The Call
THE RECORDING
The call they didn't want you to hear
We thought this was progress
One morning in mid-October 2025, the phone rang. Funding Circle's Recoveries team. The agent said she'd received our documents and had been looking at everything. She had a few questions.
We'd spent weeks preparing. Bank statements. Income and expenditure forms. A detailed settlement proposal with a covering letter explaining our situation. We'd been completely transparent. We expected this call to be the start of a proper conversation.
It wasn't.
The number
Within minutes, the agent stated a figure. The "outstanding debt," she called it. A number that exceeded what we'd originally borrowed, despite the fact that we'd already repaid over two-thirds of the loan.
We said it couldn't be right. She repeated it. We explained that only the original loan amount had ever entered our bank account, that we'd paid back more than half. She repeated the number again.
This went on throughout the entire call. Every time we challenged the figure, she restated it. No breakdown. No explanation of how it was calculated. Just the same number, repeated as fact, as though repetition made it true.
The question that gave it away
Before any review of our settlement proposal had taken place, the agent asked:
The agent:
"If the offer is rejected, what is your plan for increasing the offer?"
Read that again.
She hadn't evaluated the proposal. She told us she needed to "put it forward to be reviewed." But she was already asking us to increase it. Already framing rejection as inevitable. Already treating the outcome as decided.
When we pointed this out, she told us the offer "would be rejected." On a call where she hadn't yet reviewed it.
What we told her
We told her everything.
That the business had failed. That we'd put our personal savings in to keep it going. That we'd sold our cars. That we'd maxed out credit cards buying stock, not taking holidays. That we had nothing left.
We told her a close family member had been diagnosed with cancer.
We told her the settlement offer represented money we didn't have, scraped together from family, because we were trying to do the right thing.
Us:
"We have nothing. We have got nothing."
We thought honesty would matter. We thought showing them we were real people in a real crisis would change the tone. We thought it might lead somewhere human.
What she said next
After we'd laid everything bare, the agent moved to her next point.
If we wanted to continue making token monthly payments, Funding Circle would need to place a charge against our property. Security. On our family home. For one pound a month.
The agent:
"We will need to put or seek a charge against your property so that we are able to secure the debt."
We asked her to think about what she was saying.
Us:
"You need to put a charge on my house so I can pay twelve pounds a year. Is that what you're saying?"
The agent:
"Yes, sir. That is exactly what I'm saying."
Then she went further.
The agent:
"And here you also have the possibility of facing bankruptcy."
We had just told her about the cancer. About losing everything. About having nothing left. Her response was to threaten our home and raise bankruptcy.
The ultimatum
When we said we would take the matter to court if we had to, the agent's response was immediate:
The agent:
"So if you are planning to take it to court, sir, then clearly you have the funds to increase your offer."
We had spent the previous twenty minutes explaining that we couldn't afford to eat. That our actual financial position, after debt repayments, was deeply negative. That the settlement offer was already more than we could afford.
And she used our willingness to fight as evidence we could pay more.
When we pushed back, the language hardened:
The agent:
"If you choose not to cooperate with us, I will just escalate the account to our legal team."
"Cooperate" meant one thing: agree to a charge on the family home. Anything else was non-cooperation. And non-cooperation meant escalation.
The complaint about herself
Towards the end of the call, we were asked if we wanted to raise a complaint.
Think about that for a moment. The agent who had just spent nearly an hour threatening our home and raising bankruptcy was now offering to log a complaint. About herself. Through herself.
Us:
"I'd raise a complaint with you about you. That doesn't feel like a great process."
We didn't raise one. We still believed, at that point, that the settlement proposal would be reviewed fairly. We still had hope.
The promise
Before hanging up, the agent made a commitment:
The agent:
"Give me seven days. I will give you a call in seven days and I'll let you know exactly what the outcome is for the settlement offer."
Our offer had already been with Funding Circle for nearly two months at that point. A seven-day review and callback felt like progress. Something concrete. Something to hold on to.
That call never came.
Seventeen days later, our offer was rejected by email. No prior contact. No callback. No explanation of what had changed. Just rejection, followed immediately by a demand for security over our home.
Read the full breakdown: The Sham Evaluation
The recording
During the call, we asked for a copy of the recording.
Us:
"Can you send me a copy of this recording, please?"
The agent:
"Unfortunately, I won't be able to do that."
All calls are recorded "for training purposes." But when we asked for the recording of a call in which we were threatened with losing our home, the answer was no.
We got the transcript months later, through a Subject Access Request under data protection law. This page is what was on it.
Fifty-five minutes
The call lasted fifty-five minutes. In that time:
- Our settlement proposal was dismissed before it was reviewed
- A figure exceeding our original loan was stated as undisputed fact
- We disclosed serious family vulnerability
- Our home was threatened as security for one pound a month
- Bankruptcy was raised
- Our willingness to seek legal advice was used against us
- We were told to "cooperate" or face escalation
- Our request for the recording was refused
- A seven-day callback was promised and never honoured
Every quote on this page comes from a recorded call in our possession, obtained through a legal data access request. We didn't want to publish this. But when a company treats people this way and then refuses to share the evidence, the record needs to be public.