Help please, unknown debt?

pipk62 · 31 May 2007 at 7:04PM

Hi all. I posted the following in 'Credit Cards' forum,:doh: advised to post it here too:

I had a letter arrive through my letterbox recently from a company called 'Ruthbridge Limited'
They give some information, such as Their ref, Their Client, which is Cabot Financial Europe Limited, their Clients Ref and balance, which is 2022.04
It then says We have been instructed by the above named client to retrieve this outstanding balance in full.
Failure to respond to this notice within seven days may result in the following legal action:
- A county court form being issued
- A judgment being obtained, which will accrue costs and interest.
- A Bailiff's warrant may be served for seizure of assets.
- An attachment of earnings / Garnishee Order.
It then goes on to say I must contact them within seven days and payment must be made in full.

So I contacted them, having no idea what this debt is, the person in charge of my case wasn't there at the time, so I left my phone number.
Today He phoned, I asked him what the debt was for and he said that "I had been told before, so how do you intend to pay" this discussion went on for a little while, then He said "phone the police and get a crime reference number", I said "OK but won't they want to know what for?" he said "No, because I'll be phoning the police too" none of this made sense, how can I report a crime when I don't know when that crime is?
Anyway.. He then asked if I lived at an address he had, which I did, but quite some time ago...
He then said that I had a City Financial credit card at that address in 2001, and I had "done a bunk!"

I do need to explain something here, I left my home after a marital break-up, and lived in a small flat (the address he had) for about 3 months, then I moved back into the address I lived at previous to that to be with my children, (my ex-wife had moved away); I can't be certain that I didn't have a credit card, My mind was all over the place! but if I did have a credit card, how did I get it? I had just moved home, I was self-employed and on financial assistance, and surely on my application they would have needed my previous address?!?!?

I asked him to send me details of this debt,telling him that I'm not phoning the police yet, he said He wasn't going to send me any details whatsoever!
In all this time I haven't received any letters from City Financial, Cabot Financial, or from Ruthbridge ltd until now.

I'm at a lost what I should do now.

any advice would be welcome.
Many thanks.

RAS · 31 May 2007 at 7:22PM

The site closes in a couple of hours, so I have nabbed a post from Crown.

Edit it to include your details and send this this recorded delivery.

You may find that the debt is statute barred. Otherwise, you may find that they do not have the documentation. They can do nothing to you unless they can prove it was your debt.

What a lot of these companies do is buy statute barred debts and then try to trace the person concerned (or anyone with that name) and get them to cough up despite the fact that the debt is no longer valid. They can be very threatening, so you migh want to add that all communication will be by letter. If they ignore that you can report them.

The other possiblitiy is that someone who lived in the house after you used your details to get a credit card, but any documentation

Here is a template letter (dates need to be edited) that was posted by the user PhatBear in another thread recently. Hope it helps.

If a debt colecting agency is chasing you send them this:

I do not acknowledge ANY debt to your company. I require you to supply the following documentation before I will correspond further on this matter.

1. You must supply me with a true copy of the alleged agreement you refer to. This is my right under your obligation to supply a copy of the agreement under the legislation contained within s.78 (1) Consumer Credit Act 1974 (s.77 (1) for fixed sum credit) - your obligation also extends to providing a statement of account. I enclose £1 in payment of the statutory fee.

2. A signed true copy of the deed of assignment of the above referenced agreement that you allege exists.

3. You are notified that you are obliged to supply these documents, whether you are the original creditor or not under S189 of the CCA 1974.

4. I would also like to point out that under the Limitation Act 1980 Section 5 “an action founded on simple contract shall not be brought after the expiration of six years from the date on which the cause of action accrued

Non-compliance with my request is a criminal offence under the above Act and will result in a report being submitted to the relevant statutory authorities, therefore if I do not receive evidence that I owe your company any monies by 6th February 2006, I will have no hesitation in passing your details to the Office of Fair Trading.

As you are aware, a credit agreement that is not properly documented and signed by the customer is totally unenforceable under the CCA and therefore is a complete defence to any court claim that is issued.

Take note at this stage, that any legal action you may contemplate will be both vigorously defended and contested.

Regarding your threat that a Doorstep Collector will call the owner of this property is denying you or anybody working on your behalf access onto their estate or grounds in relation to this disputed debt, should you or any agent acting for you attempt to gain access to the estate or its grounds, then you will be ignoring your denial of access and the owner of "insert your address", will take legal steps to sue both you and or your agents for trespass, please also note that having a letterbox on the property gives you or anyone working on your behalf neither implied nor expressed rights to enter the properties boundaries, again any instances of trespass WILL lead the property owner to sue both yourselves or any agents working on your behalf

Yours,

pipk62 · 31 May 2007 at 8:21PM

Superb!

Many thanks, I will get that sorted as soon as possible.

All the Best.
Phill

misfire · 1 June 2007 at 10:38AM

We had a different situation but i feel some of the things that helped us may help you. We moved and barclaycard sent a new card and pin to our old house (it got there 2 days after our post redirections stopped) we thought the account was closed. Some took £200 pound a day until they hit the £3000 limit - first we knew was when they phone my hubby to see how he was going to pay the debt - so glad we kept our phone number..

o.k long story short time.... barclaycard tried to get us to pay this (saying it was our fault we didnt tell them we moved was one of there tactics). They were really scarey and at one point my hubby considered us getting a loan just to get them off our backs (no way was i paying a loan for fraud committed against us) We got some great advise of here and one of the things was to get the police involved.

As soon as we got the police involved things started to get sorted - we had a lovely wpc who we had to send correspondence into (barclaycard wouldnt talk to the police until we had signed a ... whats it called.... data protection thingy) but it all got resolved in a matter of months once the police were involved. So it is worth contacting them - they were REALLY helpful to us. I dont know if this would help with your situation but it may be worth giving them a ring on your local police station number and see if they can eitehr help or give you some advise.

Keep posting - without this site i am sure that we would still be trying to sort the barclaycard mess out now.
Good luck

pipk62 · 7 June 2007 at 6:25PM

UPDATE.

Hi again.

After sending the letter as advised by RAS, with a notification that all correspondence will be by post only, I have now received another letter.

It says...

Dear Mr ********
As we have been unable to contact you by telephone, it is essential that you call our office immediately, in order for us to deal with the issues you have raised in your correspondence regarding this debt.

Please therefore call the above number, quoting our reference number as stated

.

Incidentally, they use for a signature the name printed in a different font and larger, this time only half the 'signature name' is visible.

I can't help thinking this is some sort of trap, and I really don't think I should telephone them, but should I reply by letter?

Would like to know your thoughts?

RAS · 7 June 2007 at 6:44PM

Hi Pik

Ignore the request to phone. Check that your letter was received and who signed, when.

They are legally obliged to respond to your request. You might want to stick Cabot into the search engine on this forum and see who you are dealing with.

They need to send you the evidence of your debt in 12 days, from the date when they received the letter. There are follow-up letters on the site.

In the meantime send them a note advising that you wish to communicate by letter only and that you will not do so again until they have responded to your letter of .... requesting evidence of the debt.

You might want to change your thread title to cover the issue and get some of the real experts on board.

pipk62 · 7 June 2007 at 7:28PM

RAS wrote: »

Hi Pik

Ignore the request to phone. Check that your letter was received and who signed, when.

They are legally obliged to respond to your request. You might want to stick Cabot into the search engine on this forum and see who you are dealing with.

They need to send you the evidence of your debt in 12 days, from the date when they received the letter. There are follow-up letters on the site.

In the meantime send them a note advising that you wish to communicate by letter only and that you will not do so again until they have responded to your letter of .... requesting evidence of the debt.

You might want to change your thread title to cover the issue and get some of the real experts on board.

Whoops! I gave them 28 days to reply, would that matter?

Changing the title would be a good idea, Any ideas? and how do I go about it?

Many thanks for the advice.

RAS · 8 June 2007 at 10:34AM

Pip

Hi no good at the techie stuff.

You may have to put up a quick thread "How to change title, help", or try a search on that as I saw a query a couple of weeks back.

One thing that struck me after I mailed last night.

Get copies of your credit reports. Almost any debt that is still actionable will be on there.

I nicked this from another thread

The best thing to do is to get a copy of your credit file from the UK credit checking agencies such as:

https://www.experian.co.uk

https://www.equifax.co.uk

https://www.callcredit.co.uk

Also, please read the following sections of the site/forum:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/credit-rating-credit-score

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...d.html?t=51087

Hope that helps.

angelavdavis · 8 June 2007 at 11:28AM

pipk62 wrote: »

Whoops! I gave them 28 days to reply, would that matter?

No, just wait max of 28 days then see what happens. The letters are computer generated. There has been another posting recently where a DCA has told someone to report the incident as fraud (I can't find it though!

)

Regardless of whether this was fraud, it sounds like the debt is statute barred anyway, so if they provide a Credit agreement, there are some templates on the national debt line web site that enable you to tell them not to bother you any more about it:
http://www.nationaldebtline.co.uk/en...limitation_act

Crown · 8 June 2007 at 11:47AM

Hi Pipk,

In the letter you sent them you have made your case clear and have given them time to send you the relevant paperwork. I do not see the harm in contacting them by telephone and seeing what they want.

If they try and get you to make any further commitment via phone tell them that you are awaiting a reply to your previous letter and you will only discuss this further in written correspondence. also then tell them that they only "x" amount of days left to reply under section 77(1) and section 78(1) of the consumer credit act 1974. With that politely tell them that you look forward to receiving the paperwork and hang up.

the are so fond of pushing people around and making legal threats that they dont oftwen know how to take someone who states that they know there legal rights.

After the date has expired (after the 28 days you gave them) post them a copy of this follow up letter. Make sure you edit it correctly to your needs.

Crown · 8 June 2007 at 11:48AM

I refer to my letter dated {enter date} which was delivered via Recorded Delivery to your offices on {enter delivery date}.

You have failed to acknowledge this request by not supplying the requested documents. The documents I requested should be readily available as proof of your legal right to collect this account.

In my letter of the {enter date} I made a formal request for a copy of the signed, executed credit agreement for the above account under Section 77(1) and Section 78(1) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and a true signed copy of the Deed of Assignment. In addition a full statement of my account should have been sent to me detailing all debits and credits to the account from the time {debt agency name} purchased this account, along with any other documents mentioned in the credit agreement.

You are reminded that you are obliged to supply these documents, whether you are the original creditor or not, as defined under Section 189 of the CCA 1974.

The Consumer Credit Act allows 12 working days for this request to be carried out before your company enter into a default situation. If the request is not satisfied after a further 30 calendar days, your company commit an offence. These time limits expired on {enter date} and {enter date} respectively.

As you are no doubt aware, Section 78(6) states:

If the creditor under an agreement fails to comply with subsection (1) -

(a) He is not entitled, while the default continues, to enforce the agreement; and
(b) If the default continues for one month he commits an offence.

Therefore on {enter offence date} this account became unenforceable at law and no further payment will be made by myself to the account, as you have failed to comply with a request for a true signed copy of the said agreement, and other relevant documents mentioned in it, and failed to send a full statement of the account and failed to provide a true copy of the Deed of Assignment, under the relevant sections of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. Further, i do not acknowledge any debt to {debt agency name}.

I require the following action from {debt agency name} :

1. All payments made to date to {debt agency name} for this account should be refunded in full, including interest at the rate of 8% per annum.

2. Removal of all defaults entered by {debt agency name}. Note this is to be a complete deletion and not merely an amendment.

3. I look forward to compensation under Section 13 of the Data Protection Act 1998 to be offered for the processing of my data in the manner it has been done over the past number of years.

4. After a full refund of all payments with interest and compensation are received by myself, you will be required under Section 10 and Section 12 of the Data Protection Act 1998 to cease and desist all manual and automatic processing of my data within your company and any other company within your group.

If you do not respond positively to my request, court action may be taken under Section 14 of the Data Protection Act 1998 to force {debt agency name} or any other company within the group to comply with the refund of all monies paid, removal of all defaults maintained and compensation for damage and distress as a result of unlawful data processing. I may also pass the matter to the relevant enforcement authorities including, but not limited to, the OFT, the Information Commissioners Office, Trading Standards, the CSA, the FOS and my local MP.

I look forward to your reply within 14 days to resolve the matter amicably.

Help please, unknown debt?

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