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About LinkBacksNo one is saying people who have debts shouldn't be forced to pay them. Noone is saying leaving money around is sensible. But allowing any random thug to break into your home is wrong.
No one is saying people who have debts shouldn't be forced to pay them. Noone is saying leaving money around is sensible. But allowing any random thug to break into your home is wrong.
Great idea, making it legal for a load of bullyboy thugs to break into people's homes. As if they don't use intimidation tactics already.
Not funny really. My parents had bailiffs come around trying to bully them into letting them in because they had had a credit card sent to the wrong address and someone had used it.
The address was theirs 7 years ago, and that's where the warnings, summonses and all other crap went to. My parents had closed their account with that bank (Nat. West.) and their original credit cards had expired years ago, but Nat. West. sent them another out of the blue.
there was no way that my parents could have known what was about to happen, but imagine if a big man with a hammer broke into their house and took stuff totalling 3,600 quid? (x5 if the 20% figure is correct). That would be the TV, DVD recorder, computers, probably my dad's antique Arabic rifle, Mum's jewellery, which my dad bought in the Middle East and is irreplaceable; God knows. It would probably be sold before they could straighten it out and that's their old age ruined, all their memories stolen.
I don't see why the police cannot be there, that makes a lot more sense, and I am going to sign the petition.
(Thanks Evilmunky)
Eagles may soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet intakes.
SiM - I think you're being incredibly naive if you think that these "finance recuperation organisations" would go by the letter of the law.
If these organisations sent round poilte and sympathetic people to cousel the people in debt, then in theory the idea may have legs. In practise however, the repeated failure of credit checking organisations to provide an accurate and up to date list of who owes what to who means that basically thousands of innocent people would be victim to having their stuff effectively stolen when they've done nothing wrong. It's nearly as bad as burglary.
Of course debtors should pay up - that much is obvious, but past experiences of hundreds of thousands of people just prove that this proposal would cause ridiculously large amounts of people heartbreak due to no fault of their own.
But of course that doesn't matter if it's never happened to you. Does it?
(FWIW, no, it's not happened to me or any of my family. It's just that I live in the real world and I understand that unfortunately people aren't treated fairly)
I have had no experience with this at all (I am a student).
My opinion is nothing to do with how its collected, thats a separate issue and should have separate laws regarding it. As long as its collected legally I am just saying that its not wrong IMO for lenders to get back what they are owed forcefully after multiple demands for repayment and after its gone to court. So the bailiff will not take stuff unless its already been to court and the court rules that the bailiff can.
Maybe if the government ran repossession it would be better, or if they at least monitored it properly.
Of course I would never be in that position because I will never borrow too much money. I have never known anyone to get into this position either.
I've never had any bailiff knocking on my door (I pay off my debts), so I have no real idea how those people are like. But reading the description of those people, and comparing them to how they are described here seem night and day. On one side we have legal officers with roles different from police officers, and on the other hand we have bullies. I do think that separating those people from police officers is acceptable given that the range of tasks are different and I'd rather see police officers be outside stopping crime than collecting debt. This does however mean that those bailiff would need to receive the same type of moral training a police officers is expected to receive. Frankly speaking, I suspect that debt collectors will never be 'liked', but that comes with the job. But as long as all attempts to collect the debt has been exhausted, the court permits actions, and then why property trained civil servants can not do the job adequately.
In theory. All you need is for mistakes to be made and you have **** happening.Originally Posted by SiM
It doesn't need multiple demands either. When I worked in Britain one of my VAT cheques went astray and the
VAT sent bailiffs around to my house. My wife was terrified and they showed her documentation showing that the VAT has ther right to demand entry. She called me and I called the police and they went away, but they had been banging on doors and so on. I had no idea that my VAT cheque hadn't arrived, the VAT give no warning, and I paid out of a business account that I never really looked at.
Under this new legislation I would have probably lost everything in the house as my VAT was about 8,000 per quarter. Thats why I think it's a bad idea.
But also the rule of law has always been that only the government (Police, VAT, Customs and Excise, etc.) can force entry into a private house and now they are allowing freelancers to do it. Remember when clamping was only done by councils? and now it's done by people paid by results. And look what happened to the behaviour of clampers. You don't want some goon whose only qualification is that he's strong and scary to be rewarded with a percentage of everything he 'recovers' from your house; believe me.
(Thanks Evilmunky)
Eagles may soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet intakes.
Mistakes can happen, and can be costly. Well maybe there is provision in the new law that will ensure these types of mistakes won't happen.
I don't know the laws now or the proposed ones in full detail. But if they are followed (which they probably weren't in your case Brucelles) then I'm sure that these types of mistakes would be very rare.
The clampers got fined in the end! Good result...
Bailiffs should be fined too if they break the law...
I'm entirely alongside Brucelles, redlight and Teepee on this; the idea that bailiffs are intelligent enough to know what the law is, and would obey it even if they did is laughably fanciful. TooNice, these people are NOT "civil servants", they are employees of private companies whose primary motivation is to get as much profit as possible. Do you think they turn up and carefully value the items in a property and then like good little boy scouts only take what's necessary to settle a debt? Dream on. They turn up and take everything they can get their hands on. Grant these thugs unsupervised forced entry and you're legalising and licensing legbreaking thugs.
Like i said, I have never countered any 'bailiffs' nor do I have the intention of finding out. But I have looked it up in various sources, which gave me the impression that they are civil servants. If they aren't, then it certainly would not hurt to set up such group and giving them those rights.
If the police are too busy catching speeding motorists to bother overseeing a lawful entry and repossession, then why not delegate it to our fake plastic police CSO's?
"You've gotta laugh when you fall off a sofa!"
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