where on earth do they get their employees!!!) are acting for MINT, and I offered MINT 30% of his debt in full and final settlement and sent Subject to Access letter to them, they confirm the debt has not been sold but in truth I don't understand the implications. What is my next step - I am handling and financing these payments to get them off his back and we will sort out how he repays me at a later date when/if he is well enough but I have limited savings. Also he owes to Capital One - I offered them 25% in full and final settlement and am still waiting a response - they all deal with him via letter now, and he sends any response unopned to me - stupid when he has written to them to say they can have full and frank discussions with me but they won't. I thankfully have not had much experience of debt but do want to help him resolve his problems so he can get well and make a clean start. Please give me any advice you can, it will be greatly appreciated, thanks,