Debt collector letters - note to the regulars

Stroma

Also complaints about debt collectors can be made here I believe

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/debtcollecting-note.html

Edit - my mistake

did the debt being collected originally come about under a regulated consumer-credit or consumer-hire agreement?

We can only deal with complaints about the collection of debts arising from a regulated consumer-credit or consumer-hire agreement. This means that we cannot deal with complaints about the collection of debts such as:

council tax
utility bills
rent arrears or
trade debts.

4consumerrights

The licence requirements for debt collectors is in the process of being changed. All debt collector licences issued by the OFT will expire on the 31st March 2014. The responsibility then lies with the Financial Conduct Authority from 1st April ( who will implement and enforce stricter application criteria and codes of conduct - I believe they also will carry out the role of the CSA).

From September 2013 all debt collectors were required to apply for an interim licence which gives them a "grace" period during the changeover period which was under discussion (the last time checked) to apply for the full licence.

swellchaser

Won't this period of 'grace' allow the DC's carte blanche?

4consumerrights

swellchaser wrote: »

Won't this period of 'grace' allow the DC's carte blanche?

No it is not a grace period in that sense - they have had to apply for the interim licence which lasts for so long before applying for the full licence. Debt collectors were required to apply for interim licence from September 2013.

The grace period also for the fact that the full terms and conditions regarding licence requirements are undergoing consultation process.

teabelly

I'm sure it will be fun seeing who forgot/didn't get a new licence....

It's probably a good time to make sure the right pairs of eyes see complaints about current debt collectors behaving badly so they are refused a new licence and put out of business.

The_Deep

I have never subscribed to the doctrine that one should ignore any letter, Readers' Digest bumph excepted.

Question everything, point out all errors, (it is amazing how many times Councils contradict themselves), record telephone calls and send the caller a transcript, be polite but firm, above all, amass a paper trail. It really does work, and lets your adversary know that you are not to be trifled with.

bluekelly

Thank you Daisy for the letter/post.

Do you happen to know the address for Debt Recovery Plus? I can't find it on their letters and I'm loathe to phone them.

Thanks again.

Redx

bluekelly wrote: »

Thank you Daisy for the letter/post.

Do you happen to know the address for Debt Recovery Plus? I can't find it on their letters and I'm loathe to phone them.

Thanks again.

a quick google search shows this http://www.debtrecoveryplus.co.uk/contactus/

bluekelly

Wait I think I found it on their website.

JonnyRotten

Just a short one in response to bazster.

I have written quite a few letters to various Ministers, including the Prime Minister, about many of my 'pet hates', such as this.

I will write to them about this pernicious and fraudulent business model of parking charge theft being perpetrated by thousands of parking companies upon the gullible public.

However, the drivel I received back from some of them, if I receive a response at all, may well have been written by their cleaners (sorry for the awful assertion that cleaners cannot write clever legible letters using HM The Queen's English).

My local MP could not be bothered to respond to me at all, as he was too busy cosying up to Angelina Jolie and trying to save the world rather than to sort out our local issues for local people, or indeed National issues like this one, which is, in fact, what we actually pay him to do.

Just remember everyone that Ministers are just administrators and some are not very good administrators and many know absolutely very little about the posts that they hold, so writing to them may just not make anything happen. It needs an awful lot of people to flood their mail box with the same issue to get them to take note.

zzzLazyDaisy's suggestion to write to the Debt Recovery shysters and push it back to the PPC was a reasonable legal tack and the 63p to do so cannot be a waste. Her advice is after all sound from many years of legal experience, I am sure!

I am now at the 5th letter regarding more buffoonery at a Newcastle Hospital car-park by the driver who had a parking permit as the driver works at that NHS Trust site. Two are from PCS and 3 are from DRP and I was just going to wait for a proper LBCCC from the PCS solicitors, but I am considering zzzLazyDaisy's advice.

I will fire of a robust letter to the CE of the Trust complaining about the harassment from PCS and DRP and how unhelpful the Trust's Manager of Estates and Parking was in assisting an employee colleague. That just might get the dragon off the back.

Keep fighting

and still JonnyRotten