topic Received a settlement letter from AMEX in Rebuilding Your Credit

Received a settlement letter from AMEX

codehavoc — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 18:16:50 GMT

Good day MyFICO Community. It’s been a while since I posted but I was laid off September 30 2016 due to a RIF and I have fell to some financial difficulties. I tried my best with my minimal payments for most of my cards but my AMEX account was cancelled and is with a collection agency within AMEX. I was sent an settlement letter and they offer me to pay 60% of my balance which is 7k. I current can’t afford that and was wondering if I can negotiate with them. Also in better news I was finally placed in a position but I do not start until October 30th. I would love to knock this AMEX out the ball park and hopefully reestablish a good relationship with them by getting a new card in the future. If you guys have any advice for me, I will gladly appreciate it. Thanks

Re: Received a settlement letter from AMEX

Dalmus — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 04:18:39 GMT

Are you able to make large payments towards that $7k? You might be able to negotiate that way.. Say you'll make $500 payments each month until paid off, if your new job will sort that.

Re: Received a settlement letter from AMEX

codehavoc — Thu, 12 Oct 2017 12:52:02 GMT

Yes I should be able to do that. I was just wondering if I can lower the settlement. I have bad negotiating skills

Re: Received a settlement letter from AMEX

RobertEG — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 18:26:30 GMT

They have sent you a formal contract offer, agreeing to accept your payment of 60% of the total debt as legal discharge of the debt.

You are in negotiations, and can send any counter-offer of your choosing. Sending a counter-offer is effectively a rejection of their offer, and places your new offer on the table. They can accept, reject, present a new counter-offer, or ignore, which effectively removes their offer from the table.

You can continue the written, single offer/counter-offer game or you can speed up negotiations by getting them on the phone and beginning face to face negotiations that can involve instant back-and-forth offers and counter-offers. If you dont trust your oral negotiation skills, then should perhaps stick to single written offers, but they have no need to even respond to a written offer, so you could remain in an extended state of limbo awaiting a response.