Changes to Debt Collection Letters

Snakes_Belly

I had an incident with a energy company some years ago. I won't go into all the details but it resulted in the energy company placing the debt with a debt collector. The debt was disputed and as such the debt collection agency referred it back to the energy company. I never received another letter from them. I made a complaint to the Ombudsman who sorted it out and the energy company had to compensate me. 

So some debt collection agents will refer a disputed debt back to the originator of the claim.  I tried this with DRP and told them to refer back to Excel and stop processing my information. It did not work and they continued to hassle me.

No enquiry is made by the debt collection agencies as to whether a person is vulnerable by the likes of DRP.  Someone could be very mentally fragile and these letters could tip them over the edge. All because they may have had a fluttering ticket. This is one of the reasons why I believe that debt collection should not take place until the debt has been proven.     

Snakes_Belly

D_P_Dance said:

I have dealt with many DCAs. over the years.  Usually I ignore but if they persist I have found that telling them that the debt is in dispute usually sees them off.

It's great that you saw them off but not everyone is strong enough to handle DCA's which is why there needs to be something in place to deal with the more vulnerable members of society.

Snakes_Belly

https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/treating-vulnerable-consumers-fairly#how
We see a number of posters on this forum who would fall into this category. Even for a strong character having to deal with Excel/VCS is like having to deal with the mafia.

Sandtree

Snakes_Belly said:

 This is one of the reasons why I believe that debt collection should not take place until the debt has been proven.     

Appreciate this isnt my normal haunt but what do you meant by "the debt has been proven"? 

In the types of arguments being presented here that sounds like you want the very first move to be that the matter moves to the courts? Firstly, that wouldn't be compatible with the Civil Procedure Rules and secondly I am very sure that court papers landing on the doorstep will cause much more concern to vulnerable customers than debt collector letters.

Having worked in insurance industry for both claims and strategy I have spoken to many customers over the years that have received court papers and I can assure you it stresses them. I've even done sale of backbooks of policies which go through a legal process in the High Court and customers, many of whom were pensioners, were phoning in their thousands because the letter (as approved by the FCA) mentioned something to do with them going to court.

Snakes_Belly

"Appreciate this isn't my normal haunt but what do you meant by "the debt has been proven"? 

In my opinion the claim should not be a debt until it is proven by the court.

It is difficult to tell what the new framework will look like but I can see that if minor transgressions incur a very small charge such as an admin fee then this will cut out quite a number of claims getting to the single tier appeal.

I would see the single tier appeal as being much more independent than the two existing appeals services are at present. Whether debt collection should start after this stage is debatable and it really depends just how independent the single tier actually is. If the adjudicators are allowed to make judgmental decisions as opposed to criteria based (present system) then mitigating circumstances could be taken into account. I think that debt collection could start after this stage. After this stage we should expect to see the number of PCN's in the pipeline reduced dramatically.

A lot depends on the impartiality of the single tier appeal. If this does not work I would not want to see debt collection start until after a court judgment which may of course go in the defendant's favour.

At present debt collection will start early on in the process and will threaten with court, CCJ's etc. It also gives the parking operator an excuse to hike up the costs although this had been challenged.

Court can be stressful but many people on here have fought these claims through the courts and won including OAP's. 

This is how I see the new framework and it's just my thoughts.