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Hi everyone - I'm new, officially speaking, but have been browsing the forums for a couple of weeks while trying to sort out some nonsense from Lowell (whom I now know to be reknowned!).
I'll try to keep this as brief as I can, but it's quite the saga, so hopefully you can bear with me.
Back in the day, I was a bit of a silly girl and ran up some very stupid debts. It was a combination of sheer recklessness and persistently difficult circumstances which led to desperation; I became a single parent, survived a domestically abusive relationship, discovered that one of my children has an extremely rare life limiting disease...you get the picture; I'm not here for the sympathy vote whatsoever!
Anyway, over the last little while, I've been quite literally trawling through my finances and going through the motions of trying to repair my shocking credit history. What did not help said history was the fact that Lowell Financial came along some years ago and I've been connected to them ever since. I put up with several years of nonsensical to-ing and fro-ing which, sadly, involved me making regular payments for a while before stopping, and then starting again, and then stopping. That kind of thing. I found them extremely difficult to deal with, not to mention dishonest and misleading, hence the recurrent tendency to leave them stewing before picking up the mantle again.
As it stands, I have successfully cleared a substantial amount of my old debts, with some remaining. I would really like to get these sorted out as it is my hope - in the future - to purchase a home with my partner, more so than anything else simply because my daughter's needs are so complex that it is nigh on impossible for me to meet her needs without buying at some point.
So, here is where I am right now. This is where it gets a little complicated, perhaps. I've recovered my credit file sufficiently enough to have obtained a Capital One credit card last year, which I have been using to repair my credit (extremely responsibly I might add, it is working wonderfully). I also successfully completed a year with a Cashplus card and got lots of lovely little green ticks for that; it has now closed with a nil balance. Lovely. So, on that front, I am making good strides.
The problem all comes to down to an array of accounts held by Lowell, ALL of which are listed as defaults on my credit file, except for one. I'll list them:
Vanquis credit card - £218.79 - this one is standard, nothing unusual to report with it; it is one single entry under Lowell's name listed as a default, which is correct.
Provident loans - £919.00 - this consists of 2 loans, both of which are marked as fully settled/not defaulted by the original lender but defaulted under Lowell's entry.
Vodafone - £1471.00 - now, this one is currently in dispute due to the sheer amount; it's from a contract I cancelled literally 6 weeks before it was due to end and I have no idea how on earth they got that sum. It is one single entry on my credit file under Lowell, listed as a default.
JD Williams - £80.15 - again, one single entry by Lowell, defaulted; the actual balance is now £50 and I was thinking of just clearing this.
O2 - £612.00 - this one is a little different. There are two entries, one default by o2 (still active, last reported on days ago) for £897 and then another default from Lowell for the same debt, only it shows the current balance of £612 (it originally defaulted at £897). Experian informed me today that they would query O2 about the default entry as they shouldn't still be reporting on it due to the fact it sold to Lowell a couple of years ago.
HSBC - £1376.00 - this one doesn't show on my credit file whatsoever; it is an extremely old debt from over ten years ago, but Lowell tell me I apparently last made a payment in October 2014.
Now, my first instinct is to just pay off the remaining balance for the JD Williams account and be done with it before moving on to the rest. Please do correct me if I should think twice.
As for the rest - namely Vanquis, Provident, Vodafone, O2 and HSBC - I was wondering if it's worth me submitting an SAR to the original lenders or something to Lowell themselves asking them to prove that they actually own the debt and that I owe it to them? Perhaps I'm clutching at straws, but I don't currently live with my partner and am very much still a single mother on benefits (3 children, one severely disabled). I'm going to struggle enormously to clear those debts off and, given Lowell's history with me, something just keeps telling me not to trust them an inch. For a start, I suspect that the default dates listed by Lowell on my credit report aren't correct - i.e. that they changed the original default dates.
I've had the phone calls where they're super nice, appear super helpful and caring and promise me they'll sort something out for me - but I know it's all total bull. I'm also not 100% clear on what all the templates are and what purpose they serve, so if there is something I should be doing, I'd really appreciate some pointers!
In the meantime, I'm due to take a call from one of Lowell's chumps tomorrow morning. He thinks he's going to go through my income and expenditure to make an arrangement for me, but I've already been through that and they concluded I couldn't afford anything, so they were talking about offering me partial settlement. Rather than going through my finances again, I have instead made a list of information that I want to request about my accounts (simple stuff like original account references and original default dates), then I plan to inform him that I'll be in touch via writing in due course.
If you got this far, congratulations - I don't know how I did. Any and all suggestions are extremely welcome!
I'll try to keep this as brief as I can, but it's quite the saga, so hopefully you can bear with me.
Back in the day, I was a bit of a silly girl and ran up some very stupid debts. It was a combination of sheer recklessness and persistently difficult circumstances which led to desperation; I became a single parent, survived a domestically abusive relationship, discovered that one of my children has an extremely rare life limiting disease...you get the picture; I'm not here for the sympathy vote whatsoever!
Anyway, over the last little while, I've been quite literally trawling through my finances and going through the motions of trying to repair my shocking credit history. What did not help said history was the fact that Lowell Financial came along some years ago and I've been connected to them ever since. I put up with several years of nonsensical to-ing and fro-ing which, sadly, involved me making regular payments for a while before stopping, and then starting again, and then stopping. That kind of thing. I found them extremely difficult to deal with, not to mention dishonest and misleading, hence the recurrent tendency to leave them stewing before picking up the mantle again.
As it stands, I have successfully cleared a substantial amount of my old debts, with some remaining. I would really like to get these sorted out as it is my hope - in the future - to purchase a home with my partner, more so than anything else simply because my daughter's needs are so complex that it is nigh on impossible for me to meet her needs without buying at some point.
So, here is where I am right now. This is where it gets a little complicated, perhaps. I've recovered my credit file sufficiently enough to have obtained a Capital One credit card last year, which I have been using to repair my credit (extremely responsibly I might add, it is working wonderfully). I also successfully completed a year with a Cashplus card and got lots of lovely little green ticks for that; it has now closed with a nil balance. Lovely. So, on that front, I am making good strides.
The problem all comes to down to an array of accounts held by Lowell, ALL of which are listed as defaults on my credit file, except for one. I'll list them:
Vanquis credit card - £218.79 - this one is standard, nothing unusual to report with it; it is one single entry under Lowell's name listed as a default, which is correct.
Provident loans - £919.00 - this consists of 2 loans, both of which are marked as fully settled/not defaulted by the original lender but defaulted under Lowell's entry.
Vodafone - £1471.00 - now, this one is currently in dispute due to the sheer amount; it's from a contract I cancelled literally 6 weeks before it was due to end and I have no idea how on earth they got that sum. It is one single entry on my credit file under Lowell, listed as a default.
JD Williams - £80.15 - again, one single entry by Lowell, defaulted; the actual balance is now £50 and I was thinking of just clearing this.
O2 - £612.00 - this one is a little different. There are two entries, one default by o2 (still active, last reported on days ago) for £897 and then another default from Lowell for the same debt, only it shows the current balance of £612 (it originally defaulted at £897). Experian informed me today that they would query O2 about the default entry as they shouldn't still be reporting on it due to the fact it sold to Lowell a couple of years ago.
HSBC - £1376.00 - this one doesn't show on my credit file whatsoever; it is an extremely old debt from over ten years ago, but Lowell tell me I apparently last made a payment in October 2014.
Now, my first instinct is to just pay off the remaining balance for the JD Williams account and be done with it before moving on to the rest. Please do correct me if I should think twice.
As for the rest - namely Vanquis, Provident, Vodafone, O2 and HSBC - I was wondering if it's worth me submitting an SAR to the original lenders or something to Lowell themselves asking them to prove that they actually own the debt and that I owe it to them? Perhaps I'm clutching at straws, but I don't currently live with my partner and am very much still a single mother on benefits (3 children, one severely disabled). I'm going to struggle enormously to clear those debts off and, given Lowell's history with me, something just keeps telling me not to trust them an inch. For a start, I suspect that the default dates listed by Lowell on my credit report aren't correct - i.e. that they changed the original default dates.
I've had the phone calls where they're super nice, appear super helpful and caring and promise me they'll sort something out for me - but I know it's all total bull. I'm also not 100% clear on what all the templates are and what purpose they serve, so if there is something I should be doing, I'd really appreciate some pointers!
In the meantime, I'm due to take a call from one of Lowell's chumps tomorrow morning. He thinks he's going to go through my income and expenditure to make an arrangement for me, but I've already been through that and they concluded I couldn't afford anything, so they were talking about offering me partial settlement. Rather than going through my finances again, I have instead made a list of information that I want to request about my accounts (simple stuff like original account references and original default dates), then I plan to inform him that I'll be in touch via writing in due course.
If you got this far, congratulations - I don't know how I did. Any and all suggestions are extremely welcome!
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