Geetee's thread

RAS

Geetee wrote this on another thread.

Geetee wrote: »

Hi,

Firstly I hope I'm posting this in the right place. I'm a newbie and this is my first post so please forgive me. I have a problem with Thames Credit Ltd too and I didn't know where to start so I figured that replying to a thread of the same nature would be the best thing to do. (sorry if it's not)

Basically, my BF got a letter from TC saying that he owed them £650 pound and that they had been trying to track him down. He does have past dealings with them when he was in debt a few years back. Anyway these letters have been coming for the past couple of months. At the time when TC was handling his debt we decided to use the CCCS to help us get debt free and we thought we had paid everything off. I phoned the CCCS but they no longer have records of us, I do have a statement from 2002 confirming that we were paying TC through them. This statement was also sent to our current address where we've been for the past 6 and half years, so we can prove that we've had dealings with them while at this address so there was no need for them to "track us down". We phoned TC and they said that yes they'd been getting payments from the CCCS but they stopped with a final sum of £200. At first they agreed to accept that this was probably a settlement figure but now they're saying that it wasn't because they had no letter to confirm this on their system. We have asked for proof that he still owes them money but this never materialised.

Now my bf has agreed to pay them £150 by Saturday the 24th of November. He did this because they've been phoning them at work everyday and he's getting angry and embarrassed by it. He agreed to do this before we'd googled and noticed how many other people had similar problems with them.

Is there anything we can do now he's said that he will pay them?

I hope I haven't rambled but I'm finding this whole thing very confusing.

RAS

A few links below.


1. A link to the OFT guidelines- ringing your BF at work is completely unacceptable.

Following link will take you to a downloadable pdf version of the Office of Fair Trading Debt Collection guidelines, to which they should all adhere:

http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/bus...dit/oft664.pdf (thanks rog2)

2. A list of good contacts to whom you can complain formally.

Here are pipk62's list of websites for the organisations .

These addresses are the ones that I have used to find the information that I required, You may want to research pages other than the ones I have linked to, try clicking on the home page if any of these aren't what you wanted.

Office of Fair Trading, Contact page: http://www.oft.gov.uk/contactus

The Information Commissioners Office, Complaints page: http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints.aspx
(note: I chose to complete and download the .pdf form on Data Protection, which I am also sending to the other offices, with an accompanying letter)

Trading Standards, Central office homepage: http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/
-Please note, you can search by inserting the postcode in the top right hand corner, remember to use the postcode of the DCA rather than your own-

Write to the one in Preston, as they are responsible for licensing this mob.

Consumer Credit Association, enquiries page: http://www.ccauk.org/consenquiries.htm

the Financial Ombudsman Service, Contacts page: http://www.financial-ombudsman.org/contact/index.html

Members of parliament list, (as provided by RAS): http://www.parliament.uk/directories/hciolists/clomps.cfm

3 A letter telling them that they must contact in writing and that any further phone calls will result in complaints to the regulatory bodies.

RAS



Phone letters from fermi

Something along the lines of:

Quote:
Dear Sir / Madam,

Re accounts ref

I am writing to you to inform that I request all communications to me in writing. I do not want any further telephone calls made to me ( my mum).

To continue to contact me by telephone after I have requested you not to constitutes harassment. I require all future communications in writing for future Court use. Do not telephone me again – remove any telephone numbers you hold for me from your systems.

Your telephone calls are in breach of the Office of Fair Trading guidelines. If you continue with them after the receipt of this letter, an official complaint, together with a log recording the times and frequency will be passed both to that office and to Trading Standards, For your information, all telephone calls are taped.

This type of debt collection method is contrary to the ‘Administration of Justice Act 1970’. In that it is intended to cause alarm and distress to the recipient. Your methods will not be tolerated. A formal complaint to the relevant authorities will be made.

Take further notice that continued telephone calls after receipt of a request not to call may constitute a criminal offence under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.

Communicate in writing and ONLY in writing. Your telephone calls will not be answered.

HOWEVER, CALLS WILL TRIGGER COMPLAINTS TO THE REGULATORY BODIES.

I trust I have made myself understood on this matter.

Yours,
And then if you get any more calls:

Quote:
Dear Sir/Madam,

Ref. 1234567890

Despite my letters regarding ANY communication from your company, which stated that I require ALL communications in writing, your telephone calls continue.

This behaviour constitutes harassment; the letters stated quite clearly to you that I require ALL communications in writing for future Court use. Do not telephone me again - remove any telephone numbers you hold for me from your systems.

Your telephone calls are in breach of the Office of Fair Trading guidelines. If you continue with them after the receipt of this letter an official complaint, together with a log recording the times and frequency of the calls will be passed both to that office and to the Trading Standards office. For your information note that ALL telephone calls are taped.

This type of debt collection method is contrary to the ‘Administration of Justice Act 1970’ in that it is intended to cause alarm and distress to the recipient. Your methods will not be tolerated. A formal complaint, containing copies of all correspondence including yours, has now been submitted to the relevant authorities. This will be relevant to questions of your fitness to hold a licence under the Consumer Credit Act, whether or not it results in a prosecution.

Take further note that continued telephone calls after the receipt of a request not to call may constitute a criminal offence under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.

Communicate in writing and ONLY in writing, your telephone calls will NOT be answered.

HOWEVER, CALLS WILL TRIGGER COMPLAINTS TO THE REGULATORY BODIES.

I trust that I have made myself understood on this matter,

Yours faithfully,

There a quite a few other variations on these floating around on the site if you search as well.

Geetee

Thank You very much RAS, your post is very helpful and enormously appreciated. I will get the letters printed out and read through the links.

Do you know if my boyfriend is held to anything after agreeing to pay them? He's now saying that he should pay it because if he doesn't pay the reduced amount of £150 then they're going to ask for the full £650.

RAS

Responses to your queries below.

Geetee wrote: »

Basically, my BF got a letter from TC saying that he owed them £650 pound and that they had been trying to track him down. He does have past dealings with them when he was in debt a few years back. Anyway these letters have been coming for the past couple of months. At the time when TC was handling his debt we decided to use the CCCS to help us get debt free and we thought we had paid everything off.

I phoned the CCCS but they no longer have records of us, I do have a statement from 2002 confirming that we were paying TC through them. This statement was also sent to our current address where we've been for the past 6 and half years, so we can prove that we've had dealings with them while at this address so there was no need for them to "track us down".


We phoned TC and they said that yes they'd been getting payments from the CCCS but they stopped with a final sum of £200. At first they agreed to accept that this was probably a settlement figure but now they're saying that it wasn't because they had no letter to confirm this on their system. We have asked for proof that he still owes them money but this never materialised.

Did you send them a CCA letter (statuatory request)? If so what date?

Now my bf has agreed to pay them £150 by Saturday the 24th of November. He did this because they've been phoning them at work everyday and he's getting angry and embarrassed by it. He agreed to do this before we'd googled and noticed how many other people had similar problems with them.

Is there anything we can do now he's said that he will pay them?

Yes.

You have previously acknowledged the debt by paying the DMP through CCCA, so it is not yet statute barred. It may well be by early 2008, which is probably why this load of sharks have got involved, just as it becomes statute barred. If you BF acknowledges the debt in writing or by paying any time in the next few month, he opens the floodgates.

The best thing to now would be to demand the CCA if you have not already done so.

That puts the debt into dispute, which means they can do nothing until they produce the CCA. Based on your experience so far the chances are that the CCA does not even exist, so you will be able to tell them where to go. They have 12+2 working days to send the CCA before they are considered in default.

RAS

Geetee wrote: »

Do you know if my boyfriend is held to anything after agreeing to pay them? He's now saying that he should pay it because if he doesn't pay the reduced amount of £150 then they're going to ask for the full £650.

They are very very unlikely to be in a legal position to do anything about this.

The reason they will accept £150 is because they know that legally they are unable to get anything if they try to chase him through the courts.

Geetee

Thank You very much. I have now got a copy of the CA letter and one asking them not to contact us by phone. I shall get these sent by recorded delivery as soon as I can. If they phone in the mean time I shall tell bf to let them know that we are now going to communicate by post.

RAS

And quote the OFT Guidelines indicating that they are not entitled to phone you where it might be embaressing and that they are in danger of breaching the Data Protection Act as well.

tigerfeet2006

RAS did I also read somewhere it is best not to put your proper signature to any letter as some have tried to copy signatures?

Geetee

I'd like to thank you for helping me sort this matter out. At the weekend we received a letter offering us a christmas discount of 25% to pay the debt or a new years discount of 15%. If I wasn't suspicious of them before hand that would've made me so.

We received a letter today saying the following:

Dear Sir,

Agreement Number:
Outstanding Balance: £0

We refer to your recorded delivery letter received 26th November 2007.

We have received confirmation from Commercial Collection Services Ltd that the account was settled on 30th December 2002.

We have deleted the account from our database. There will be no further correspondence from us with regard to this matter.

We return you £1.00 postal order and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

The Commercial Collection Services Ltd have never been mentioned to us before.

So within a week it has gone from pestering phone calls at work everyday and letters threatening court action to the balance being cleared. I can't thank you enough RAS. My bf was still unsure whether to send the CA letter in case it resulted in them asking for the full balance. It makes me wonder how many other people are bullied into paying them money that has already been cleared or wasn't incurred by them in the first place.

I'm very glad that with your help we managed to get this sorted. Incidently bf's credit report came today aswell and this debt isn't on there.

If there's anything more we can do to make sure this kind of behaviour doesn't continue with other people could you please point us in the right direction.

THANK YOU SO MUCH :j

RAS

Absolutely delighted with the outcome.

Sadly we do encounter folk on here who have been apying debts for which they are not legally liable.

If you want to help out I would suggest that you write and make a formal complaint to all the people who are listed in my previous post (2).

As well as complaining about Thames Credit, have a go at Commercial Collection Services Ltd, if sold the non-existant debt to TC in the first instance. Apart from anything else they have shared incoreect information about BF with a third party, which is completely against the Data Protection Act.

I would be inclined to see if you can get a special Christmas offer from TC or CCS Ltd. How about they compensate BF for the distress and upset and for breaking the DTA? Seriously.

HAve had a bash at editing down weller's excellent letter


Dear TC

Re:−
Your Client Ref:

I refer to my letter dated (enter date) which was delivered via Recorded Delivery to your offices on (enter date).

You have acknowledged this request indicating that the debt was settled in 2002, despite which you have been phoning me at work everyday (embarressing, distress, haressment as you wish) .

You are reminded that you are obliged to supply these documents, whether you are the original creditor or not, as defined under Section 189 of the CCA 1974.

1. Removal of any defaults entered by (enter DCA name). Note this is to be a complete deletion and not merely an amendment. (if appropriate)

2. You are required under Section 10 and Section 12 of the Data Protection Act 1998 to cease and desist all manual and automatic processing of my data within your company and any other company within your group.

3. A full explanation as to how your company came to be chasing a debt that was fully paid nearly six years ago.

Furthermore, under the Data Protection Act (D10), you are also denied the authority to pass on any of my personal data. To do so in the circumstances is I understand a breach of the Data Protection Act 1998, and also the OFT guidelines, and should you ignore my request it would again result in you being further reported to the relevant authorities.


If you do not respond positively to my request, court action may be taken under Section 14 of the Data Protection Act 1998 to force (enter DCA name) or any other company within the group, removal of all defaults maintained and compensation for damage and distress as a result of unlawful data processing. I may also pass the matter to the relevant enforcement authorities including, but not limited to, the OFT, the Information Commissioners Office, Trading Standards, the CSA, the FOS and my local MP.

I look forward to your reply within 14 days to resolve the matter amicably.

Yours faithfully