People freaking me out about debts that aren't mine.

Razael

Hi all, I've seen this is a great board, but now have to post my own question about somebody else's debt, hope you'll help I live at a rented property and get loads of debt related mail for other people. I've never had anything even approaching debt ever before.

A while ago I received some post addressed to 'the occupier' and this is where I made my first mistake. This letter said it was looking for a David X (surname withheld) and asked if i knew his whereabouts. I filled out a form online and said i didn't know David X (I don't). However I foolishly gave my own name at the time. This was a few months ago.

Then, on sunday I had a ring on the door. This man had one of those voter registration forms, with the name of the previous renter of the address on it, who is still on the electoral register even thought she doesn't live here. (I never bothered to register myself in the register since I didn't plan to live here long). Anyway this guy told me he was doing a 'electoral register check', which seemed legitimate because he had the correct looking form and correct name of the previous renter. Without thinking, for some reason I signed the bottom of it (what was I thinking??). Do councils do electoral register checks??

Then today some other bloke turns up and asks for a person with the same first name as me, but different surname. Let's call him Bob Y. He says it's a court matter. He asks if I am a Bob, and says that someone in the street told him that a Bob lived here. At this point i just thought it was too weird so said sorry I can't help you and let him go on his way.

So.. what is going on? Anything to be worried about? Any advice? I don't want any pain from these people and have never dealt with this sort of stuff so have no idea how to do it or what my rights even are? I am thinking I should ask for ID from everybody now.

Tixy

The council do do electoral roll checks and they do do them at this time of year. If you don't respond to the letter sent out they do send someone round to get your form signed. So its quite possible that that was a genuine council caller.
So did you sign the form saying that the previous person still lived there and that you didn't? if so then you need to contact the council, explain you didn't understand what you were signing and ask for it to be corrected.

I would agree you should ask for ID from everyone.

If the previous occupier has outstanding court judgements then its just possible you might get baliffs turning up. It might be handy to make sure you have a copy of your rental agreement or something to prove you rent the place somewhere fairly easy to access so that if someone does call and once you have confirmed their identity you can prove who you are and that you now live at that place.

g_attrill

I don't think they are tricking you to take on debts as such, the only think they might be doing is if they think the debtor is still living there but giving a false name to creditor they will try various things to catch them out. Regardless, if you aren't that person you can't accidentally take them on. Have you been putting all post back in a postbox with "return to sender, new tenant" or similar? I only got a few things here but I opened anything that looked like it was debt related and called the senders and they were happy to be told that the person wasn't living here any more.

Gordon_Hose

If the debts aren't yours then the only thing you have to worry about is the inconvenience of letters. If you get a letter for the previous occupant, pop them back in the letter box marked "Not known at this address".

Don't open mail addressed to someone else though, it's an offence.

DVardysShadow

Gordon_Hose wrote: »

If the debts aren't yours then the only thing you have to worry about is the inconvenience of letters. If you get a letter for the previous occupant, pop them back in the letter box marked "Not known at this address".

Don't open mail addressed to someone else though, it's an offence.

Only if

• it is in the course of transmission. Once it drops through your letter box, that no longer applies
• you do it intending to cause detriment to the addressee.