Please help - Can this lead to a CCJ or are they phishing?

Spint

I'm not sure if this issue is best served in another forum but the main concern (for now) is if the issue will affect a credit rating and whether it can lead to a CCJ.

My friend used the services of a company called Bettermove to sell her flat. She said the person that she spoke to at this company was very nice, made her feel at ease with the hassle of selling her home and understood that it was a no sell no fee service. After quite a while, my friend was getting frustrated with the lack of prospective buyers and then she received a letter from a company called Honeycomb stating that she will need to pay £960 by a certain date if her property has not been sold by then.

It seems she was mis-sold a service but unfortunately and because my friend simply based the agreement with Bettermove on trust, she signed a document with the company Honeycomb who appear to be a finance provider.

Upset, my friend emailed the person at Bettermove to explain that she would have never agreed to such an agreement had she known she would've have to pay a fee regardless of her property not being sold, and the fact that they had not found a buyer for her home despite all the assurances they could quickly sell it. She did not hear from them or received a reply.

In the end, my friend sold her flat by other means and moved back to Turkey.

She keeps in contact with the buyer of her flat who now received a letter from a company called ACIUK addressed to my friend. They appear to be a debt collection agency that bought the agreement from Honeycomb who apparently no longer accepts new agreements.

The timeline for this is from November 2017 when she agreed to use the services of Bettermove, a letter from Honeycomb in June 2018 stating my friend needs to pay them £960 by November 2018 regardless of her property being sold, to receiving the letter from ACIUK in July 2023 at her old address.

Does this company ACIUK have the power to put a CCJ to my friend's name or to the property that she sold? I don't know how this works.

In fact, are they just phishing since it's been quite a while in which case just ignore the letter? That said, she doesn't want a CCJ placed on the property if that is at all possible as could it affect the credit rating of the new owner? My friend is worried that if she contacts them she will open up a can of worms. I'm sure this company doesn't care about the fact that she was mis-sold the agreement that has placed this debt on her head in the first place.

My initial thoughts are to go through any complaints procedure at Bettermove where perhaps they might get the debt cancelled but I don't know if either that's a good idea or possible?

Thank you for taking the time to read this and any advice you can give me that I can pass on to her.

Brie

a ccj can't be put on a property as far as I'm aware.  it's put against a person.  

what I find curious is that if your friend was selling a property why would there be any finance agreement?  that sounds like something one might need if one was buying and needed a mortgage.  

Brie

Your friend might just ask the new owner to put anything received from the collection agency back in the post marked "no longer at this address".  

If your friend wanted to engage with them (which, I believe, acknowledges that there might be a debt) then she may wish to send a "prove it" letter to the collection agency.  If she doesn't do anything and they cannot get hold of her and don't proceed to legal action then the debt would drop off her own credit history after 6 years which from what you report would be June 2024.  

At no point would there be anything on the new owner's credit record.

sourcrates

If she lives in Turkey, it won`t affect her in any way whatsoever.

Neither will it have any effect on whoever now owns the property.

The fact your friend lives abroad means that any such debt is basically dead in the water, any letters sent to their old UK address, should be returned to sender.

Should legal action follow, the CCJ will sit on their UK credit file for 6 years, it will not show on any Turkish credit files.

The debt may even be statute barred now anyway, but that is of little importance, whatever scenario plays out, she has nothing to fear from this, there will be no enforcement action, no issues at all.

Brie

listen to @sourcrates
he knows what he's talking about!!

Spint

Brie said:

a ccj can't be put on a property as far as I'm aware.  it's put against a person.  

what I find curious is that if your friend was selling a property why would there be any finance agreement?  that sounds like something one might need if one was buying and needed a mortgage.  

Yes, exactly! It took a while to get my head round this. I don't know for sure but it seems that the cheeky buggers (Bettermove) get the client to sign this finance (loan) agreement from Honeycomb whereby Bettermove receives money straight away from Honeycomb, but tell the client that they don't have to pay anything until they sell the property which they expect to do so within 12 months or sooner, which is when the loan must be repaid. So, if or when they do sell the property within that time then the client will pay Honeycomb the money and everyone's happy. Therefore, providing Bettermove does sell the property within this 12 months, they can make it look like it's a no-sell-no-fee service.

I looked at the agreement or rather the small print and it does state along the lines that £960 has to be paid when the property is sold or within 12 months after the agreement starts, whichever comes first. They neglected to tell my friend that, and she just took what they said to her on the phone as word and signed on the dotted line via email.

All would've been well except they couldn't sell her property within the time and were !!!!!! at it too. That's probably why they didn't want to know after that.

Spint

Thanks for all your advice sourcrates & Brie.

I think she will feel a lot more at ease now.