Security Investigations Debt Recoveries - A&L to Santander ?

always_3

I have a old A&L debt which is around 12+ years old which is being repaid at £1 per month, I understand that Security Investigations is simply A&L own in house debt collectors, but today I got a letter to say that everything is now being transferred to Santander. I do not know if this will just be a straight transfer or if I will not start getting nasty letters to increase the Amount (I am not working with 4 kids).

I also still have another A&L account (Now Santander) which was okay but I am wondering if Santander will close it or take some money as A&L never seemed to notice it.

Thanks for your help.

Hannah_10

They might well close it and take the money, this is something that if anyone else did it you'd call it stealing but when the bank does it it's called setting off and they don't even have to tell you they did.
There is more about setting off on the main site here, it's best you read it.

You would be safer to close the account that is in credit on Monday and open an account at a safe institution (one not in the same banking group as Santander or A&L). That's a bit of a minefield at the moment and so I have started a project here to make it clearer. Although the project's still in its infancy so far it seems the ones for you to avoid would be...

Santander Banking Group:

• Abbey
• Alliance & Leicester
• Asda
• Bradford & Bingley
• Cahoot
• Carter Allen Private Bank
• Santander

Chances are the debt has been passed back to the original lender (bearing in mind the recent name change) because the DCA have got bored of £1 a week. Although they're in house to Santander (formerly A&L) they have a degree of independance. It might be that you will be asked again for higher payments and will again have to justify the token amount or that the account will just sit with Santander going down one pound at a time forevermore. If you get any threatening letters don't worry too much, it's mostly just hot air and you can always post them here (names and identifiers left out of course) for a bit more advice.

Given the age of the original debt there is a resonable chance it was never legal in the first place did you know that? Before 2007 about 70% of all the lending agreements (called Consumer Credit Agreements or CCA's) that were written by banks and other lenders were totally illegal. The Consumer Credit Act, which sets out the rules, has been in place since 1976 so they didn't really have any excuse for this, they were just really keen on ripping the public off, greedy and reckless as they were, in flagrant breach of the law. If it turns out that yours was one of the majority of illegal ones then the law says fair's fair, it's a con and you don't have to pay it back. This is called unenforcibility. If you are interested then everything you need to know about what it is and how to go about finding out is here It's not a short thread (allow a few days) but it's well worth the bother.