Debt company conflict of interest?

tbsnc99

Hello there this is my first post on this great forum! , I have been a reader of this site for many years as i got myself in debt a lot of years ago (more than 6) Due to being out of work after an accident. Now i have followed advice from different posts as my debits were sold on tho the recovery people many times. Now most have gone away due to the amount of time 6 years without contact but i do get letters sometimes from chancers !

Now i usally look at the back of the letter before opening google the detail and if its one of those nice debt letters i just pop in in the green recycling bin (to do my bit save the forests etc)

I got one this morning and it was a local po box from the near by town, hand delivered to my letter box bless him. Now the company in question is ** removed or data protection ** Credit Solutions Limited and the director/recovery agent is called ** removed for data protection **. Now i rent a property off his wife and he attends to all the paperwork tenancy aggrements etc (that had to be signed) So i think this would be a conflict of interest possible but am not sure.

Now the debt will be way over 6 years ago now so im not really bothered about that, Well i may send him a recoded letter that i have used before from the forum saying debt statute barred etc.

So im wondering if anyone had any idea about this?

Thanks again great forum!!!

DVardysShadow

tbsnc99, please go back to your post and take out the details of your Landlord and the debt company and anything which may identify you.

In the legal sense, there is no obvious conflict of interest - but read on below. You pay his wife rent and he may have bought your debt, so you would owe him for that. Possibly the debt is Statute Barred. Or it may not be your debt. Or he may not have the right to collect on it.

Just treat the rent and this debt as separate matters for the time being and put him to the trouble of doing the following, one item at a time

• prove that the debt is yours
• prove that he has the right to collect it
• prove that it is not Statute Barred

Now this looks to me to be a funny one. If the debt is Statute Barred, all this means [in England and Wales] is that it cannot be pursued in Court. The debt itself still exists.

So what I am wondering is whether this character has it in mind to deduct this debt from your deposit when you leave the property. And whether he has looked at your credit record and bought your debts with the idea of taking them from your deposit.

Now if that has happened, quite possibly, he is in breach of the Data Protection Act for misusing your tenancy data for an unrelated business. So perhaps rather than conflict of interest it would be abuse of trust.

As I see it, he would not have a right of set off to deduct this debt from your deposit for various reasons which I won't go into at the moment.. But I really am not sure on this. The other thing which bothers me is whether your deposit is protected in a deposit based scheme or an insurance based scheme.

I think that the issue of the deposit and the right of set off could do with an airing in the Housing forum. If you do that, please make it clear on both threads that you have 2 different threads to explore different aspects of the problem.

tbsnc99

Cheers for the advice and have removed names

tbsnc99

if the debit is proven to be mine its still over 6 years ago and not with him so what is the point? probably 10 years ago i think? shall i just ignor it like the rest ?

RAS

Unless there is a CCJ, send the statute barred letter.

DVardysShadow

RAS wrote: »

Unless there is a CCJ, send the statute barred letter.

Given the peculiar features of this case, I would go through proving the debt and the right to collect first. Statute barring might be circumvented and the other 2 issues might throw more light on what is going on. Just a gut feel on this one - normally I would defer on the order of these.

RAS

DVardysShadow wrote: »

Given the peculiar features of this case, I would go through proving the debt and the right to collect first. Statute barring might be circumvented and the other 2 issues might throw more light on what is going on. Just a gut feel on this one - normally I would defer on the order of these.

i meant if the debt is yours... then ...

Teacher2301

On dvardys point - the deposit for the rental accommodation must surely be protected in a government protection scheme and that any deductions must be related to the costs of the landlord related to the property - buying a debt to recover a deposit seems an odd way to get money via this route?

Difficult to say on the conflict of interest issue, perhaps someone could answer this - would the man in question have to prove how he obtained your address through other means or would just simply knowing you be enough to void any question of conflict of interest? Say, he has a written letter addressed to him from you living at his wife's rental property? Other than that, I'd say he wasn't.

DVardysShadow

Teacher2301 wrote: »

On dvardys point - the deposit for the rental accommodation must surely be protected in a government protection scheme and that any deductions must be related to the costs of the landlord related to the property - buying a debt to recover a deposit seems an odd way to get money via this route?

The deposit is not protected in a government scheme. It is protected in 1 of 3 government approved schemes. The subtle difference is important. 2 of the 3 schemes are insurance based, whereby the Landlord holds the money and the insurance is against him defaulting in repaying ...

I am not too sure of the overall legalities around this, but I think that if this is what is in the offing, it is better to see it coming from a long way off.

tbsnc99

they have addition infomation on me also as i changed my number years back to stop the calls plus my tenancy agreement has a signature on!

poppasmurf_bewdley

If there is any prospect of him taking this money from your deposit at the end of the tenancy, then surely it would be better for you to withhold the (at least) last month's rent to ensure you don't lose out.