anyone had dealings with mercers

grace

IF it does go to court...make sure you ring the court preferably before the action date but its not vital....tell them how the DCA have behaved....in my experience they take a very dim view...I had my payments reduced after I contacted the court offices regarding the lewis group and their tactics....

AGB863

Have a look at this info

Physical/psychological harassment

2.5 Putting pressure on debtors or third parties is considered to be oppressive.

2.6 Examples of unfair practices are as follows:

a. contacting debtors at unreasonable times and at unreasonable intervals

b. pressurising debtors to sell property, to raise funds by further borrowing or to extend their borrowing

c. using more than one debt collection business at the same time resulting in repetitive and/or frequent contact by different parties

d. not ensuring that an adequate history of the debt is passed on as appropriate resulting in repetitive and/or frequent contact by different parties

e. not informing the debtor when their case has been passed on to a different debt collector

f. pressurising debtors to pay in full, in unreasonably large instalments, or to increase payments when they are unable to do so g. making threatening statements or gestures or taking actions which suggest harm to debtors

h. ignoring and/or disregarding claims that debts have been settled or are disputed and continuing to make unjustified demands for payment i. disclosing or threatening to disclose debt details to third parties unless legally entitled to do so

j. acting in a way likely to be publicly embarrassing to the debtor either deliberately or through lack of care, e.g. by not putting correspondence in a sealed envelope and putting it through a letterbox, thereby running the risk that it could be read by third parties.

Have a look at the whole document there is a lot more advice
Debt Collection Guidance

If you inform any DCA that they breaking these guidelines and they continue to do so, they will be reported to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and they could losse their licence to trade.

Please note that these guidelines can only be used if a default notice has been issued on the debt concerned.

We have to use this information when working with some DCA's who make a lot of noises to clients when wanting more money from them than they can afford or refuse to acknowledge us a Debt Management Company working on their behalf.