Aqua selling debt on - Mental Illness

[Lini]

Hi
Ive used this forum before and it was so helpful.
As per my other posts, I've been ill with bi polar for the past 3.5 years when I was diagnosed after becoming seriously unwell.
In the past two years ive been admitted as an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital twice and have received home treatment from the local crisis team. I had to surrender my job to be admitted for treatment (I was contracting at the time) Im giving this level of information to give an idea of my circumstances.

I informed Aqua card about my mental health issues in 2016 as I was in arrears and was struggling with repayments. the account was then closed.
I havent' made any payments in the past three years. I have checked in with them a couple of times to keep them updated to my current position, the last time being back in April this year after another period in hospital. I informed them of the situation - they asked if they could note it as it was regards to my health (they did this also back in 2016) I of course told them yes that was fine.
I explained that I was being nursed at home and therefore was unable to seek employment for a while as I was signed off - I had to agree to have the home treatment three times a day for meds if I wanted to stay out of hospital and I was still recovering.

They hadn't contacted me at all since I stopped making payments back in 2016. This made me nervous and so I wanted to check in to make sure thye weren't sending letters somewhere else or something.
The customer services rep told me not to worry at all - not to pressure myself to make any payment arrangements and to hold off as I would be hearing from them very soono and I should wait for that.

Today I realised that I hadn't received anything and so contacted them again to ask if any letters had been sent to me yet and if not how would I move forward
I was told that my account was sitting with them waiting for someone to buy it from them (a lot of detail I thought) and that was why the last person that I spoke to told me to hold off and not worry.

Im not sure how to deal with this as I thought there were some restrictions on selling debt when the company are aware that you have a psychiatric illness - especially one that sends you loopy and off down the high street in the buff (a little insight into the activities of lunatic)

At this stage should I push for them to keep the debt or should I wait for them to sell it on and negotiate with the buying company once im back on my feet again or should I put a complaint in about the debt being sold and would this even help me in any way.

Thanks for your time

Lini

:0 ) / :o ( HA!

[Amethyst]

Ahhh the life of a lunatic sounds a tad chilly at the moment, maybe hold off on that till summer

Sooooooo, it sounds like Aqua have had the account on hold since you told them about your circumstances and your contacting them won't have changed anything - particularly as you've told them things haven't improved a lot .... once it gets near 6 years old they will just put it in the sell list for someone like Cabot or Lowell to purchase.... please don't be fearful of that happening as all that will happen there is they will send you a notice of assignment when it happens and you can then reply to them explaining again your circumstances - they both have very good vulnerability processes now and should instantly back off.

Aqua are of course at fault for not including information with the sale of the account -and for not simply writing the debt off and ceasing any activity on it at least giving you a bit of certainty - it is likely to be the only way they would recoup something ( like 10% ) of any debt outstanding so although it isn't ideal, trying to stop that happening is likely to be more trouble than its worth (you'd have to write asking them to write it off entirely and get a Debt and Mental Health evidence form ( like this http://malg.org.uk/wp-content/upload...-June-2017.pdf ) completed by your Doctor etc to send with it) so that might be more stressful than just waiting for the assignment and reiterating your position ( if things haven't improved at that point) - really it depends what you think will work better for you - leave it alone and deal with a letter if/when something arrives - or if that will play on your mind constantly you can try and get them to write the debt off completely now.

Things are improving slowly with regards debts and health issues, not fast enough, but getting there - so really don't panic if you do get a notice of the sale to a debt purchaser in the future - just come here and we'll help as much as we can xxx

Hopefully that's a little reassuring ? maybe ? xxx