Saying money owed but is not owed

plutus1947

My wife has just received a letter from a company calling themselves Equidebt Ltd saying that a debt from a creditor named Motormile for over £2000 is owed by my wife and that debt has been passed over to Equidebt.

According to a search I have done Motormile is another debt collection agency.

My wife has received no communications from Motormile regarding any debt owed to them or anyone else. Neither does my wife owe anyone that amount of money.

If this debt was initially passed over from a company my wife has supposedly done busines with and not paid any accounts with that company why is the name of the company she ran up the bill with not mentioned.

My wife was informed that if she failed to respond to this letter within 7 days a doorstep agent will be instructed to make an appointment to visit her.

Should she simpy ignore the letter to see if they contact her again or should she write to them asking who she actually is supposed to owe the money to?

Her name is spelt correctly and the address is also correct on the letter.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

fermi

Letter when you know nothing about about the debt - AKA "Prove it" letter

Or wait and see if they write again?

You call really.

Unlikely that anyone will call round, but even if they do then they have no rights. You can tell them to get lost.

Equidebt have been sending out a lot of "fishing" letters to people who owe nothing.

Some example: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4154007

Lensman_2

I will add the following to Fermi's excellent advice.

Please DO NOT call them.

While it may feel like you are doing something about it, they will try to bully you in to believing this debt is your wife's and extract payment by any means - fair or foul.

They are best kept at arms length - and this is done by keeping it all in writing.

If they call you up then do not answer their "security questions" - just tell them that you want all communications in writing and hang up.

Let the prove-it letter do its job and come back when you get a reply.

Ms_Brush

As per Plutus1947's post, I have had three letters from Equidebt Ltd in the last few weeks, claiming I owe £345 to Motormile.....

I dont owe them (or anyone else) anything - so in response to the first letter I sent the "prove it" response. I received a second letter telling me that they had removed me from their records on the 17th Dec. Excellent, so I thought.

The third letter arrived today (20th Dec), offering me a reduced settlement - £103.50, to be paid in full by 27th December. Needless to say, I'm not impressed.

Just about to follow the excellent advice on this forum and send them the complaint letter and phone the FOS for advice. Will keep you posted.

It is really annoying and time consuming. I have been bombarded with a lot of these 'fishing' letters in the last few years following identity theft. I dont know if there is any register or similar that you can contact to stop this once and for all?

plutus1947

Just as it happened with Ms Bush my wife received a letter from Equidebt offering her a reduced payment and reduced the 'debt' from over 2K to £600.

If my wife 'did' actually owe this money I can't see why they would offer a reduced figure so quickly. At the very least they would have sent one of their 'agents' to visit her as they threatened in their initial letter.

We have decided to ignore their letters for the time being to see:

1) If they reduced the 'debt' even further

2) If they actually send someone around.

My wife has no intention of calling them or writing to them at the moment. If, in the unlikely event. they do send someone to see her we will sort it out there. In fact we would like to see someon face to face instead of being threatened in letter form.

Firms like this do not frighten my wife or myself.

fermi

Ms_Brush wrote: »

Just about to follow the excellent advice on this forum and send them the complaint letter and phone the FOS for advice. Will keep you posted.

Good. If you end up taking it to the FOS it will costs DM £500 for the pleasure. If enough people do that then it might make them think twice before sending letters to people who don't owe anything.

Ms_Brush

fermi wrote: »

Good. If you end up taking it to the FOS it will costs DM £500 for the pleasure. If enough people do that then it might make them think twice before sending letters to people who don't owe anything.

I spoke to the FOS just before Xmas - they are writing to the company on my behalf. They have also advised I write a formal complaint to them, quoting the FOS reference number. They will have 8 weeks to formally investigate and come to a mutully agreeable solution - if not, the FOS will formally pick this up on my behalf.

Not too concerned over Christmas, will sort out when I go back to work next week - and will keep you posted.

Lensman_2

Good progress, well done.

And thanks for keeping us posted. Doing that might well help some other reader who may not be brave enough to sign up and post, but will have benefited just the same.