Thanks so much. I have spent so long stressing myself out over debt and feeling totally ashamed of myself, I just need to let it go, stop feeling ashamed about being in debt and just chill out for a while. Let the defaults fall off, don't apply for anything and just concentrate on saving a deposit! I think i just stressed out as I am 32 and moved back home a couple of years ago and feel a bit like I should be living on my own instead of with my mum in my 30's! I think I should swallow my pride and be thankful I am in a position where I can save money even if there is a bit of a stigma attached to living at home in your 30's! I know a lot of others aren't as fortunate and would like to be in a position like mine where they can save a bit more and not worry about household bills!!!

Thanks for your reply. I have 10 defaults all registered within 12 months of each other in 2009/10. I was just wondering whether it was worth my time and stress worrying about a clean record when I should just really sit back and wait for them to drop off. I do have some excellently maintained accounts and realistically I don't need to apply for anything, I have a bank account and a couple of credit cards, I'll just have to wait longer to apply for a mortgage! But on the plus side I suppose it gives me 4 years to save up for a deposit!

In your opinion would it matter whether I had 1 default or 10 (all around the same date)? Surely once I have one default my credit is mucked up for the 6 years anyway so having more than one wouldn't make much difference?

Thank you so much for your advice. You have been extremely helpful! I will give it some thought and gather all the info I need on here before I make any definite decision. I very much appreciate you taking the time out to help!

Thank you so much again for your reply I do feel better now. I haven't cabcelled the re-direction as I don't want any letters going to my friends house, her husband was doing his nut about them before I set up the re-direction so I do need to be having them sent somewhere else. The CC's were taken out around 2006/2007 and I didn't have any PPI on them. I'm not worried if they get any judgements by default as like I say I don't have or need any credit so not too worried about that, I can ride out the next 4 years without needing credit by which time the defaults will have dropped off. I do have some other defaults with other companies that seem to have just decided not to bother but I think that is due to the fact that the amounts are around £200 or less. The highest single amount of the defaults is £1255 (littlewoods) with another at around £600 (captal one), and the other two around £400 each which are all being chased by lowell. I will ride the wave for the time being and monitor the situation. Its very bad that the DCA's can get info onforwarding addresses from Royal Mail! surely there must be a breach of the DPA somewhere along the line!

Thank you for your relpy. Yes I did use the royal mail redirect service in which case if they would know through this my new address would they not just write to me here rather than keep sending letters to my old address? I was very careful to tick the box for my details not to be shared etc but i'm not silly enough to think that would be guaranteed! The CC's were with Barclaycard and Capital One and the cataloagues were with littlewoods and another that I forget but part of the shop direct group. If i could carry on without paying them then I would as I know they will have paid pennies for the debt I suppose my main concern is whether they will start turning up on my friends doorstep. I'm not fussed about my credit as I find a life without it is sooooooooo much better!! I suppose I thought that even if I offered a quid a week that it would prevent any doorstep visits or anything along those lines.

2 years ago I got into trouble financially and defaulted on my credit accounts. I will be honest and say that I totally buried my head in the sand, moved away and have avoided the debts ever since. I lived at my friends house for this period so simply redirected my post. The DCA that has been chasing me is Lowell Portfolio and Red (which I believe are the same people) and as my credit report seems to show that I have just disappeared since my last address and there is no activity whatsoever since 2009 all i have been receiving are demanding letters. There have been no home visits as I know my friend would have told me. The total debt adds to around £2800 made up of a couple of credit cards and a couple of catalogues I am on quite a low income which is another reason why I haven't responded to any letters but on the same note I am not proud of myself especially since the debts are registered at my friends house. With this said I have been thinking about getting in touch with lowell to set up a payment arrangement but wanted to make an informed decision before I did so. With 2 years having passed with no contact from me and with no activity on my credit report (they have been doing a search every month obviously to see if any linked address comes up) is it worth getting in contact with them or should I stick it out for another 4 years? I obviously don't want my friend getting involved in this by having people turn up on her doorstep but given the previous facts is this even likely?? I know some will think I am an awful person but I just want to try and do the best all round, I am living pretty much hand to mouth at the moment but would it be better to set up this arrangement even if its only for £5 per month? any advice is greatly appreciated.

thank you so much for your reply and your advice. The promise was made orally unfortunately and i received no notice of the debt being transferred but the original company had my previous address so if it went there i wouldn't have got it but they did say they tried to call me but i never had any call. Fredrickson had my correct address though so don't know where they got that from. I shall write to both of them now. Thanks aagain!

I took out a payday loan last year from payday express. I had used them before and always paid in full on the required date but on this occasion I lost my job so was unable to pay it back. I immediately wrote to them, by recorded delivery, with a repayment proposal which they didn't reply to but sent out a default notice in December. I immediately rang them and they told me they had recieved the letter but offered no explanation as to why they had not replied but agreed to my payment offer of £12 per month, the total debt was £264 as they must have added some charges onto it becuase the original loan was £225. Anyway I paid my first installment that day and continued to pay every month as agreed. Today I recieved a letter from Fredrickson Internationl demanding payment and when I checked my credit file a default has bee registered which they assured me back in December would not happen as I had made a payment arrangement. The default date was in February but this entry only appeared on my file within the last week. When I spoke to payday express they advised me that the debt had been sold on to Fredrickson in February as despite my arrangement I had not made any payments. I advised that this wasn't the case th guy looked into it and within 5 minutes found all the payments i had made but the debt had already been sold. He advised me that despite me keeping to my repayments that he couldn't remove the default. The strange this is though that the default has been registered at £233 which is exactly £31 less than the original amount which equates to the first 2 payments I made (one for £12 and one for £19) so how can they say that I didn't make any payments as this is clearly not the case. Also the amount of £233 that is registered is actually higher than my credit amount of £225 so much include charges and I am sure I read somewhere that this is illegal and gives me grounds for having the default removed?? I have asked them to send me a copy of the default notice they said they sent on 24th January however I had moved house by then so wouldn't have recieved it. Can anyone advise?? Thanks guys

No i've no intention of applying for credit whilst I am a student, fortunately as I have moved back to my mum's I don't need to! I suppose I just panicked slightly as I had read that linked addresses stay on your file for 6 years and I intend to look to buy my own place once I have graduated and didn't want this to mess anything up. I'll take your advice and leave it be for the time being and address the issue should it cause me any problems later on. Thanks so much for your help!

Hi I just didn't know whether it would cause any issues if I applied for any credit as I wouldn't be putting these addresses down on my application, would they not think i was hiding something and flag it up as fraud if i don't use these addresses? I assume that no-one elses credit history at these addresses will effect me in any way either? Thank you so much for your reply.

I have just checked my credit report on experian to find that there is a linked address entry from experian 2 years ago for 2 addresses where i stayed for a brief period but never had any financial accounts at these addresses, one is my mum's old house and one is my friends, I applied for my credit report at this time just out of curiosity more than anything as I had never applied for a report before and if i remember rightly i input that I had stayed at each address about 3 years each even though I hadn't, was just having a nosey at what the free report and stuff was about. Anyway having been stettled down in my own place for a couple of years I have just moved back to my mums new house as I have started university and I have updated my credit report to reflect this which is when these linked address entries have shown up. I have absolutely no idea how they have linked this, all I can assume is that it has happened when I updated my new address as my mum will have done the same and as we both have the same surname and same initial i wonder if there has been some sort of cross over. Anyway my question is whether I can have these entries removed since I have no financial connection to them or is this just going to get me into deeper trouble with experian and affect my credit report further if they realise that i lied about the details of me staying at these addresses? there really wasn't any malice in it at the time I was just being curious...

Hi Guys, this is my first post so apologies if i do not get the ettiquette correct! I have been hiding from my debt for a while now due to falling behind after my dad passed away and i slipped into a depression. I am now starting to get my life back on track and have decided to tackle my debt problem following the excellent advice on this site! I stopped paying my debts 18 months ago and estimate that I owe about £4k in total over about 9 accounts the largest single sum being £1200, the rest are mostly all under £500 with a couple even being under £200. The thing that I find odd is that although to begin with I was being inundated with debt collection letters now the amount I recieve is much less (I have actually moved but my friends still live at my old address so pass my post on to me). My friend told me that if the debt is under a certain amount of money that some companies simply write off the debt as it is not worth their time/money trying to chase it when they have insurance that covers things like that. The companies I owe are Orange, Capital One, barclaycard, JD Williams, Next, Kays and Littlewoods with the largest debt of £1200 being owed to Littlewoods. It only seems to be Orange, JD Williams and barclaycard who are still sending letters through DCA's not any of the others which I find odd. I am not suggesting that I am going to avoid them just because they are not writing to me (part of my recovery process with my counsellor involves tackling all this) but I was just curious as to whether my friend was right or not. I couldn't find anything on the internet that answered this. Thanks for all your help!