Anyway, I digress a little. I have been unable to pay my Barclaycard accounts since July 2008 when my business went belly up. Since then I have had all sorts of phone calls from Barclaycard, text messages and from what I’ve read on various forums, unenforceable default notices served against me.

What generally happens is that once your account goes into arrears, the account is passed over to Mercers, who are in the same office as the Barclaycard staff, or so I have been told by someone who used to be a debt collector and knows the business inside out.

Mercers then deal with the account, and to be fair are persistent, they rang incessantly for weeks before I eventually spoke with them and told them that I could not afford the full payments.

I eventually did have a six month spell when I could pay 1% of the balance under a quasi debt management plan, though all it was really was a short term (six month) agreement with my creditors to stop interest while I was getting my finances back together.

After this period, I then couldn’t afford to go back to paying even the 1% as my income had taken another hit, so I wrote to them, in fact all of my creditors, and told them that I could only afford about £80 a month between all of them.

This was not acceptable to any of my creditors, so I just started paying it anyway. This went on for a couple of months, I had more default notices sent to me and more phone calls, but by this time I’d become oblivious to it.

Then I had a breakthrough, middle of October I had a phone call from a very nice, polite woman who was from Calders Financial, acting on behalf of Barclaycard.

I spoke with her and she informed me that she may have a solution that would stop the phone calls, but it required me making a lump sum payment.

Bingo! A full and final settlement offer, initiated by the creditor, or at least their representatives.

I made her an offer of about 20%, she came back with nearer 40% and we settled someone between the two, slightly in my favour if I recall.

I then had her spin me a double glazing salesman’s line that the offer was only valid for that day and if we couldn’t get the funds to them by 3pm that day, the offer would not be available after that, and it would most likely cost us more to settle in future.

Clearly rubbish, if the debt is only worth x today, and then in three months time, after there has been no income on it, it’s worth less, simple economics.

I was able to settle the debt that day, but before I did, I demanded that they produce an offer of full and final settlement to me in writing before I paid over any money. Call me skeptical but I don’t trust these people, and certainly wouldn’t want to pay over a lump sum, just to find that the next month I received a statement showing that I had paid off some of my debt but the rest remained.

They claimed they couldn’t email any written offer over, but could fax something, so I gave them our fax number and it arrived after about 10 minutes. I then settled after I had written proof, and as yet have not had any other proof from them to say the debt is settled, so I await my next statement date with interest!

Related Pages

• Barclaycard Has Passed Credit Cards To Mercers Debt Collections
• Almost Settled Another Two Debts With Barclaycard