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Mods, if I'm posting any of this in the wrong forum please move it.
I'm not sure if and how many people this experince of overseas debt will help, but I'll post it up anyway.
I owed the Bank of New Zealand $10,000 from when i was living in NZ a couple of years back.
The debt followed me back to the UK and i was receiving threat-o-grams , all the usual stuff.
I was making payments but these were costing £20 a pop to send over to BNZ, a big chunk of my monthly repayments were going into this.
I was thinking, can a foreign bank outside of the EU recover here in the UK? Are they likely to for those sums?
I found out that BNZ will sue for just about any sum and that under the Administration of Justice Act 1920 a foreign order can be re-sealed here in the UK (NZ is a signatory to it and it extends to most Commonwealth member states). I emailed some Kiwi lawyers I found on the net, pretending to be a creditor pursuing a UK national, and found out that NZ courts can make orders against non-NZ citizens and non-NZ residents, as long as I was living in NZ at the time the debt was racked up.
However, I bluffed it with the BNZ. The BNZ knew I was in the UK and that debt recovery would be awkward. They had said they would trabsfer the debt to a NZ based DCA if I didn't pay them the full subs each month. I couldn't afford those.
So I emailed BNZ and told them that (a) I was in hardship and (b) that they could go get a court order and try to have it re-sealed in the UK. I also requested (c) an interest freeze and (d) they couldn't get an iorder against a non-NZ resident.
I then got a reply from the bank saying that they agreed to the interest freeze and, taking hardship into account, would abandon half of the balance if I could get $5000 to them.
Anyone working in NZ should know that employers have to contribute now to a pension called KiwiSaver.I had done that, plus paid in a few dollars myself. That amounted to $3500 over 12 months. You can't usually access KiwiSaver under any circumstances UNLESS you can prove you ahve moved from NZ permanently. Well, I did this and directly TFR from NZ Inland Revenue that sum to the BNZ. So, only $2500 to find, or £800.
I scrimped together $2500 and sent this over BUT charges of £40 from the UK bank and interest rates meant I was $230 short.
Guess what? BNZ used that as an excuse to break the agreement and asked for the $5000 balance in full. Also started charhing interest again.
So, I sent them a hardship letter and repeated and my threat to report them to whatever trading standards exiost in NZ for banks plus invited them to take me to court as I was never an NZ resident. Upshot is that the bank caved in (again) and agreed to abandon everything.
So I am NZ debt free now and with a relatively good conscience, as I kept in touch with them throughout and negotiated the settlement.
If anyonme wishes to PM me I will copy them in on my emails to BNZ, as they clearly worked for me.
I'm not sure if and how many people this experince of overseas debt will help, but I'll post it up anyway.
I owed the Bank of New Zealand $10,000 from when i was living in NZ a couple of years back.
The debt followed me back to the UK and i was receiving threat-o-grams , all the usual stuff.
I was making payments but these were costing £20 a pop to send over to BNZ, a big chunk of my monthly repayments were going into this.
I was thinking, can a foreign bank outside of the EU recover here in the UK? Are they likely to for those sums?
I found out that BNZ will sue for just about any sum and that under the Administration of Justice Act 1920 a foreign order can be re-sealed here in the UK (NZ is a signatory to it and it extends to most Commonwealth member states). I emailed some Kiwi lawyers I found on the net, pretending to be a creditor pursuing a UK national, and found out that NZ courts can make orders against non-NZ citizens and non-NZ residents, as long as I was living in NZ at the time the debt was racked up.
However, I bluffed it with the BNZ. The BNZ knew I was in the UK and that debt recovery would be awkward. They had said they would trabsfer the debt to a NZ based DCA if I didn't pay them the full subs each month. I couldn't afford those.
So I emailed BNZ and told them that (a) I was in hardship and (b) that they could go get a court order and try to have it re-sealed in the UK. I also requested (c) an interest freeze and (d) they couldn't get an iorder against a non-NZ resident.
I then got a reply from the bank saying that they agreed to the interest freeze and, taking hardship into account, would abandon half of the balance if I could get $5000 to them.
Anyone working in NZ should know that employers have to contribute now to a pension called KiwiSaver.I had done that, plus paid in a few dollars myself. That amounted to $3500 over 12 months. You can't usually access KiwiSaver under any circumstances UNLESS you can prove you ahve moved from NZ permanently. Well, I did this and directly TFR from NZ Inland Revenue that sum to the BNZ. So, only $2500 to find, or £800.
I scrimped together $2500 and sent this over BUT charges of £40 from the UK bank and interest rates meant I was $230 short.
Guess what? BNZ used that as an excuse to break the agreement and asked for the $5000 balance in full. Also started charhing interest again.
So, I sent them a hardship letter and repeated and my threat to report them to whatever trading standards exiost in NZ for banks plus invited them to take me to court as I was never an NZ resident. Upshot is that the bank caved in (again) and agreed to abandon everything.
So I am NZ debt free now and with a relatively good conscience, as I kept in touch with them throughout and negotiated the settlement.
If anyonme wishes to PM me I will copy them in on my emails to BNZ, as they clearly worked for me.