Peculiar (crazy?) Solicitor actions - react or ignore?

adoy

I've had a bit of a rough period and accumulated some debt and managed to sort most of it; but for one company which has retained a small solicitors firm that is acting very peculiarly. One of the reasons I haven't been able to sort things with this creditor is because their admin and bureaucracy is so difficult to deal with, so it's hardly surprsing that they retained a solicitors firm that is acting the way it is. Under their odd circumstances below, should I even respond? And are the solicitors actions described below proper and adequate?The Solicitors actions: 1. The solicitors have sent 2 letters, both mis-spelling my surname. Is service of a claim even possible if the name is mis-spelled? If they do try to serve a Claim which is mis-spelled, should I respond to it or let it run? Can credit be affected by a county court judgement if the judgment is issued in a name spelled differently from mine?2. The last letter threated a Court claim form if they don't hear from me within three days from date of letter. Normally you'd get expect to get longer to respond. Furthermore, here they sent the letter the next day, thereby already eating up one of my three days to respond. Days two and three were the weekend and day four was Bank Holiday. It didn't say business days, so on the basis of Calendar days it was manifestly impossible to respond in time any event.3. Do pre-action letters need to be signed by an individual to be effective? The letter has a really scribbly illigegible initial-like 'signature' under a "yours faithfully" BUT the name of the signatory is the surname of the two partners of the firm. For example, if the firm was Blair Brown Solicitors, the letter is signed like: Blair Brown. Obviously even if I wanted to reply to the person who signed the letter I can't because no such person exists. There is no Mr. Blair Brown or any such equivalent.I really don't have the funds to pay off this debt and am not working. Also, the debt is well under 1,000 pounds - would a big national company using a small semi-local solicitors bother to actually go to court to collect on this?

lemma1968

What is the debt that they are chasing you for? There may be a way you can slow this whole thing down but it depends upon the type of debt.

A county court claim has to be wrong in some material way for it to be invalid - do not run the risk that an improperly spelled name will save you. If the other details such as address and date of birth are correct then your details will still appear on the Reference Agencies sites. You need to do a credit reference check to see whether or not you have any defaults registered against you.

On the letter they wrote to you- it is immaterial that a letter has not been properly signed by them. You have a reference on the top of the letter, you write back to them citing that reference.

What did the first letter say?

Did they ask you to respond within a certain time frame?

Never ever ignore a summons.

If in doubt contact either your local CAB or law centre.

https://www.lawcentres.org.uk/lawcentres

HTH

Good Luck

eira

Is this really a solicitor or the company pretending to be one to frighten you ? Barclaycard are Mercers who also have some 'solicitor' who are really them . Lowell Financial call themselves Hampton legal or names to that effect. If you check the Company House website (totally free) you find that it's the same company.

Keep everything in writing-regardless of the threats.This takes nerve ,but if there really is a solicitor behind it they know that this is the correct procedure. Using 'solicitors' is one of the lowest forms of bullying

immoral_angeluk

Request a copy of the signed credit agreement... if they don't give it to you within 14 days they can't chase you for the debt.

adoy

Thanks very much for your replies. To answer some of the questions you raised the debt is to a national courier company. The first letter just said that according to their client, I owe them xxx pounds and if I believe the amount is wrong then to let them know. (I assume it's because the client company wants to pay the lawyers only to scare and cough up payment at this stage, but not pay them for being thorough and taking the time to state how they came up with this amount, what invoices are in question, time period in which the alleged debt came about, etc). There was no mention of court at all in the first letter. The second letter said essentially, 'since we didn't hear from you about our first letter we're giving you three days from the date of the letter to pay in full or we will file a Claim in court and if you don't reply to that we'll ask for judgement in default and that will affect your credit rating'. Nevermind that they still don't tell me anything about what they base their calculation on, that they only posted the letter the next day (one of my 3 days to reply) and that the second and third days were on bank holiday weekend so there was no possible way on earth to comply with their three day demand. I was looking on the dept of constitutional affairs website material on pre-action protocols and if I understood correctly potential claimants are supposed to give reasonable time periods of as much as 28 days to respond as well as helpful information regarding how the debt in question arose or is calculated. None of this occured in their letter.It is a solicitors firm but a very small one relatively local to me.Although the creditor is not a bank they regularly offer their account customers net 30 or net 60 payment terms so ostensibly the agreement with them could be looked at as a type of credit agreement or incorporating one. Regardig the suggestion of asking them for a copy of the agreement to be supplied within 14 days, should such a request be sent in only after the particulars of claim is filed in court or before that in response to their letter?