Cabot/Vanquis claiming unrecognised debt

OIKY

Hi All, new member posting on behalf of my girlfriend, please bear with me on this one as it's going to be quite long, i hope that it makes sense As i've struggled to put all the information together to get the timeline right. I would appreciate any helpful comment on this and am happy to clear up anything that might not make sense

In September 2011 we received a letter through the door from a company called cabot financial, all It enclosed was a self completion budget form asking for all her details with a column on the left hand side claiming the original debt was from a Vanquis Credit Card and set at £1189.88.
This came as a huge surprise as there was no contact with this company before recieving this letter. We chose to ignore this letter seeing as it was asking for personal information we had no intention of giving them. We then received another letter in November 2011 which again referenced the debt (now at £1214.65) claming it was "vital we contacted them urgently" and that if they didn't hear from us "we'll have to move your account to the next stage of the collections process"


Now, my girlfriend previously DID have a credit card with Vanquis and she is convinced she made the final payment to them in October 2010. All letters and statements from vanquis were going to her parents house and she stopped receiving correspondence from them after the final payment was made. Also Vanquis had never been in contact in any way to claim any remaining debt. so as you can imagine these letters were quite concerning. we decided to phone vanquis who stated that the debt was no longer anything to do with them, we did find out in this phonecall however that the address on file with vanquis was one that my
girlfriend never gave to them nor had lived in for 3 years AND a new card had been sent to that address.

She made a phonecall to citizens advice who directed her to consumer direct trading standards who then informed my girlfriend to phone cabot and request statements. My girlfriend took the advice and phoned up cabot and asked them for statements, we did not hear back from them until the 8th february 2012 when they sent us a letter informing us that the last payment was made to vanquis for £250.00 in october 2010 (which we already knew) so we got back in touch with cabot over the phone who stated
that Vanquis will no longer respond to us and that cabot would ask them for statement containing the information since cabot took over the account and asked us if we have any proof of payment such as a chequebook or a statement, we explained that the debt was finalised over the phone and that vanquis sent all correspodence and a new card to the address mentioned above where she hadn't lived for 3 years.

We hadn't heard anything again until 03/04/2012 where cabot sent a letter saying that they have not yet had a response from vanquis, because of this we contacted cabot again by phone. Cabot reminded us that vanquis had 30 days to respond to which we reminded them that it had actully been 60 days and there had been no response. On 26/04/2012 cabot finally sent what they claimed to be a statement from vanquis, this 'statement' was an amateurish A4 blank letter with a header that said 'Vanquis Bank - customer transaction statement' it contained a column of transaction dates, merchant name and a transaction description (such as sale/cash advance etc) There are NO monetary amounts or running total on this statement, so obviously we found it completely questionable. We found a transaction on the date my girlfriend made her final payment, on this statement it has the same transaction description as any other payment 'PAYMENT COLLECTED' HOWEVER we can see that after this payment the only transactions on the account are for PPI collections (BING! Looking forward to doing them on this once this episode is over) for 7 months up until the close of balance (presumably closed by cabot?
).


Because of the poor quality of the supposed statement sent to us, we phoned cabot straight back informing them that as far as we were concerned this was not a statement as there were no amounts or any helpful information at all. The advisor on the phone were actually quite helpful and told us that the account would be put on hold immediately and she would request vanquis to send more details in the next 30 days. Since this phonecall In April we have only recieved 2 letters and no phonecalls.
The letters are dated 09/11/2012 and 09/01/2013 and they both say the same thing, that they have requested the information from Vanquis and that Vanquis are experiencing a delay retreiving the information from their archives. So much for 30 days!

Ok, so that's the story, i'm not exactly sure what my question is but we are really unsure as to what our next step should be, should we just wait it out while Cabot and Vanquis struggle to find the information? either way i think we need to be prepared for whatever their response may be. This situation has been quite stressful and it has even started to make my girlfriend doubt that she even paid the debt off when she was previously convinced that she had. As i have said to her though, surely if the debt was
legitimate then it would be incredibly easy for either vanquis or cabot to produce the proof, why haven't they done this so far? and why is it taking them so long? ever since the start of this situation i become increasingly angry and more convinced that cabot financial are nothing but crooks trying to scam money off us. If anyone has any experience in a situation like this or knows what we can do i would appreciate any help or comments.

thanks.

FireWyrm

Phew! Thats a long explanation. OK, so the bottom line is that you dispute this debt entirely?

If so, go via the Prove It letter route. Yes, I know you've sent one of those, but I suggest you start again from scratch. That being the case, they should send you PROOF of the debt. That PROOF must be a statement showing a reference number, original creditor, original debtor, address, payments made, dates etc. Anything less isnt proof of the debt and you move to step two.

Step two is a 'take a long walk off a short pier' letter which effectively says that they cannot prove it, have failed to provide evidence and you dispute that you have every owed this debt at all. You also tell them in that letter that you now consider this matter closed and you will no longer respond to their enquiries.

The final step? If they THEN continue, you send a final letter telling them that further correspondance will result in a letter of complaint to the OFT.

End of story. Do not telephone, do not respond, do not engage with any person at the door claiming to work for this company.

They are cold debt chasers and this is more than likely nothing to do with you anyway.

OIKY

thanks for the reply i really appreciate you sitting through that and reading it!

but yes, pretty much you hit the nail on the head. the only thing i can think of happening is that Vanquis didn't close the account when asked, continued to rack up the PPI when asked, and when nobody replied to the letters they sent to the wrong address, they got annoyed and sold off the debt.

The only problem with that theory would be that the amounts that cabot are quoting must surely be unreasonably high for a couple of PPI payments. Saying that, from what i've read about them so far, simply plucking a number from thin air doesn't sound beyond something that they would do.

it seems i will be following your steps as well as following advice from another forum and send vanquis a subject access request to see what information they hold on my girlfriend.

I cannot wait for this to be over so we can claim the PPI in what would be the sweetest of victories :beer:

FireWyrm

Well good luck.

Best to also check both your credit reports with all the main agencies as well as Noddle and see what is showing. I doubt very much they will come to your house (despite their threats) and frankly, this debt is probably close to being statute barred anyway, even if you ever did owe it and that's by no means proven.

Just remember, dont be afraid, they have no power and you have every right to tell them to jog on.

chanz4

why not just write and ask vanquis, maybe your gf isnt telling you all

ostridge

Just wondering if perhaps OIKY your girlfriend might have a claim for PPI miss selling if she didnt know? she had PPI or mabe couldn't claim PP if self employed or something yada yada ...