Debt Collectors.

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Was browsing around and came across this rather disturbing article on the debt collecting industry.
Seems that they are getting away with all sorts of criminal acts, and no one seems to be doing anything about it.

One particular part that caught my attention -

This story tells us something dark about Britain today. When the rights of rich people are threatened, the state swoops in fast: every day, there are arrests for counter-feiting designer clothes and pirating DVDs. When the rights of the rest are threatened – in much more damaging ways – the state becomes sluggish and forgiving.

It's completely true isn't it?

The Face of Debt Collection Today - Johann Hari

[Agent]

I recently went through this with some "debt" from Vonage: http://forums.hexus.net/shopping-ret...ollection.html

Took months to get sorted with multiple calls and letters being sent, even though I was absolutely in the right the entire time.

Vonage literally said "This person owes us this debt" with no evidence and caused me loads of hassle. Requests for information that the debt collectors were legally required to give went ignored. Same for my request for any and all information they help about me under the data protection act - totally ignored it.

The day I went to file harassment with the police against the company I had a letter appologising for the entire ordeal. Absolutely unbelievable what they can get away with when your innocent, nevermind when you do owe debt.

Vonage are on my 4 letter word list now.

[BlackDwarf]

Ok, best be careful what I say, and exactly how I say it here, but I work for Lloyds TSB, more importanly, in one of their collections departments, however, I do still work for Lloyds, and we do try to do our best for customers.

Most of the issues do seem to be from when an account passes to CDR, and is sold to external agencies. Having seen the C4 program about these agencies, some of their tactics do seem a little harsh. But, I personally feel that if you can't afford it, don't borrow it, and most of this could be stopped if people weren't so greedy and lived within their own means, instead of taking out credit

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But, I personally feel that if you can't afford it, don't borrow it, and most of this could be stopped if people weren't so greedy and lived within their own means, instead of taking out credit

Fair point, and one that I completely agree with - but read the article, it's not just about that

[synaesthesia]

Having been through severe debt and as a result have not long come out of bankruptcy, I've had a fair share of dealing with these morons.

Went through BR with my wife, who had a long standing debt with Provident from years back. During the BR period they were still trying to harrass for money, culminating in them sending someone round to our flat. 10 minutes later, whilst he was sat here explaining why bankruptcy is not an excuse to not pay (!) I had 2 police officers knock on the door, who promptly escorted him out of the building and supplied him with a caution. They also apparently had a good go at Provident's collection agency (unsurprisingly part of the same company). I had orchestrated this with a very friendly chap I met within the police about a year ago, he'd been through exactly the same and offered a little help

It's always funny to investigate these companies further - it really is shocking just how many of the debt collection agencies are sister companies of the people that employed them in the first place, separated for tax and legal reasons. Was mentioned before about Lloyds TSB - did owe them just over £7k and probably some of the nicest people to deal with in their own collections department. Once the debt got "sold" over elsewhere, things went downhill very quickly, ending up in me taking legal action. I'd imagine they'd have bought the debt at half it's value and found themselves at a loss of twice the original debt amount as a result. But not everyone is as strong - many underhand tactics are designed to force payment/settlement from the weaker. Unacceptable.

Don't get me wrong - debts should be paid, and people that want a free ride should be shot on sight, but noone is above the law. Shocks me that it continues, even with the new laws in place set on debt collection agencies and bailiffs.

[oolon]

Yes, indeed don't borrow if you can't afford it, how about it someone buys 2 mobile phones however it seems they have registered the phone to your house! Fortunately though not in our name. Anyway as soon as strange bills arrive, you phone the 2 phone companies, then more bills arrive, phone comes did nothing, get letters saying the change of credit card for the phone did not work, FINALLY after 4 months they cut the phones off. You would thing, good that's the end of it. Nope next a debt collection agency writes to me threatening me to pay the 1,000 pound of bills! Fortunately they did eventually accept the person did not live here, never lived here. Not before they made it quite clear they thought I was covering it up! I am sure they would have been very happy if they had shake the tree and are paid. One thing, bailiffs are like vampires, if you give them permission to come in one, the next time they don't have to ask.

[Barrichello]

There are 20,000 debt collectors in Britain chasing £20bn of overdue debt

Welcome to "buy now pay later" Britain.

Some people really need to wake up and start living within their means and try to stop "keeping up with the joneses"

[synaesthesia]

Quite right. The whole system is a shambles - and people are too quick to blame someone else for their own shortcomings. Mistakes get made, either pay the price or take the punishment, but blaming anyone else is daft.
Getting off topic though - is this a case of punishment not befitting the crime? Or these collectors beating "criminals" by becoming one themselves. (for want of a better word, sorry).

[TooNice]

I think one of the problem is that with so many people in debt, how do you sort the ones who will eventually pay up, from the ones trying to take the company for a ride until they are 'persuaded' otherwise.

It doesn't of course justify the illegal tactics, and for a start, they really should do a better job at identifying the debtors (and not go people who have nothing to do with it). Beyond that, it is also the duty of the ones who owns money to supply the correct current address when moving and to quickly inform/try to co-operate with the company they owe debt to about their difficulties before the company decides it's just cheaper to cut their loss and sell off their debts.

[AledJ]

Yes people should live within their means but....................................this is also the banks and lending companies problem!! When time were good they lumped massive loans on people with great interests rates.

[Mazzle]

I agree with what Dwarf and others have said in regards to living within your means, I also completely agree that it is not internal departments that are the problem but external companies.

The problem I see is that to get the debt out of a person agencies will do almost anything to get their money (I say their but it wasn't ever there's to begin with it was 'passed over' to them). Yes taking out finance was the consumer's decision and yes they have a duty to uphold the contract but we are all human and sometimes we screw up. The adverts that speak about mortgages/loans/cards and failure to keep repayment could mean losing your home or court action, funnily enough that part is the least stated in EVERY advert it has got a little better but only within the last couple of years. The lobbyists and government are happy to whack great big photos of diseased lungs or "Smoking kills" across the front of a cigerette packet so why not inform people about the risks of credit openly and honestly like smoking they should be obvious but again getting money out of someone by enticing them with BNPL deals and long term contracts is profitable to them where as smoking or alcohol cuts the cash cow off people die but not before they've spent all their cash on these vices. If gaining credit was more transparent I feel that there would be a lot less of this going on but the agencies will cry "no one forces you to take this credit agreement" More often than not this is the main/only way they justify it.

For years this has been happening but things are changing, partly due to the internet if nothing else. Freedom of information and an army of consumers in the same situation are starting to fight back the intimidating, mentally abusive and downright disgusting tactics that SOME agencies will use. I've never had debt passed on to an agency and even if I did it will NEVER make feel stupid or depressed because I decide to attain credit and want to take the easy road. The countless examples of scenarios when a person cannot make payments due to 'unavoidable' conditions and the understanding of said conditions fall onto deaf ears and are rebuked with "it's your own damn thought don't cry about it to us".

The word for this type of action is bullying, because someone feels that you are inferior or are stupid in their eyes this gives them the right to treat an obviously vulnerable person more unstable. There are people who do take credit without thinking it through but there are more that don't deserve this kind of treatment.

Agencies do use illegal tactics to extort money out of someone but there are now people who won't take this lying down, if any of you are there are thinking about credit then think long and hard and be realistic but if you do decide to with every intention of paying off said debt and a problem occurs such as bereavement, long term illness, or redundancy due to your employer (many more reasons with such a complex society we live in) then try not to worry too much and focus on the situation at hand. I mean honestly do they want us to believe that none of them have ever taken credit out in their lifetime? Do all NHS staff refrain from smoking? Yet will have to tell a patient not to smoke as it's dangerous for your health? No.

I actually make it practice if that an agency tries to harass someone I know into paying a debt that sometimes doesn't even exist in the hope the person is not going to fight this because they 'DO' owe the money to inform them of the procedures that the agency must adhere too.

Always ask for the COA agreement that must be present, an agency has a legal right to inform you of this if they are chasing up a debt but you will always have to ask once again because they lurk in the shadows hoping you won't kick up a fuss. They must also contact you within a reasonable period of time for such a debt and in no way harass you daily either at home or at work because this has obvious ramifications. Basically NEVER agree any acknowledgement of any debt until both the COA and all requests for any other relevant information are sent to you. NEVER sign your name on any correspondence it has been known for agencies to falsify your signature in the hope that you don't remember so they can illegally attach your name to a document and therefore enforce the debt on you. Any kind of prolonged harassment should be recorded and shown to the FSA if found that the debt is unenforceable. Don't let cowboys push you into accepting debt when you have no recollection of it. I could go on but well...I'll spare you guys your eyesight

Bottom line: I guess if (and this is a contradiction) you want to beat these charlatans then don't take credit and watch the parasites go back underground. Eradicate credit and eradicate these pests, then everyone is happy.

Gah sorry for the rant!

[Saracen]

.... But, I personally feel that if you can't afford it, don't borrow it, and most of this could be stopped if people weren't so greedy and lived within their own means, instead of taking out credit

And of course the banks have nothing to do with people taking out credit, do they?

Yes, people should live within their means and not take out credit they can't afford. But a credit arrangement is a two-way street - for every borrower, there's a lender. And among those lenders are many banks who were so dead keen to maximise their profits that they lent on terms that they ALL should have known were unsustainable.

It wasn't borrowers that came up with 125% mortgages, or with 6x salary multipliers. It was greedy banks that were betting on the housing market continuing to rise at the same substantial rates as it had been in recent years ..... and they lost that bet. It wasn't borrowers that designed 0% balance transfer deals if you take out credit cards - it was banks and card companies trying to sell more cards, and/or poach customers from their competitors.

Let me make this clear. I don't have any credit card debt at all. None. I don't have a car loan, I don't have any store credit cards and I have a mortgage I can pay off any time I chose, and which is about a third of what I spent on my last new car, and NO other debts of any type. Why? Because I ignored the absolute barrage of blandishments bank after bank after bank kept sending me. Do I want a loan for this, or a credit card for that? No, I flipping don't. But trying to get banks to stop sending me unsolicited marketing stuff trying to flog me excess finance that I don't need and don't want, and gave repeatedly told them not to send, is like trying to stop the sun coming up in the morning.


Yes, people shouldn't take out credit they can't afford. I completely agree. But that's far from a complete picture. Firstly, there's those that could afford it when they took it out, and then got hit by some unexpected event, like long-term illness, or unemployment ... or a recession caused, in large part, by greedy and imprudent bankers.

Then there's the fact that banks have spend the last decade at least shoving as much credit at us all, whether we wanted it or not. Not all that long ago, I was sent a "pre-approved" credit card, all I had to do was "fill in this form". I rang the company and said "thanks, but I don't need your card .... and if I'm pre-approved, why all the impertinent questions?" They told me they needed to verify my salary details. Tricky, I said, as I'm self-employed and don't have a salary. Oh, then we need a letter from your accountant, they said, and were a bit be,mused when I said I am an accountant and do my own accounts. Next, they wanted a copy of my tax return for the last three years .... so I pointed out that it seemed like "pre-approved" was a bit of an ..... erm ..... lie, and I suggested, politely, that they shove their card. So what did they do? Instead of the gold card they'd offered ... they sent a platinum one instead. Yes, I signed their form .... but I didn't fill in all the details they wanted, and the ONLY information they had on my income level was the estimate I gave them myself. They didn't verify it, because there is no way they could have. Yet they still sent a card with a whopping great credit limit.

Oh, and by the way, I then changed my mind, destroyed the card and sent it back to them, with a letter saying will they now please leave me the hell alone and not keep sending me this junk. I might as well have been talking to myself.

So while people ought to be responsible and not take out credit they can't afford .... or better yet, not take out credit period .... banks ought to have been responsible and done far more verification of the circumstances of people they were lending to, rather than just lending to anyone with a pulse. And they need to take responsibility for having so actively sought to lend as much as they could, often on daft conditions.

Oh, and this is not a potshot at you, BlackDwarf, or at Lloyds, because they were by far one of the more responsible banks, at least until they got conned by The Brown and Darling Comedy Duo into bailing out HBOS and, more importantly (to our glorious PM), bailing out his political career which, if HBOS had gone down the toilet, would probably have gone down the toilet with it.

[jimbo90210us]

I personally feel that if you can't afford it, don't borrow it, and most of this could be stopped if people weren't so greedy and lived within their own means, instead of taking out credit

Agreed but you can fall foul of these people even if you do not have any debt.

We moved into a new house in 2006 and as normal gave our meter readings to the electricity and gas suppliers. All good and happy life in new house for 3 months till the first gas bill arrived. Over £1000 for 3 months (man it was a cold 3 months that summer we had to have the heating going full blast). We rang up British Gas to ask about the bill as the initial reading was not the reading we had given them it was from way before. In fact later we found out that it was a gas reading from 2 years previous.

We paid the amount from the initial reading so we paid what we owed for the gas we had used.

We still kept getting bills, phoned up and we were told it was sorted, more bills. And repeat, and again and again and again for about 9 months.

Eventually we got a letter from the bayliffs who came round and reffused to believe us and called us liars. NEVER LET A BAYLIFF IN YOUR HOUSE. Luckily we didn't but the bayliffs caused a lot of stress to an innocent family and a pregnant woman that was totaly unjustified.

Through one of our phone calls to the gas people we found out that they knew we were not the occupiers when the gas was used and that the previous people in the house who it was rented to had not paid. I think they were trying to chance it to get their money off whoever they could.

Unethical business & sh***y admin staff == Bayliff

You do not always have to be stupid and run up lots of debt on cards although this is where the majority fail foul of the bayliff.

[BlackDwarf]

Completely agree with Saracen and Aled.... In fact, very regularly I see debt that was fuelled by the targets of staff members at branches, "I think the Platinum accound would really suit your needs. No? Well we'll put it on anyway and charge you £25 a month, even if there's no money in the account". I do see irresponsible lending, but the majority of customers I deal with are either: a) Lazy dole scum who never intend to pay it back, or b) Unlucky souls who are a product of the recession and companies going under.
I have sympathy for the latter, and will do my upmost to keep their accounts from being charged off. The former on the other hand... Well, they almost deserve to be sold on.

And don't get me started on the HBOS débacle.

[Lucio]

Back when I was 19 and moved into a rented place all by myself, I had a baliff company latch onto the property as the former tenannt had run up a lot of debt. They totally ignored my repeated phone calls that the person who they were after no longer lived there, tried to gain entry to the property whilst I was out (neighbour saw them snooping around and lifting a window that I thought was on a secure ventillation latch)

In the end, I faced them down on the doorstep, and told them to stop haressing me, was one of the more frightening experiences of my life to be honest.


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On the flip side mind you, I work for a company that like many companies, offers standard 30 day invoicing facilities, without debt collection agencies our company would never survive because of the sheer number of people who think they can walk away from a business contract because we're the "big company". It's not even particularly large amounts of money, a few hundred pounds in most cases, but the attitude you get even when we start with the basic calls & letters after 90 days is staggering.

[AledJ]

As I said above and others have pointed out the banks are also at fault!!! Every time I go into the post office they offer me their damn credit card!! Mr post office dude could not understand why I didn't want another card!! The only credit card I have is a Tesco one which is used for petrol and shopping, but its paid off every month!!

I'm about to go back to university to do a 10 month Legal Practice Course (needed to qualify as a solicitor) Now my course fees are £9000. I could have taken out a further education loan that some banks offer for postgraduates. I kept getting info about these loans from the three banks I bank with. Eventually after a few calls they stopped sending me the rubbish!! I decided instead to work (as a security guard) in order to save the money.

The only debt I have is student debt!! Whats most annoying is that the government gives no support to post graduates!! Would have liked to have started my LPC course 2 years ago but as i didn't want a bank loan, my only choice was to work.