What to do with MBNA?

[mrdonk]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm currently in serious financial problems due to illness and unemployment. I have a house with considerable equity and can scrape the mortgage payment every month through part time work and little savings.

 

Most of my debt is with MBNA (3 cards totalling 40K - including one that is beyond the CCA limit of 25K, actually 26.2K, from a phone call offering 0% BT and a merge of 2 cards) and since they raised their interest rate to nearly 30% for missing one payment, I finally gave up with them. I was bombarded with borderline abuse from two DCAs on telephone, threats of collection at my door,etc. I havent paid them anything for 3 months. I now accept that this may have been wrong and should have made token payments. Regardless of that I started recently getting "nice" letters from them offering a "considerable reduction" on full payment which may be a ploy to get me to start contacting them again (regardless I can't afford it anyway).

 

I suppose my question is - what should i do now? Should I write offering a few pounds that I can afford, let them sell the debt on or take me to court?

 

Thanks all.

[rory32]

I would recommend you send each of them a CCA request by at the very least recorded delivery. This asks the creditor/DCA to prove the debt (often they can not do this - particularly MBNA).

 

The template for the CCA request is here http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/general-debt/20758-creditors-dcas-letter-templates.html template N.

[yaffsimone1]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm currently in serious financial problems due to illness and unemployment. I have a house with considerable equity and can scrape the mortgage payment every month through part time work and little savings.

 

Most of my debt is with MBNA (3 cards totalling 40K - including one that is beyond the CCA limit of 25K, actually 26.2K, from a phone call offering 0% BT and a merge of 2 cards) and since they raised their interest rate to nearly 30% for missing one payment, I finally gave up with them. I was bombarded with borderline abuse from two DCAs on telephone, threats of collection at my door,etc. I havent paid them anything for 3 months. I now accept that this may have been wrong and should have made token payments. Regardless of that I started recently getting "nice" letters from them offering a "considerable reduction" on full payment which may be a ploy to get me to start contacting them again (regardless I can't afford it anyway).

 

I suppose my question is - what should i do now? Should I write offering a few pounds that I can afford, let them sell the debt on or take me to court?

 

Thanks all.

 

 

Yes CCA all of them...Rory where does he stand with the 26.2K and the CCA 1974?

 

MBNA doubled my interest rate and that was before i got into trouble. They have only just illegally sold the account so i have not had much dealing with the DCA, MBNA on the other hand are just horrible, aggresive w***ers. Oh they will start being nice but dont let that fool you. Dont speak to them on the phone deal with everything in writing. There are tons of MBNA threads here, including mine, that you can browse.

[rory32]

Rory where does he stand with the 26.2K and the CCA 1974?

 

Was the 26.2.K the limit on the card, rather than the current balance? When was the card taken out? I assume this was a personal credit card rather than a business one.

[mrdonk]

It was the credit limit on the card and it was a personal account.

[rory32]

And when was the card taken out?

[mrdonk]

About 1999.

[rory32]

I would argue that the £26.2K card is regulated by the CCA1974 as the agreement came about from the merging of accounts that were regulated agreements.

 

However, I'm not 100% sure of my ground on this one as there is an exception for running account credit in section 82.

[mrdonk]

Thanks for the response. I never really assumed that this would have any meaning to my situation, it was just an interesting point to make with regards to the regulated-limit on unsecured loans. If it got to court I was have mentioned it as a point at least.

 

Should I offer a token payment, CCA MBNA (any benefit here?), wait for them to sell it on and CCA / offer token to whoever purchases the debt?

[rory32]

It doesn't really matter if you wait till the debt is sent to a DCA or not. The DCA will just get in touch with MBNA for a copy of the agreement. In your favour MBNA are dreadful at keeping credit agreements, particularly ones from as far back as 1999. I think for the sake of £1 it's always worth sending a CCA request.

[sequenci]

Hi,

 

Rory has alerted me to this thread, I've just got back from a break and will be keen to investigate this for you tomorrow. It's a VERY interesting query and I can't wait to research it! All the info I need is at work, looks like an interesting lunchtime for me

[sequenci]

Hello again folks.

 

Take a look at page 2 of this document:

 

http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/consumer_credit/oft140.pdf

 

Specifically about the point about an agreement being able to be over the £25k limit if "it is not likely that amount of credit that will be drawn will be over £25k".

 

From that statement I would imagine that the lender CAN offer you a credit card with a limit of over £25k, although it is very uncommon.

 

So I would imagine that the agreement is still regulated.

[mrdonk]

Thanks for the information. It is much appreciated!

[mrdonk]

Post removed to avoid confusion because moderator removed post i was commenting on.