Old Debt niggles

Lilmic

I have a debt from a hire purchase i bought in 2000, i'd bought the car and financed it and some idiot somewhere messed up my account details for the repayments and noone decided to tell me the payments weren't reaching the company i was due the monies to. Evidently i got bullied into letting some debt collector reposess my car (no reciept given). If i remember right the car was £5000 at the time and im sure the interest was £2500 or there abouts. Now when i went for this finance, the finance company did not pick up on (and neither did i with all honesty but do you really think about these things when your 20 something?) that i already was paying for another car that i thought was only over 3 years but actually 4.
Anyway asked the debt collector at the time if it was possible to pay the money i was due at the time so i could keep my car and they refused saying i'd defaulted and they were to reposess the car. I got a letter a few weeks later saying the car sold at auction for £3500 and that i still owed the company (roughly) £3200. No proof that the car sold for this price and no evidence.
I put it down to bad experience and a learning curve and set up a direct debit.
All of a sudden the company i was paying disappeared, and some other company bought my debt.
Fast forward on about 3 years and i'd heard nothing from the new company

Mackenzie Hall got in contact in January 2003 to say they had the account and i owed them the money. At the time i was just about to start Uni and maybe not the smartest i avoided contacting them. After 4 years of constant phonecalls and letters saying they'd send representitives round (no date or time) constantly phoning my parents landline sometimes hanging up. I set up a direct debit to pay them back an initial set up fee of £45 and then monthly payments of £40.

So this i started in January of this year. First payment was 28th January, followed by 3rd March and then the next payment (which is March's payment) is due on the 30th of March. Now considering the banks aren't opened at the weekends it's really not my fault that the payment won't be sent at the weekend. Now they got Februarys payment 3 days late. But Today i got a phonecall from them saying i'd missed Februarys payment.

The girl on the phone had a right attitude problem and when i tried to explanin that all payments had been made since i set the direct debit up she raised her voice and started to tell me "Your not listening" She interrupted constantly, leading to me losing the head and shouting down the phone at her to which she told me to calm down or she'd terminate the call. I tried once again to point out their error on the phone and she interrupted me again!. Now by this point i was fuming and i told her the damned payments had been paid and that i had references to this. She then told me in a patronising tone "Miss ****** i don't want the reference numbers i need to see it from your bank account" At this point i couldn't hold in the barrage of swear words about to rumble out my mouth so i put the phone down.

I ended up contacting them online on their live "friendly" chat.
I told them i wanted to discuss my account, first thing the representitive said was "Would you like to pay your account off?" Knowing damn fine i didn't and that i'd obviously just been on the phone and there was a problem and that i was obviously paying it in installments for a reason.
Anyway i calmly said no and that i just wanted to work out why they were phoning me twice in the space of half an hour to ask me why i'd missed payments when i know for a fact i hadn't.
Anyway eventually the guy said he'd look at the account and he couldn't see anything wrong with my account. Then he said i've also checked the notes on your account and see you phoned this morning and the issues raised.
So i asked if that could be changed on my account and that any contact in future be reviewed and only made if necessary.

Anyway where do i stand with these idiots? I don't actually see why i should be paying 4 years interest on a car where i did not own (through no fault of my own) for more than 4 months.

GeorgeUK

Can i just check these dates you've given?

Car bought in 2000 - no payments received by creditor (did you get these payments back from whoever was receiving the payments?)
MH contacted you in 2003 - no payments were made
payments made in 2007

Is this right? There was a period of 6 years where no payments had been made towards the debt?

If so then the debt may be statute barred, even if you have since made payments. As long as ther was a 6 year period where you made no payments or acknowledged the debt in writing.