Hi Everyone
I had a breakdown in 1998 and had to set up loads of repayment terms with companies. I did this and sucessfully continued this for many years never missing any payments. My life changed and things got better and better until in 2005 / 6 a company contacted me asking for an old payment to a credit card. At the time because of my mental state we must have missed this or just that they never acknowledged letters from our local council debt help department with our proposed repayment plan. Anyway I would not speak to them on the phone and contacted my councillor who told me not to worry as the debt was over 6 years old and they could not do anything. I telephoned and wrote to them explaining this and said I was unwilling to enter into any negotiations. I have heard nothing for the last 3 years from them and have carried on with my life.
I am very aware now of controling any finance our family has and have managed to open a current account and indeed have a couple of good credit cards none of these have ever missed a payment and my credit rating was back on track until. I got an alert from experian and on checking my report there is a default notice dated 2005 on my credit report from nowhere this month. I have now become paranoid and have checked equifax and its on there as well. I also checked for searches and it appears an associate company of the origional creditor did a search in july. I think they have seen my credit file and have decided to put this default notice on me to screw me up again.
Would like to know if they can do this and get away with it or do i have the right to have them remove this default as i have never had an account with them and the credit card they are defaulting has already been defaulted over 10 years ago. It is obviously going to mess my credit rating again with me wanting to change to a mainstream mortgage in March 2009 and I run my own business now. I know I owe the money ( and tried to make a payment plan with all the rest ) and I know its statute barred but if I offer to pay half the debt will they remove the default from all the reference agencies.
Any help / advise would be appreciated