Debt letter advice needed

pmiller056

First time here...

I returned home to find a letter waiting for me from Controlcredit demanding payment for money I allegedly owe UPS for VAT/duty/transport costs. I have received a few (less than 5) deliveries from UPS over the last few months. At no time has any delivery driver ever asked for any payment. There never has been any added labelling on any package indicating that further charges were due. No deliveries has been refused.

I have written to Controlcredit (by recorded delivery) asking them to provide proof of debt by providing a copy of the allegedly unpaid invoice(s).

What really annoys me with this letter is that it has arrived with no prior warning because UPS have made no effort to contact me previously. The debt collection subcontractor is now adding their significant fee to this invoice that I have no prior knowledge of.

In the last six months, I have never received any invoice or reminder from UPS through the post. To the best of my knowledge I have not received any emailed invoices from UPS. My email service provider, like most others, automatically and silently deletes emails that they desgnate as spam or  potentially fradulent, so I have no way of knowing if UPS have attempted to email an invoice. Like most people, I get delivery-related text messages on my mobile phone which are clearly attempts at fraud using shortened URLs. As a conequence any attempt by UPS to contact me about payment by text message using a shortened URL is likely to be missed. Some mobile phone service providers filter out potentially fraudulent messages in transit so they are never seen by the recipient.

Communicating by email and text message is horribly unreliable, so I would reasonably expect at least one reminder letter in the post from UPS before passing any outstanding invoice on to a collection subcontractor.

What is accepted and legal in terms of requesting payment of recipient-paid delivery fees? I would reasonably expect the delivery to be witheld until payment is made. If payment is not forthcoming the delivery is returned to sender or binned. The most common example being Royal Mail if a letter has insufficient postage attached. Why has this not happened in this case?

Any suggestions for the next steps when 'proof of debt' is provided?

Thanks

Pete

user1977

pmiller056 said:

I would reasonably expect the delivery to be witheld until payment is made. If payment is not forthcoming the delivery is returned to sender or binned. The most common example being Royal Mail if a letter has insufficient postage attached. Why has this not happened in this case?

Because that isn't what normally happens when there's duty to be paid on imported goods. Pretty commonplace for the courier to (helpfully) deliver the parcel first and send you the bill afterwards. But it's reasonable not to expect charges to be added if the said bill was never received.

You haven't said whether you've actually imported anything recently on which duty might have been payable?

Sandtree

pmiller056 said:

My email service provider, like most others, automatically and silently deletes emails that they desgnate as spam or  potentially fradulent, so I have no way of knowing if UPS have attempted to email an invoice. 

That is not how any email provider I know of works and I would strongly recommend that you change provider if this really is how yours does. Many will give you the option of using their spam filters that will move suspect emails to a spam folder and this may be auto-deleted after 28 days or such but you have 4 weeks to check the folder to ensure its not been over sensitive.

Email is increasingly accepted as a method of official communication and the Insurance forum is full of cases of people saying they've found out that they've been driving without insurance because their insurers sent warnings and then cancelled the policy but they were all still sitting in the junk folder. The courts don't consider an overzealous spam filter acceptable excuse.

You are perfectly entitled to ask for evidence of the debt but it is business as usual for the parcel to be delivered and an invoice to follow on after for the charges they've paid for you.

born_again

Not the 1st thread on this subject.

mattyprice4004

Couriers can’t win - hold parcels for payment and people moan, release parcel then ask for payment and people moan! 

Did you import something from outside of the UK? 

deannagone

This is a bit scary.., I've imported a 3D printer from China.., arrived last week, not received anything asking for duty yet.  Checked emails, there's nothing.  I'd rather avoid debt collection company fees.

MattMattMattUK

pmiller056 said:

First time here...

I returned home to find a letter waiting for me from Controlcredit demanding payment for money I allegedly owe UPS for VAT/duty/transport costs. I have received a few (less than 5) deliveries from UPS over the last few months. At no time has any delivery driver ever asked for any payment. There never has been any added labelling on any package indicating that further charges were due. No deliveries has been refused.

I have written to Controlcredit (by recorded delivery) asking them to provide proof of debt by providing a copy of the allegedly unpaid invoice(s).

What really annoys me with this letter is that it has arrived with no prior warning because UPS have made no effort to contact me previously. The debt collection subcontractor is now adding their significant fee to this invoice that I have no prior knowledge of.

In the last six months, I have never received any invoice or reminder from UPS through the post. To the best of my knowledge I have not received any emailed invoices from UPS. My email service provider, like most others, automatically and silently deletes emails that they desgnate as spam or  potentially fradulent, so I have no way of knowing if UPS have attempted to email an invoice. Like most people, I get delivery-related text messages on my mobile phone which are clearly attempts at fraud using shortened URLs. As a conequence any attempt by UPS to contact me about payment by text message using a shortened URL is likely to be missed. Some mobile phone service providers filter out potentially fraudulent messages in transit so they are never seen by the recipient.

Communicating by email and text message is horribly unreliable, so I would reasonably expect at least one reminder letter in the post from UPS before passing any outstanding invoice on to a collection subcontractor.

What is accepted and legal in terms of requesting payment of recipient-paid delivery fees? I would reasonably expect the delivery to be witheld until payment is made. If payment is not forthcoming the delivery is returned to sender or binned. The most common example being Royal Mail if a letter has insufficient postage attached. Why has this not happened in this case?

Any suggestions for the next steps when 'proof of debt' is provided?

Thanks

Pete

Phone the number on the UPS website and speak to the billing department. They will be able to check what the payment relates to using your tracking number. Also likely if you speak to UPS is that they will let you pay any amount direct to them with no additional fees. 

Do you have any idea which shipment the invoice relates to, what value it was and when it was imported?

https://www.ups.com/gb/en/help-support-center.page?

pmiller056

The letter from the debt collection company has nothing about the UPS invoice number or package number on it. Hopefully the copy invoice supplied as proof of debt will have sufficient information for further investigation. The debt collection company has a UPS reference on it, but using this to search on the UPS website finds nothing. Phoning the UPS helpline was a waste of time - the lady on the end of the phone could not match the reference given to anything within UPS.

Anything I've imported into the UK recently has been low value stuff bought via Ebay/Amazon, so import VAT and other costs are sorted in advance at the time of purchase through the online marketplace. None of these items have been delivered by UPS. I have recently (March) bought a laptop computer directly from Dell UK, probably delivered by UPS, which was shipped directly from overseas, but I'd be surprised if I got stung for import charges on that delivery. If this delivery did attract recipient-paid import charges, they would be greater than the outstanding debt.

I do regularly check my email junk/spam folder for lurking messages - there's been nothing there. My own experience, and that of friends using the major free-to-use consumer-oriented email providers is that most email designated by the filter robot as spam/junk IS silently deleted along the way. We have the test messages and screen shots to prove it. This is why a lot of emails from businesses often have a note to the effect of 'please add @mybank.co.uk' to your approved sender list, so that any email should continue to get through. There's a LOT of parcel delivery email/text/phone fraud and scams about for these types of charges. These frauds are increasing, so I suspect the current way of doing things will become unsustainable for parcel companies as they get drowned in the 'noise' of related fraud and they will have to change how they run this aspect of their businesses.

user1977

pmiller056 said:

I do regularly check my email junk/spam folder for lurking messages - there's been nothing there. My own experience, and that of friends using the major free-to-use consumer-oriented email providers is that most email designated by the filter robot as spam/junk IS silently deleted along the way. We have the test messages and screen shots to prove it.

For reference, I've used Gmail for many years and its spam filter is spot on (and spam lives in the spam folder for a month before being autodeleted). I can't remember the last time anything important was wrongly flagged as spam, at most it's the occasional marketing email which I had actually opted into.

born_again

Contact UPS. Could be a scam..
What number do Controlcredit show on their letter? As google does not bring up any company under that name

Tokmon

pmiller056 said:

I do regularly check my email junk/spam folder for lurking messages - there's been nothing there. My own experience, and that of friends using the major free-to-use consumer-oriented email providers is that most email designated by the filter robot as spam/junk IS silently deleted along the way. We have the test messages and screen shots to prove it. This is why a lot of emails from businesses often have a note to the effect of 'please add @mybank.co.uk' to your approved sender list, so that any email should continue to get through. There's a LOT of parcel delivery email/text/phone fraud and scams about for these types of charges. These frauds are increasing, so I suspect the current way of doing things will become unsustainable for parcel companies as they get drowned in the 'noise' of related fraud and they will have to change how they run this aspect of their businesses.

What email provider do you use?

One of my email providers is Gmail and all dodgy email's go into the junk folder and there are plenty of messages in the junk folder to show it works. They only get deleted after a period of time so i suggest you switch to them if your finding the emails get deleted immediately with your current provider. 

The reason they ask you to add to your safe senders list is not because they get deleted it's because most people don't check the junk folder so will miss important emails.