The people you owe money to are more formally referred to as your ‘creditors’. You, an individual who owes the money, is formally referred to as a ‘debtor’.
When you apply for a formal debt solution, creditor contact will continue for a while, but you will find that once you are approved for your chosen debt solution, contact will reduce and eventually stop over time.
You may still be contacted by the people you owe money to at any point throughout your chosen debt solution but it is usually nothing to worry about. You do not need to discuss anything with your creditors and if you do get contacted by your creditors – all you need to do is direct them to us and we will deal with them on your behalf.
The most common types of creditor contact after a debt solution has commenced are communications such as annual statements (your creditors are legally required to send these, but they are not a demand for payment and you can simply ignore them) and a document known as a Notice of Assignment. This is a letter to tell you that a debt has been sold to another creditor organisation. It is fairly common for companies to sell debts to other creditor firms known as ‘Debt Purchasers’. Debt purchasing is exactly as it sounds, essentially one company selling the debt you owe to another. This is most commonly done with credit cards and loans but can happen with other types of debt.
Again, this is nothing to worry about. The new creditor, or third party acting on behalf of the original creditor, is still bound by the terms of the Protected Trust Deed, Debt Arrangement Scheme or other formal debt solution. They cannot take any action to recover the debt and the Notice of Assignment is for information only. Should your creditors send you a Notice of Assignment letter, you would simply make us aware of it and our in-house team will make sure that our records are updated and that any future correspondence goes to the right people thereafter. It is also normal for the debt purchaser to write to us informing us of their purchase at the same time that they write to you.
Getting contacted by the people you owe money to can be a stressful experience, which is why we have a dedicated team available to help you with this specific issue, you should never try to struggle on without asking us for help, we’re here to help you throughout the period of your chosen solution. And, if you are not yet in a debt solution but would like to find out more about whether a debt solution is right for you, please contact us on 0141 221 0999 and speak to an experienced debt adviser in confidence.