Littlewoods debt collection - Advice please

geordie_joe

I wouldn't bother writing to the DCA, they can't do anything to you unless they can walk into a court and prove you owe them the money.

Littlewoods can't prove you owed the money, if they could they would be taking you to court and getting the whole £177 off you. They have sold the debt for a pittance because that is all the money they can get for it, they know they can't get anything out of you.

The DCA will bully you and harass you into paying them more than they paid for the debt, but in the end they can't make you pay anything.

If you contact them they will continue to bully you, but if you ignore them they will give up. The time and money they spend writing and phoning you will be directly proportional to the amount you owe. That is, they won't spend £200 sending you letters and phoning you if you only owe £177. It's basic business sense and maths, if they buy the debt for £20 and spend £80 persuading you to pay, and you do pay, they have made £77 profit.

But if they pay £20 for the debt and spend £200 persuading you to pay, and you do pay, how much profit/loss have they made?

Ignore them completely, they will go away pretty soon.

On the other hand, you should contact Littlewoods. They are the ones who will put a default on your credit record. You must get them to admit that you never owed them money in the first place, so can't have defaulted.

Sol00

It depends if Littlewoods have sold the debt or if the DCA are acting as agents.

I agree DCAs are more mouth than action, but I wouldn't recommend ignoring it and as the DCA are the company in contact, it should be them the letter is sent to.

horse76

I wouldn't pay it, like others have said already. You never received the item, and if you never gave them permission for any parcels to be left with a neighbour, then I'd say it's their fault.

I went through a similar situation about 4 years ago. Someone used a catalogue account in my name to obtain goods, it was an account I hadn't used for ages, forgot about, so didn't realise it was still active. First I knew about it was when I received a letter through the post from a DCA demanding around £240. I contacted the police, they couldn't do anything unless the catalogue raised the issue with them, even though they looked into it and more or less said they knew who had done it. So, I put it in the hands of a solicitor, sis in law works for a solicitor so quite few letters (luckily free of charge) was enough to get the DCA to give up, and the debt was written off (it did take nearly a year to get to that stage).

I got to the stage where I just wanted to pay the debt, cause I didn't want it affecting my credit rating, which it never did throughout it all. I'm glad I listened to everyone who told me not to pay it, and I hope you can get it written off. Good luck.

Sol00

I have a lot of respect for the Police, but I don't understand why they don't deal with cases of fraud from the public. Is it not considered a crime thesedays?

sexki11en

Does anyone know why this has been moved to this forum? It's not an I wanna, it's a debt / customer service issue Could a board guide move it to a more relevant spot please?

SK x

sexki11en

Ok, this morning I received the reply below.

Dear Miss,


Thank you for your e-mail, unfortunately I am not able to deal with this due to the length of time that has elapsed.
You should have pursued this at the time.

We would have sent out statements with the item being charged to your account and had you contacted us we could have sorted this for you.
Your account has been passed onto a debt collection agency.



Kind Regards

XXXXXXXXXX

Online Customer Services

Any ideas what I should do now? Also anyone know how I can get this moved to the right board please?

SK x

Widelats

So your saying now you didn't recieve statements either? I find that hard to believe to be honest ....

sexki11en

Widelats wrote: »

So your saying now you didn't recieve statements either? I find that hard to believe to be honest ....

Am I? Can you show me where i've said this please?

I received statements - I called them and told them I'd never received the items and they didn't do anything. That was time ago.

I'm actually asking for advice on what to do now.

SK x

ebsay2000

Hi,

You'll get more replies, and advice on this forum..............

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.html?s=&daysprune=&f=76

sexki11en

ebsay2000 wrote: »

Hi,

You'll get more replies, and advice on this forum..............

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.html?s=&daysprune=&f=76

Hi,

Yeah, I know. My post was moved here and now I can't move it somewhere more relevant. :rolleyes:

SK x