That's the one thing that amazes me, that people can have a good portion of their debt written off, yet seemingly not have to give back the items that they bought while accruing that debt.
Its similar to benefit cheats who con the government out of thousands, then cry poor when caught and end up agreeing to pay it all back, but at something stupid like 20p a week, with no interest incurred.

To the people who can't understand how people get into this much debt:

I think you're underestimating the persuasive powers of salespeople who are on commision for selling things like credit cards and loans.

It's not uncommon for someone to sell you a credit card and then diarise a call in 6 months time to sell you a consolidation loan. This then frees up your credit card again for more spending.

As more of your income is getting spent on repayments you start to have to use credit cards for normal expenses - food shopping for instance - and on it goes.

I think the companies selling these products need to take a hell of a lot more responsibility for their sales tactics and their constantly increasing targets and presure on staff to sell at any cost.

I worked in the industry and knew fine well what tactics etc were used and I still fell in to the trap, so what hope is there for the average man in the street?

Yep

£7000 - Car loan.
£300 - Owe my nan
£300 - Credit card

Managable and not so bad - the credit card debt is mainly from Italy this year, Venice is NOT cheap for a start! I still owe my nan for helping me out last year :$

I'm gonna put myself into some more debt soon, though, to get my van interior re-done and some body repair work. I don't worry about that though as

A) At least I have a full time job and nowhere near the debt some folks from uni are in.
B) My van will reflect the money spent on it. Worth about £5-6k as it sits currently, so at least I know if I ever get into dire straits I'll just sell it.

Unfortunately I don't have a copy, no.

It was more of a short hand-scrawled note than a letter saying something like "Please remove my details from your database and do not send me any more letters, thanks."

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