Advice on letter from Lowells

Bigmac1962

I am after some advice regarding a letter I received from Lowells chasing an extremely old debt on a Capital One account which I settled many years ago. I am not sure if this is the right forum to place this thread on as this is my first attempt to start a discussion.
A bit of history:
I closed my account with Capital One in 2003 after a dispute with them regarding charges they had applied to my account incorrectly (in my opinion).

During the dispute, charges and interest mounted to around £1k. I then wrote to Capital One stating that I did not recognise any of the balance and would not be making any other payments. I did not hear back from Capital One and assumed in my niavety that the matter was now closed.
I heard nothing for almost 2 years, then started getting threatening letters from Capquest. To make matters worse they then started phoning me at work, up to 5 times a day. In November 2005 I sent Capquest a letter asking them to prove the debt (I still have a copy of this letter)- this put an end to the letters and calls from Capquest.

In the subsequent years I have had ocassional letters from various debt collectors regarding this debt which to be honest I have ignored.

At the weekend I received a letter from Lowells stating that following my request they enclosed a copy of my original application for the Capital One credit card and demanding over £2k. At no point have I requested anything from Lowells as I have neither written to them or talked to them.

From what I have read ths debt must surely be time barred by now??


I would like to know what to do next:

1. Just ignore it (my usual defulat position),
2. Write to them pointing out the debt is now time barred, or
3. Ask them for details of the "request" they claim to have received so I can pass it on to the Police as a case of identity theft.

Many thanks for reading this, apologies if I have rambled slightly but have tried to include all relevant information.
Any advice gratefully received.

fermi

If you feel you need to reply then perhaps a slight adaptation of the letter in this link?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=34906257&postcount=5

I would imagine the 'request' could possibly the original 'prove it' letter if it was a CCA one, as legally that would still stand, even if it had been sold to Lowells and they would not be able to enforce with complying with it. They can't anyway, if it's statute barred, but that is a different issue.

Bigmac1962

Fermi,
Many thanks for template, I will send this off and see what they say.

As a general point once a debt becomes statute barred is there anyway the debt agency can have it "un-barred", or is there anything that I could inadvertantley do to "un-bar" the debt?

fermi

No. Once barred it stays that way forever. That is set down in law.