Advice please?

fat-tony_4

don't think this is the correct board, but as a number of people have commented on a threadabout debt collection agencies I was wonderring if anyone could advise.

I regularly get mail sent to my address for someone who doesn't live there. Lets call him Smith Adam( by the look of it his name has been inverted). Now some of these letters have return addresses that suggest a finance company(which i return), others don't. Some of them you can see through the envelope are requests for final payment, etc.

As i regulalry check my credit score etc i know that their is no-one linked to my address on my report, so is it likely that this person once lived here and the debt collection agency are just mailing all known addresses for this person? i'm loathe to try and contact the firm to say this person doesn't live here, should I just leave it be??

fat-tony

pulliptears

You will get posters who will tell you not to open the mail as its illegal, well technically it is. You will also get posters telling you to accidentally open one without reading the name on the letter. When you have accidentally opened it you should then maybe do the right thing and return it with a covering letter explaining that you bought/rented the house in whatever date. If you can provide photocopied proof with it all the better.

I am not, of course advocating that solution You could give them a call if the company name is on the envelope, it wouldnt hurt.

When we bought this house 12 years ago we had a similar problem, I had small kids and the thought of bailiffs turning up on the doorstep terrified me. I was sending mail back for months with "not known at this address" written on it, but still the letters came.

One morning I opened one, accidentally of course as it was in the middle of a pile of my post, and I gave them a call. The letters stopped shortly after.

Personally my thoughts were I would rather take the risk of opening the letter than dealing with bailiffs, but thats for you to weigh up.
hth
x

fat-tony_4

Thank-you

I guess the reason I'm only curious about how to stop them, rather than worried is because if they were serious about this person living at my address it would have flagged up on experian wouldn't it??? I hope?!

Also the person is called a name similar to Smith Adam( a surname followed by first name), it's just peculiar.

The reason i'm loathe to call them is the number of instances of people then being accused of being said person and abused down the phone. If that did happen what would be my best recourse??

fat-tony

pulliptears

fat-tony wrote: »

Thank-you

I guess the reason I'm only curious about how to stop them, rather than worried is because if they were serious about this person living at my address it would have flagged up on experian wouldn't it??? I hope?!

Also the person is called a name similar to Smith Adam( a surname followed by first name), it's just peculiar.

The reason i'm loathe to call them is the number of instances of people then being accused of being said person and abused down the phone. If that did happen what would be my best recourse??

fat-tony

If that happened I would just put the phone down and send them the letter with proof of your ownership/tenancy.

When it happened to us nothing was flagged within our credit status for the house, but I guess had it got as far as ccj's it would have happened.

I think you will find most of the people are reasonable if you do give them a call

Good luck!

markelock

your credit score is personal to you, and has nothing to do with the house.

so the person who's name is these letters can be in as much debt as you care to mention, it will not reflect on you.

open the letters and call the people (assuming the numbers are there) they are usually happy to at least move forward in their search for the debtor.