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JD Williams - Questionable Consumer Credit application activities

I received goods from JD Williams & Company Ltd trading as Marisota (marisota.co.uk). I have never opened any account with them, nor placed any order with them. After a google search I see that this trick appear to be pretty common as may others have reported exactly identical cases. I called J D Williams and was connected to their "fraud department". After some questions, they agreed that the account in my name was opened fraudulently. I asked then to nullify my account and remove all my personal details from all J D Williams databases / lists. I do not want to have anything to do with them. To my surprise the woman at their fraud team replied. No we will not remove your account as there is an outstanding balance. I said you just established and confirmed that the account was opened fraudulently, you have to remove my account I have not given my consent to you for keeping my details on file. Yes, but I have received goods from us, can I send a collection. What items have you received? I told her that I believe J D Williams & Company ltd is behind the creation of my account and the bogus order so I consider anything they sent me "a gift", and will give the (huge size women's jacket) to charity. But I have no obligation to return them anything. You are shouting if you shout I will end this call. I did not shout, but yes raised my voice, did not use any four letter words. She replied, ok we are getting nowhere here so I refuse to remove your account, and ended the call. The following day a new delivery was attempted by MyHermes from J D Williams t.a. Marisota. I refused to accept the parcel. I called J D Williams again, now they CLAIMED they do no longer find any account under that number, they also checked by postcode and street number. No accounts. Fine. OR is it? I see from other victims that J D Williams customer service has an habit of lying and claiming that they have sorted out an issue - only for debt collection letters to arrive months later. At this stage the initial outstanding balance has been fattened by "interest rates, monthly fees, reminder fees (even if some claim they never received any reminders) and finally debt collection fees. J D Williams & Company Ltd appear to fabricate consumer credit accounts without the consent of their customers and/or ID fraud victims like me. I see cases when customers - those who actually has ordered product from some of J D Williams catalogues who called to pay by credit / debit card, received goods, but their card was never charged. Later they are contacted regarding an outrageous balance on their account and offered a very short time to pay - or to sign a consumer credit agreement form and send it back to J D Williams. Surely, this way of operating is illegal. Sadly some customers pay up in the fear of loosing their credit score. If they sign J D Williams "consumer credit application" at this late stage they sort of "approve" the scam. However, I find it highly questionable if this would be tested in court.

I get extremely angry reading these reviews. For all JD Williams brands it appears that 75% of reviews are lowest score - and then there are some 5 star reviews that probably are made by some Online Brand Reputation management companies / or J D Williams themselves. I hope the issue for my part is sorted. But I am that angry considering the huge volume of complaints and the fact that this way of acting by J D Williams seems to be more or less systematic. They cause a lot of stress for innocent people out of pure greed.
Further it appears to me they know exactly law inside out and their customer service is well trained to lie to their customers only to increase the claimed debt with (fake) interest to inflate the fabricated debt to outrageous.
Those consumers/individuals with less education do not know how to address this.
Worst of all, some people sign the consumer credit application of the claimed debt as they cannot pay the bill for the outrageous "claimed" outstanding balance debt. Surely, since J D Williams have not had any consumer credit agreement with these customers, the outstanding balance should only be the price of the products, not a penny more, as the outstanding balance is a result by an (intended) error by J D Williams & Company Ltd.

Those customers who then have signed a consumer credit application under threat of debt collection and credit markings and sheriffs / bailiffs are usually individuals who cannot afford legal help either.
As a result that J D Williams & Company Ltd messed with me, I am now planning to arrange a Group Litigation Order for victims scammed by J D Williams. As many of these cannot afford legal costs, I plan to set aside a considerable amount of funds for such victims so that they can join a Group Litigation Order. I will not request any interest for my personal funds I would use for the legal action, as long as I get my funds back when - as I believe the Group Litigation will win the legal battle against J D Williams. Some victims have never signed any consumer credit agreement and stated they do not want and credit but to pay off directly by card. I found some cases where the customer paid the total by J D Williams inflated debt as a final settlement within the short time span without ever signing any consumer credit agreement with the company - only to get a new reminder letter requesting payments for interest rate between the final settlement agreement and the 2 days for payment appearing on their account + £ 30 pounds for the new reminder. Tells it all about how ethical this company is.
Thus we will have a few different cases, but in all there is in my opinion no question about it - J D Williams & Company is not operating according to FCA regulations. J D Williams & Company Ltd is authorised by FCA. As the list of claimants could be very very long I wonder, is there any governmental organisation providing help to cover legal fees for victims that cannot afford such fees?
I want to stop J D Williams from continuing this very questionable way of running their business.

List of J D Williams & Company Ltd trading as business / brand names:
Better Living, J D Williams First Financial, Sweet Sixteen, Fullpower, Compliments, Trading Post, Summer Fashion, Williams Leasing, Full Power, Simply Be, Special Collection, Value, Trading By Post, Comfortably Yours, All You Need, Discountworld, Dale Street Shopping, Discount World, Fifty Plus, First Financial Retail Solutions, Home Shopping Direct, Direct To You, Fashion World, Simplybe, Premier Man, Marisota, Candid Collections, Candid, Shapely Figures, Splendour, Aldrex, Ambrose Wilson, Slimma, Your Style, High & Mighty, Julipa, The Gift Box, Shires Of Bath, Classic Style, Vivaladiva, Classic Confidence, Classic Combination, That'S My Style, Melgold, Fabrici, Shopping Sense, The Brilliant Gift Shop, Heather Valley, New Now, Inspirational Home, Oxendales, Country Garden, Sander & Kay, Shoe Tailor, Williams & Brown, Sartor, Jacamo, Sander & Kay'S Trading Post, The Value Catalogue, Watkins & Cole, Bury Boot & Shoe, Whitfords, Naturally Close, Feel Good Essentials, Whitfords Bury Boot & Shoe, Classic Detail, JDW, Velvet Affair, House of Stirling First Financial, Home Essentials, First Financial, Simply Yours, Rose Mary And Thyme, Petfoodnstuff, House Of Bath, Nightingales, Beau Bath, Brilliantspecs, Crafting Direct, Crazy Clearance, J D Williams, The Kids Division, Gray & Osbourn.

Comments

  • wealdroam
    wealdroam Posts: 19,181 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    Just a quick skim read of that leads me to believe this thread should be on
  • tykesi
    tykesi Posts: 2,061 Forumite
    1,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Agreed and I doubt anybody will bother reading that wall of text on there either.
  • Ectophile
    Ectophile Posts: 7,627 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    In summary:
    1. Somebody fraudulently opened an account in your name.
    2. You received an order, which you now want to keep, but have no intention of paying for*.
    3. They now say there is no account in you name (perhaps they closed the account).
    4. They haven't made any attempt to claim the money from you.
    So you want to start a class action lawsuit on the basis of things that you have read on the internet that have happened to other people.


    *That's probably a criminal act in itself. I am not a lawyer. Ask a real lawyer if you want proper legal advice.
    If it sticks, force it.
    If it breaks, well it wasn't working right anyway.
This discussion has been closed.
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