Only for £80 which is nothing compared to some on this forum, but just wanted to share my personal *win* with knowledge and foresight provided by this site For some time i had a Citi/Opus credit card and kept it in a manageable level. At around May 2012 I left my family home at the start of a very bitter divorce proceedings. The details are unimportant other than at the same time to this I thought I had paid off the Credit Card completely and even destroyed it. Unfortunately due to the bitter divorce, letters that Opus had been sending me were not passed on (destroyed?) by my wife. My first hint of a problem was that I received a letter from Lowell informing me that I now owned them over £80. I immediately asked them for details , not a formal Prove it letter as I wanted to seem a bit naive . This resulted in a copy of statements from Opus going back to about October 2012. The problem was that every statement consisted only of late payments and interest adding up to about £50 of the £80 demanded. Not a single mention of the original debt There then followed many rounds of politely asking for statements going back to the original debt, with a response of either 'pay us' letters, copies of the part statements or even the original agreement at one point ( even though I hadn't even asked for it) This came to a head when they managed to find my telephone number and called. They made the mistake of saying that if I wanted the original debt statement that it would be my responsibility to to submit a SAR to Opus and 'its not their problem' I then sent them a heavy hitting letter, pointing out their statuary responsibilities, their onus of proof, revoking any contact by telephone etc and refusing to respond any further unless they provided either original debt proof, or started court action. They caved immediately and i received a No Further Action in the post today And that original debt? I still don't have the faintest clue what it was for. But extrapolating back it must have been for less than £5 Thats a 1600% overcharge fail for Opus/Lowell in the bag

Afternoon All, I thought I would share some good news with you all today and also ask for a bit of guidance. Today I took delivery of a letter from Lowell saying the following:- "We write further to recent communications regarding the account detailed to the right. After reviewing the account, we are prepared to take a commercial view in relation to this matter and as a gesture of goodwill and strictly without any admission of liability, we are prepared to close the account and write-off any outstanding balance. We trust that you will find this satisfactory and that this matter is now closed." If I am correct it relates to an account opened in 2006 and I have no idea when the last payment was made, the default drops off in a few months. My thoughts are:- Are Lowells becoming more professional and not chasing debts soon to not be enforceable via court? or do they know that it's SB? even so they still have time for a CCJ or do they fully realise from looking at my credit file I have nothing? Cheers, Flappy

I feel as if I'm going round in circles. Am newly self-employed (just five months), not yet able to draw a wage from a new start-up business and will only be receiving NEA of £33 pw for the next two weeks. This allowance contributes to my weekly business rental. My only disposable income is £44 pcm (private pension). I recently made a claim for WTC - from Dec 2012 to end September 2013 I was unemployed and receiving some JSA(IB) - and have been awarded £0. I thought WTC was meant to help those working on low incomes. In desperation, I've had to contact my local JobCentre to do a "better-off" calculation. I thought the Government promised that working would always pay over benefits? I've used entitlement websites but there doesn't seem to be any help available. Does anyone have any suggestions/ideas? (Still) Impecunious!