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The leading debt charities have been inundated with calls from the public that have fallen into the spiralling payday loan debt trap. A recent BBC article provided some data from StepChange on these rising concerns. The StepChange debt charity helped 36,413 people last year (2012) who had payday loan debts (more than 20,000 from the previous year). Payday loan debts of course manage to grab the headlines due to their mass popularity on the web, but it should be noted that there are still plenty of problems in other areas such as subprime credit cards, logbook loans and so on. It can be difficult to deal with payday loan debts, because most of the leading payday lenders just don’t tend to deal with defaulted accounts well at all.

This includes ignoring messages that you send to them, instead sending out generic emails with attached threats. Charges are applied to the accounts and they soon push these on to outside debt recovery agencies. Although these agencies could be recovering on their behalf, it would likely be the case that they have simply sold the debt on at a low price with the agency then typically asking for the full cost up front. Debt recovery is big business today, but not all of them are great with communication and some can be very problematic to deal with. There are just a few good guys around that are helpful and that will work to fix your damaged credit profile, but you can’t pick and choose who you deal with.

The objective is of course to get them paid up and have these debts marked as settled with such marks on credit profiles lasting for 6 years. If payday loan debts have been sold and you are dealing with a troublesome agency, then you can always find outside help. StepChance for example provide free debt help and they also offer a free debt management plan (as does PayPlan). These free DMPs are funded by donations from creditors in the industry. Other debt management companies usually charge ongoing fees, but some of these do have a great track record and can help to quickly stop those harassing calls and letters. Dealing with payday loan debts is never easy, but it is very important to deal with them head on.