Advice needed - brother moved abroad and received a phone call from a tracing agency

Cmdr_Bond

Had a phone call yesterday from a company looking for my brother. Apparently a bank has had some returned mail from one of his previous addresses and they are now going through a list of associated phone numbers to try and find him.

The company is hillside services, they phoned on a geographical number not premium rate and when I called back I got straight through to a guy called Dan - no voice system and it sounded like he was in a room on his own.

I know my brother has debts, but no bad ones that I am aware of. Despite his being abroad he is still paying off his cards regularly.

I have contacted him and passed on the relevant info and reference number and am now waiting for him to make contact and find out what they want.

In the mean time my wife, who has anxiety problems, is worried we will have bailiffs knocking on or door.

jeystone

well I wouldn't worry about the bailiffs, only the council actually uses them from my experience...and they just drop off letters and run away

I guess we don't know until your brother writes back

ReadingTim

Cmdr_Bond wrote: »

I know my brother has debts, but no bad ones that I am aware of. Despite his being abroad he is still paying off his cards regularly.

I suspect your brother isn't paying off his cards regularly, or even at all if organisations such as this one are trying to get hold of him! It is possible that Hillside have been engaged to simply find out where he is now, as previous correspondence had been returned to sender, but who goes to that kind of trouble/expense if the repayments keep coming in?!?

Hillside are simply going through all of his known contacts, and are probably also writing to neighbours of all the places he's lived at etc, so your options are either to pass on his current contact details, or simply state you don't know where he is now.

A blank statement that you don't know where he is may suffice; giving the impression that you do know where he is but won't tell them may cause you to receive more attention from them, as would being financially linked to him, or him being down as living at your address - while they're unlikely to have a claim on any of your stuff, a visit from 'one of their representatives' may be unpleasant for your other half if she has "anxiety problems".

So it's up to you as to whether you want to 'tell on him', or keep schtumm and hope for the best. You could always appeal to his better nature and ask him to contact them, but don't hold out your hopes on that...

Cmdr_Bond

Well thanks for the optimism in my brothers character.

Whilst what you say could be true, I very much doubt it to be.

One problem we have is that we are identical twins. I wrote on here a while back about the 700 we got from them Because they mixed us up and merged or accounts.

Cmdr_Bond

OK things have taken a turn. Today we received a letter basically demanding money.

Here is the catch, on the bottom of the letter they list 5 transactions, dated October 2012. My brother landed in Canada in the back end of August 2012. So, it looks like this could be a problem of identity theft.

Lowell_Financial wrote:

Dear Mr XXXXXXXXXXXX

You have an outstanding account
You were written to recently and informed that Shop Direct have sold your Very -
Littlewoods/Additions Direct debt to Lowell Portfolio I Ltd. Your account was sold
because you didn't make any payments for the goods you received even after
repeated attempts by Shop Direct to recover the debt.

What happens next
Due to the fact you have not shown any willingness to repay what you are
contractually obliged to, we are going to assess your finances so that we can
determine the best way to recover what you owe. We have obtained a copy of your
credit file from a Credit Reference Agency; the information within it will help us
understand your financial situation and we will then be in a position to understand
if, and what type of, court action to take.

You can avoid court action
Even though there has never been a payment made towards this account we are
still prepared to try and help you. You can avoid any further action, which could
include the use of the Court, by paying this account in full. If you cannot afford to
pay off the balance in one go we will agree to a monthly repayment plan. We are
prepared to accept £40 per month paid by Direct Debit as a payment. If you
would like to pay a different amount the please cal XXXX XXX XXXX and an
advisor will be able to help you.

Contact us
If there is any reason at all as to why you are not, or cannot pay thus debt back
then you must call and talk to us. This debt is not going to go away and ignoring it
could make things worse. We have helped lots of people in the same situation as
you and we are confident we can help you.

Yours sincerely.

XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX
Chief Operations Officer

The letter is addressed to my brother, however my middle name is his first name. I am glad I opened it though and plan on contacting the companies involved to A) do some detective work on my brothers behalf as I believe this is fraud by a 3rd party and to inform them that I am not him, and that he is not at this address.

Hopefully, I will be able to supply enough information to be able to get some sense out of them.

Tixy

If you tell them you are not the account holder then they won't be able to discuss the account at all with you due to the data protection act.

If you claim to be your brother on the phone they will think the letter sent to your house has reached him and
1) they likely won't believe he has moved abroad
2) they may well keep on writing to your address and could even send debt collectors to it.
3) they may confuse the 2 of you up and end up with his debts on your credit file.

I would send these letters on to your brother and let him deal with it and investigate it himself.

As you are twins it is common for creditors/debt collectors/credit reference agencies to mix up twins, particularly if they have the same inititals or share a name in common. Given that letters are already coming to your address if I were in your position I would get copies of my credit file from all 3 agencies and ensure none of your brothers accounts or debts appear on there, and that he does not appear as an alias of you.