From reading your older posts, these are UK student loan debts which you have had since 1995/1998.

Don't you think you should be trying to pay them off now? You were working in the States a couple of years ago, and then said that you had trouble using the website to pay down the loans.

If you pay them something each month, they will surely accept something rather than nothing.

OP states his outgoings exceed his incomings. It's not worth paying anything to those at the bottom of the list in such cases.

I have been paying my Student loans in the period since then and this loan as well. At the time I was asking about the Student loans it was more to do with having to pay off two sets of Student loans at the same time that was making me struggle. I am caught in a Catch22 situation were they are not all rolled into one big loan but classed as two separate loans so I have to pay them back at the same time, meaning two monthly payments rather than just one a month.

Both student loans are deferred at present but the loan that has been sent to the third party agency was a consolidation loan before leaving the UK.

Please don't think I am some sort of mooch who is trying to get out of paying my way as I am just struggling in this awful economic situation, and please don't look down your nose at me. One day you might be struggling to make ends meet. It's not nice, I can tell you, especially when you have mouths to feed. I have always done my best to pay off my debts and this is the first time I have ever had this happen to me.

I'm not "looking down my nose" at you. I was thinking that paying off something will likely keep the creditors off your back, whereas if you do nothing you will always think they are looking for you.

In most areas of the States you don't get reprieve from paying back student loans- it might be like that for the UK

I am sorry if I got the wrong intonation from your original post SanDiegoGirl, but it came over a little patronising.

As for Student loans in the UK they are pretty much the same as over here, but in times when you are financially struggling like many at the moment you can defer for a year, you still add interest to your over all loan but you get a reprieve from making payments for the year.

As for the bank loan, I have at all time been in touch with both my bank, every month to keep them informed of my employment situation and now the Third Party Credit Agency. I do not like been in this situation and actually feel ashamed that I can't make my loan payments.

So we are clear this current thread has nothing to do with my student loans but it is about my bank loan been sold to a third party credit agency because I am unlucky enough to be one of the millions to be made unemployed by the current financial crisis.

As for paying them off, that is easier said than done. I am unfortunately, a resident in one of the most expensive areas in the country so what little money I do have does not go a very long way, to the point were I have used up all my savings just to make ends meet.

Student loans are different. This is not a student loan.

It's often best to have no contact with creditors if there is no hope of paying them off in the foreseeable future. In the US any payment, however small, will continue to reset the statute of limitations and credit reporting clock. There have been suggestions in this thread (I don't know the answer BTW!) that even communications will reset this clock with UK creditors.

In the US, debt collections agencies are easy to get rid off -- they prey on your ignorance. A little research and the right letter, and they'll be paying you instead of you paying them should they continue to hassle you.

I studied banking law in the UK, albeit back in the 1990s, and the same applied back then in terms of your comment regarding the statute of limitations. So, unless that's changed since, OP would be wise to cut off communications from the debt collections agency until such time that he knows he has the means to repay.