Thanks for the info. I haven't notified HSBC yet as I thought the same thing about them grabbing what cash I had in my account. I figured I would deal with MBNA first. I hadn't actually charged up that much and would have been able to pay it off. The problem happened when they hiked up my interest rate even though I never made a payment late. When my husband lost his job I then couldn't payoff what I wanted and the interest charges were out of control. Should I terminate my direct debits to mbna I set up on my end w HSBC? I really don't want to not pay them and have them get some debt collector in the us to come after me. Due to my job I cannot have bad credit so I need to make sure that doesn't happen.

Sorry, I have some cash in my HSBC account that I plan on using for when they accept the settlement. I am going to tell mbna I need to lower the offer. I said my parents were loaning me the money so needed to confirm how much usd I was getting so I could calculate gap. He said I'll go to the mgr with a £7000 figure. I'm sure they will accept less but I haven't defaulted on my payments yet so maybe not. I don't ever recall signing any agmts either as I think I applied online. Not sure of that helps at all and I don't know about PPI.

No, but I don't want to lose sleep at night wondering if and when they will ever come looking for me over here.

Hi, I previously lived in the UK but have returned back to the US as I was made redundant. I owe approx. £10880 to Virgin/mbna and had a phone call with them earlier. I am able to borrow the monies from family and after going thru the series of questions of my incoming and outgoing expenses I gave an approximate figure £7000 to clear the above loan. they were going to check w a mgr and get back to me. It now seems I could have gone lower and think I am going to call,them Monday and say I only had £7000 total as I also have to use that to pay the £6800 to HSBC. I need to get this cleared as I now cannot afford the min bal as I am living back in the US. Do you think I can negotiate a lower amount? They also said they don't so full and final settlements anymore so I guess I just hope when I accept they don't sell, the remaining debt on!