Thanks so much for the help everyone. I think I have got the Yorkshire Water situation cracked, after taking the advice given to me here. Yes, the loan company is J.R.Naylors .. the guy is set to call at my house again tommorrow. I am going to get something written out to give to him, and tell him I am posting an exact copy of same letter to their offices. I am also going to tell the collector i will only deal with the company via mail from now on, and not to bother calling again. I will alert him to the text in the letter that states that he will be tespassing if he bothers to return. Does that sound ok ? I must be feeling brave lol

Thanks for the replies thus far ... I will call Yorkshire water now, and write to the DCA The doorstep loan company is called " naylors finance "

Hi All I need help !!! I am not going to make excuses. It has been a very strange year. My company went bankrupt, my beloved Dad passed away suddenly, and i have felt at times like laying down and giving up on life. BUT ... I am not going out like that. I need to be strong and i need to deal with my debt problems. I just need some advice please , specifically on two issues - I didnt pay my water bill for a long time. Stupid i know. The bill outstanding is now £700. Yorkshire Water passed my account onto Rockford debt agency. They wrote me and said if i didnt call them by Jan 25th they would assume i didnt need the water supply. I called themn yesterday and explained my situation, and that i had no money at all, but did hope to get income very soon as i was feeling like my old self and ready to fight again. They said they could only accept £10 per week minumum if i was on benefits ( which im not ) , or higher then that if i was working. Can someone please advise me how to proceed with these guys ? If it is £10 a week out of your benefits, that over £40 per month, and i will have to pay a higher rate. Does anyone know what minimun they have to accept from me by law. I saw a financial inclusion officer and she said they cant cut off a water supply as its a basic health requirement, but still, im losing sleep over this one. The second is a doorstep loan ( i know, i know, ive let this get into a right old mess, but i want to take responsibility ) ... started off borrowing £100 paying £6 per week .. did this one week to buy food, before i knew it the payments are £50 odd a week. I havnt paid them since christmas. I told them i cant pay it anymore becuase i would tbe able to afford food. The collector calls every week even though ive told him i dont have any money for the foreseeable. I wrote a letter to their head office, which has been ignored. When i asked the collector about it, he said " the boss has filed it, but it wasnt an official letter, it was only from you " ... they just send me generic " you havnt paid " letters, as if i havnt communicated with them that I cant pay and explained why. I offered the collector £5 last week, and he didnt want to take it . I insisted and got him to make me out a receipt. I think he didnt want to take the £5 becuase they want my account to go into arrears and take me to court, and if i pay the £5 at least a court can see I have been trying. Now I am by no means a small guy, but the collector is a hefty chap, and he can be fairly intimidating. Any advice on this issue would be massively appreciated. Any help anyone could give me would be a total lifeline. I feel ashamed and embarassed it has all come to this, but I am reaching out my hand and asking for help here, as I am not ready to give up my life !!!! thanks so much lotsa love xx

Yes i am on benefits sadly after only having ever claimed them for 2 weeks twelve years ago. My health hasnt been great. A Year before the company went bust my doctor diagnosed me with acute stress, which causes me to break out in shingles when it gets really bad .. i say break out, it has happened to me twice in the last 18 months and its embarassing and horrible. My doc advised me to take at least 3 months off work but i couldnt at the time as the company needed me.

Hi thanks for the reply. My Dad actually passed before christmas but it has affected me terribly. I am broke for a number of reasons .. my ( fairly large ) business went bust last year and i lost everything, my house, my car, the kitchen sink .. just havnt recovered from that really I cant stay down forever but it has been a challenging time to say the least

Hi all Really hoping someone can help me .. im really desperate ;-/ I wont bore you with the background but my Dad recently passed away and its been a troublesome time. I havnt been my usual self and have let a few things slip. A few months ago i got a £90 fine for no MOT. It was the day before the test, and i shouldnt have driven the car but i did. I couldnt pay the fine as we have been super broke, and like i said i havnt been myself so i ingored it / forgot about it / wallowed in self pity. May 10th i was written to by Philips Bailiffs saying the debt was passed to them and it was now £165 ( £90 fine and £75 for their fees ) I called them May 18th and explained that i couldnt pay since i was extremely broke and we were struggling to even buy food. They wouldnt accept a small nominal payment to show willing, and i got frustrated and said i would call back. June 14th i receive another letter from them ... the amount has gone up to £365 !!! The relevent part of the letter reads " Despite previous correspondence and an attendance to your premises you have failed to make suitable arrangements to discharge your arrears. YOur account will shortly be passed to our removal bailiffs for IMMEDIATE exectuion by way of the seizure and sale of goods to clear the arrears you have failed to pay " So i phone them up, and say that no bailiff has attended my property. They claim a bailiff attended June 7th at 4.30pm ... well we were in all day on that day, i know for a fact as it was the anniversary of my wife's brothers death, and i know we were here all day. No one knocked at the door or rang the doorbell, and no card of any kind was left. I told them this on the phone and they said a bailiff definately attended. The guy on the phone actually said " oh he will have only knkcoed once cos he has a lot of houses to cover " !!!! .. i also told them definately no card was put through my door, and the guy said " it was probably just a scrap of paper " !!!!!!!! £200 fees added on for that ? and i question if they are making this up! I told them that fair enough i know i have to pay the £90, that is my debt and im responsible for it .. i think i would even pay the extra £75 taking it to £165, but to add £200 on for a phantom bailiff visit seems insane and exessive ... how is this meant to help someone clearly in a terrible financial position ? I argued for ages with the guy .. he said the only way he could put a hold on the account and thus stop it incurring further charges was if i paid something on my debit card, which i told him i couldndt do. I told him i would get back to them within 48 hours, thinking i would do some research before getting back in touch. I just received some amazing help a year ago through this forum, and im really hoping someone can advice me of my rights and best way to proceed please. Thanks in advance x

He has applied for DLA via Help the Aged, but he wont hear back for a few weeks apparently ... Im going to take the plunge and make appointments at each of his loan places to go in with him and basically tell them there is no way at all he can afford to continue to pay them at the current rates...

aaannnd BUMP I nned to write letters to both his loans, can anyone please give me any advice ... basically i cant let him default on the loans as he owns his house, but he really cant afford to pay the loans can anyone tell me how likely it is that the lenders will re-organise the loans, or take a newly negotiated lower payments we basically just need to buy him a little time

Hi Ida .. im in yorkshire

Hi all Just wanted to share my GOOD NEWS with you all. Basically, i wrote back to BCW, telling them that i still disagreed with what they were saying, and that if they wanted to continue communication with me, they needed to give me more in depth information to back up their claims, and if they couldnt do so, then i wanted to remind them that ( insert legal jargon here ) if they continued to write to me it was classed as harassment. I fully expected to get another threatening letter in return, and to have to write something else to them, but on friday i received a letter from BCW, that basically told me they had given up !!!! " Dear Mr *********** ( they put my full name with middle name all in caps ) I write with regard to the recent communication concerning the above account and can confirm that this account has been closed at this office and returned to our clients " Not sure is student loans will try and set someone else on me, but big ,bad BCW have bacially run off with their tail between their legs !!!! 1-0 for the working man !!!!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

**BUMP** anyone please ?

**bump ** anyone ?

Thanks everyone for the help ... does anyone have a template or idea of a letter i could send them back that would say i consider it statute barred ? i just dont wanna trip myself up writing them back Also, can someone confirm for me that BCW cant arrest my bank account .. im sure its idle threats, but it does play on my mind, and it would be a complete nightmare if that happened to us just as we are finally getting back on our feet

hey thanks for the reply .. the 98 one would have been sept 08, at the start of that years university year

Hi guys, just an update and really after some advice what to do next Today i received a letter back from BCW after sending them the latter as advised Basically says " we are instructed by our clients that the prescriptions and limitations act 1980 does not apply to accounts of this type, and have been advised that the balance quoted above is due and payable " can anyone advise me what to do next , as im sure they are wrong, my student loans were in 97 and 98

I completely agree, your 100% spot on, i couldnt have put it better friend

Hey Thanks, I will ask him if they have insurance If we write to the loan companies and tell them his situation and say he cant pay the monthly amounts due to A ) being forced to retire after falling down a flight of stairs B ) unable to work due to this, and only getting £360 per month DLA and C ) his circumstances changing so vastly, do you think its likely they will accept I asked my Dad about this, and he said he went into the bank to ask them a year ago ( after banking with them for 25 years and putting a lot of money through them, and they basically didn’t want to know nor cared for his situation My idea is to at least ease his stress short term while I get back on my feet financially too, in the hope that a year or two down the line I will be bale to help him pay them off properly.. He just needs to buy some time really cos his ship is sinking fast

After advice yet again please , this time for my daughter She joined a gym a few months ago. Despite me telling here before she went along they would try and leg her up into a contract, she has got in trouble here. She somehow got cajoled into signing a contract ( she said she felt pressured and wasn’t given a chance to think ) , it’s a “lifetime membership “ , where she has to pay £15 per month for 30 months . She really did feel pressured, and I guess felt quite silly. She is only 19, and I just wanted to see if there was any way I could help her get out of this agreement ? Thanks

After advice yet again please Me and my wife lost our house a year ago, along with our business, and have moved 3 times since then, we are only now starting to see light at the end of the tunnel … Basically I got a letter today from Northampton County Court, saying Yorkshire water have obtained a judgement against me , this is the first time I have ever received any correspondence about it, though they possibly may have written to a previous address. It says the debt was £141, but is now £228 Do I have any rights regards to having never heard from them before ? Strangely on the section of the letter where is says “ defendants date of birth “ it is blank

Sorry for double posting , but does anyone think i have a leg to stand on regards the 25k they took from me ?

Thankyou both for the help and advice Yes he owns his house, thankfully. If he still had a mortgage, or had to pay rent, he would be in major league trouble. He gets £360 a month DLA, but the loans are crippling. I wondered if he might be able to suspend or freeze them since he is on DLA ?

sorry to double post but *BUMP* ... can anyone help please ? thanks

Hi all I seem to be asking for a lot of advice on here lol Just after some guidance as relates to a fine. Heres the short version of the story .. In mid 2006 my wife received a fine for putting a poster up outside our offices. They took her name, and my car reg plate, and by the time we got home from work there was a lovely card thru the door with a £75 fine. Well me not knowing any better at the time, and being typically bullish, decided upon a moral stance not to pay it … in the ensueing year we become bankrupt, lost our business, our house, everything, and had to move three times . Im guessing in this time they kept writing to our old address. About 9 months ago two beefed up county court bailiffs with black flak vests and the full works came knocking at our door, saying we owed £450 in court fees, charges etc on the original £75 fine. I tried argueing morally, but that’s no good. We were in dire straits money wise, but I managed to pay 50 quid here, 50 quid there, just to keep them at bay. Then we took a step back financially, and we just literally couldn’t afford to keep paying .. It was a choice between paying the bailiffs, or buying food, and I refuse to starve over an inflated fine. The bailiffs got nastier and nastier, until they eventually put a card thru saying there was a warrant for my wifes arrest to appear in county court. I called the court and explained our difficult situation, and the fact that my wife was receiving medical certificated for acute depression, and I was also received medical certs for acute stress, all related to losing our business and home. I tried to explain that their system had no logic, and that it would surely cost more to incarcerate here then the remaining balance was even worth. They didn’t care. I got hustled into paying a little more as I could afford it. The remaining balance is £120, after I paid £330 off an original £75 fine. Right now there is no way alive we can keep paying it, and ill be honest, I don’t want to. It seems so unfair. We have contributed so much to this local economy with our previous business ( which was an entertainment business that brought literally over 20,000 tourists to our town for weekend breaks, and brough valuable money into our local economy ) The bailiff called at the house again yesterday and basically said if we don’t pay it off this week, they will issue a warrant for my wifes arrest. She is worried sick about it, and its only making her depression worse. I just wondered if anyone had any experience with these kind of fines, and if there was anything I can do to prevent us having to pay another £120 to those bastards. Thanks

Hi DCAKing, and thanks for replying. Here's the basic details of his loans .. He took out 2 x 6 year loans four years ago, and has somehow paid them for the last four years. It was ok when he was working, but as i said he hasnt worked since his accident. I actually had no idea his situation was so bad, i just called him to ask for the info so i can hopefully help him, he said he didnt want to tell me as it would worry me. He has one loan with Halifax, he pays £418 per month, and it has 2 years to run, and he has another loan with RBS for the same monthly payment, again with 2 years to run. Neither loan is secured. As i said, they own their house outright with zero mortgage, but their income is only the £360 per month he gets on Invalidity, and my mums £600 per month wage for working in a cafe. Please help, i feel sick now thinking of them struggling after working their whole lives, and nothing would make me happier then helping them.

Hi, yes i signed it. i was just hoping against hope here