!!!!!! letters: response received.

BillJones

harveybobbles wrote: »

DCA's have NO more power than my neighbours cat to do anything..

You see, it's idiocy like this that could do real harm if people listen to you.

A debt collection agency may have the right to institute court proceedings to recover money, and in some cases will do so. If a person has a genuine debt, then a blanket statement that they should simply annoy the agent (who has every right to recover it) helps no-one.

sourcrates

fermi wrote: »

If the collector has been given full legal assignment of the debt then they can take legal action in their own name just in the same way as the original creditor could have done.
.

Yes, sorry,


I should have made my post clearer.


When I said owned, I should of included full legal assignment in that statement.


I agree you have to take each case on its merits, it is not always made clear by a creditor if full legal assignment has been made, or weather the DCA is merely "acting on behalf of its client", a partial assignment.


A common term I have seen is :
"we have been instructed to act on behalf of our client"


The distinction is an important one.

fermi

Yes, the problem is that a large if not the majority of DCA threats are empty, but at the same time there are a significant number of people landing in court over DCA owned debts.

Some debt collectors like Lowells for example are even making 30-40 people per month bankrupt over fairly modest debts, plus an inordinate amount of cases going via MCOL for a normal CCJ. Quite a few other DCAs are emulating them at the moment.

The picture is so mixed that while you can just about say that nowadays more DCA threats are idle than not, it's no longer possible without more information to dismiss all or most of them completely out of hand.

Have even seen DCAs going to court on things like clearly statute barred debts, and either taking a chance people won't know or defend, or occasionally producing 'knocked up' evidence of payments etc, where even judges have pretty much let them get away with that.

stevemLS

At last, a bit of sensible advice.

fenners81

That's interesting advice. But does that mean the original creditors can still take action. Defaults were registered on all 3 debts about 4 years ago. The reason I'm looking to clear them now is because I'm worried about ccjs etc. I'm so grateful for all of the input but the advice seems to be conflicting.

sourcrates

fenners81 wrote: »

That's interesting advice. But does that mean the original creditors can still take action. Defaults were registered on all 3 debts about 4 years ago. The reason I'm looking to clear them now is because I'm worried about ccjs etc. I'm so grateful for all of the input but the advice seems to be conflicting.

You are bound to get conflicting advice.


In your position, if you are wanting to clear the accounts, then try a different approach, write to each DCA asking how much they would be prepared to take in full and final settlement of each account.
Depending on how much is outstanding, state you have no income, but do have "x" amount of money you could settle in full for.
At least then it gives them the prospect of some return, as opposed to none at all.