Response to Why do I keep reading about agreed settlements on this site.

I think one of the key points that the site is making is that it isn't possible to negotiate with a lender in the traditional sense of negotation, that you come in with an offer and they come in with theirs and your offer goes up and their offer comes down until together you thrash out a compromise.

To do so wouldn't be in the lender's interest so it doesn't play the game that way.

I think some people find this genuinely hard to believe. I would recommend that people who *do* think they can sort it out with some sort of casbah-type haggling try ringing the lender and asking them what it would take to make the lender go away. You'll find that:

1. the lender is remarkably unwilling to knock anything off its claim.

2. part of traditional negotiation/haggling involves you making an offer, a small offer, but an offer nevertheless. But what you won't realise is that your offer was also you admitting to the debt and that the lender can point to this in court as your admission that you owe the original amount they claimed (Ouch!). So never admit to the debt and never do anything that could be construed as you admitting to the debt.

3. after months of pleading and agreeing to fill out the Income and Expenditure form the lender might drop to circa six to eight thousand pounds. If you play it well.

4. the whole experience is humiliating

5. you're broke, possibly for years.

6. you're borrowing money from your relatives to pay off the lender who you thought you could negotiate with.

So, this site advises people not to think that traditional negotiating is possible.

Proper negotiation really begins when you ask for the documents and proof as set out in the Repossession section of this site. This is because you are then asking the lender to prove the debt. That *is* negotiation. It is negotiation because you are then showing the lender that you are as capable of sticking to your ground as they are.

*If* they ever issue a summons and you *if* you don't think you have a case against them, you make a #2,000 offer of settlement (called a payment into court or Part 36 offer) in the period before the case is actually due to be heard. But see your lawyer first.

This is how commercial debt is "settled".

Lee

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