My Update

sugar, did you settle with anyone yet? i am glad you are on your way and things are working out. :)

Thank you so much! No, I haven't settled with anyone yet. I do think it's a little too early, and I can't afford the offers I'm getting right now.

UPDATE:

Last night we took the hardship program with Discover for both of our accounts. We went thru their website, www.cardmemberassistance.com and had to use auto pay, 1 year at 5.99% - payments are about $80 per month. They call many times an hour on our home and both cell phones. I know they are the most aggressive to sue, so this should get them off our backs for a while.

Barclay's called today and offered us 40% off $5200.00. It's the end of the month, so I'm hoping to negotiate a better deal.

Update!

Since my last post, we went on a hardship program with Discover for 1 year.

Today we settled Barclay's for 30%. We're waiting for them to fax the settlement letter!

1 down, 12 more to go!

Thanks for the updates, and congrats.

Please post some tips for others on negotiating settlements. How were you able to get Barclays down from 60% to 30%? What picture did you present to them of your situation, what sort of language did you use?

Thanks!

Thank you!

Well, the called looking for their monthly payment yesterday and we just told them the truth. I lost my job, we cleaned out our 401k to stay afloat (before we knew anything about settling) and that we're borrowing money from family for the purpose of settling.

At first, the agent was a little bit rude about it but I thought he was reading from a script. On this card, we did a balance transfer last year and paid on it for as long as we could. The rep told us that it looks like we just transferred money and now don't feel like paying. We told him to look at our credit report and our history, that we were always on time with all cards until I lost my job. We asked for a settlement, and he offered 30% but kept pressing about using the borrowed money for minimum payments. We told him that we're borrowing on the condition that we settle.

The rep told us that we would have a settlement letter, but it takes 24 hours. We don't have the letter yet, but I'll post the details when we have it. I'm going to try to work on Chase today and see how that goes.

We received our settlement letter from Juniper/Barclay's, and it is quite different from our phone conversation yesterday.

It states that it is a lump sum payment, when the rep said it would be broken into 3 payments. It says that they will report it as "settled in full" and that I will be "pleased to know that your payment will be applied entirely to the loan principal, rather than first paying the accumulated interest. This may result in your credit report showing a smaller portion of the loan as charged off."

First of all, the mention of charge-off sounds to me like they are saying they will sell the remainder to a JDB - without actually saying so. We didn't agree to this, and we asked if they would include in the letter that the balance will not be sold off.

Now that the settlement letter is not according to our conversation - I don't trust them. Will we be able to bargain for a lower settlement?

Update!

Juniper/Barclay's continues to tell us they will send us a fax that has removed the above statement about a charge-off in our settlement letter. We've been calling them every day for that fax for the last 2 weeks. So, it's still not officially settled.

Chase declined all of our settlement offers, and countered with 40% for all 4 cards. Until today! I settled 1 of my Chase cards for 23%, and they said they mailed out my settlement letter, and I should receive it by tomorrow. The rep did say that of the remaining 3 accounts - they are still offering 40% for 2 of them - and the last one is "not eligible for settlement", whatever that means. It was eligible for 40% last week, so who knows.

BOA sent me a letter disguised as a Christmas card yesterday, asking me to call by the 15th. This letter has a new telephone number and they're closed today, so hopefully I'll have news about BOA when I call tomorrow.

This is what I have remaining:

Discover #1 - Hardship program
Discover #2 - Hardship program
Juniper/Barclay's - 30% settlement pending
Chase #1 - 23% settlement pending
Chase #2 - 40% settlement offer
Chase #3 - 40% settlement offer
Chase #4 - Not eligible for settlement
Citibank #1 - Not settled yet
Citibank #2 - Not settled yet
GE Money #1 - Not settled yet
GE Money #2 - Not settled yet

Your getting there! Keep your chin up!