I ow £700 to a Medical Practice for a procedure which took

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I'm sorry to read of the above. Over approximately what period do you propose to repay the bill please?

Thank you. From what you say they have rejected your offer - what are the proposing or threatening as from what you say paying more is presumably not an option?

thank you. If you are not able to come to terms, then it is open to the creditor to issue proceedings against you in court though if you expect to be able to repay the amount within approximately for months, I can see comparatively little benefit in their doing so is providing you were to enter a defence to any claim, it is likely to take considerably longer than four months for the matter to come to trial by which time presumably would have repaid the amount in question.

Clearly you are not able to pay more than you can actually afford and therefore, their refusing your offer is not entirely productive bearing in mind the above. In those circumstances, all you can really do is explain to them that you have offered to make repayments in instalments and whilst you would like to be able to offer more, it is simply not possible for you to do so. You can point out precisely the above that you expect to be able to repay the amount demanded over a period of four months and observed that whilst they are course have the right to issue proceedings against you, the matter would take more time than that to come to trial and as such, in particular given that they cannot reclaim legal costs in the small claims court, they would effectively be dealing with a lot of additional paperwork for effectively no benefit.

You can go on to say that whether they accept your offer or not, you will put money aside each month until the total balances accrued and then make payment to them once you have saved sufficient monies in one lump sum with or without their agreement in this respect. You can go on to say that you stand willing to make payments by instalments in the meantime at their preference.

If they decide to issue proceedings against you, then you would need to ensure you enter a full defence within 14 days of receipt to avoid a County Court judgement being entered against you. Providing you do so, as above, the matter is like to take considerably longer than four months to come to trial by which time presumably would have made full repayment. The only issue in the circumstances would be the additional court fee that may be payable in those circumstances which from memory is £70

thank you for the clarification. This does clarify why they are unwilling to accept the offer as it did seem to me to be rather silly for them to reject the offer otherwise.

Generally, claims companies will be willing to settle matters for less than the total amount owed but it can depend upon their knowledge of your affairs and assets generally and how easy they believe it will be to make a recovery. You can consider that from their point of view, it costs them money to issue proceedings and recover monies through the courts which monies they will not necessarily be able to recover from you and such, it is generally in their interests to agree a voluntary payment and because of the above, you can usually leverage this to negotiate the amount. Accordingly, you may wish to consider offering a slightly higher sum and explain, whether it is entirely true or not that anything beyond that is entirely unaffordable and something not within your means and see how they respond.

I hope the above is of some assistance but if you have any further questions, please revert to me.