Statute barred enquiry letter

Mountain_Walker2

Hi. I received a hand-delivered letter from a debt collector chasing an old debt which may or may not be over the 6-year statute-barring threshold. I think it should be over six years but cannot be certain, and have not communicated with them.

However, if I were to send them a Without Prejudice letter asking for proof of claim, statement of payments, communications, etc and asking why it should not be stature barred, could this letter count as a communication that would start the 6 years again?
Help on this point much appreciated.
Thank you.  

MEM62

Not if you use the format recommended in these forums. 

Mountain_Walker2

ok many thanks. I'm new to the forum today. Where can I find these please? Thank you so much. 

sourcrates

Link to prove-it letter is in my signature.

Is there a default date showing on your credit file for this debt?

Defaults stay for 6 years, after which they are automatically removed.

DankVielen

Mountain_Walker2 said:

Hi. I received a hand-delivered letter from a debt collector chasing an old debt which may or may not be over the 6-year statute-barring threshold. I think it should be over six years but cannot be certain, and have not communicated with them.

However, if I were to send them a Without Prejudice letter asking for proof of claim, statement of payments, communications, etc and asking why it should not be stature barred, could this letter count as a communication that would start the 6 years again?
Help on this point much appreciated.
Thank you.  

There is a lot of chasing of debt that is not only Statute Barred but in breach of CONC rules, it is a real wild west out there because the FCA acts as if it is impotent.

That being said in my opinion you are better off TO NOT ENGAGE, use 3rd party sources like getting a copy of your credit reference data via a subject access request, if it is a CCJ then use the Registry Trust (who also respond to Subject Access Requests).

Nobody can force you to provide data on you, your partner, your home or ANYTHING, except perhaps a Court only when that comes direct from the Court, again cowboy behaviour of debt firms using Ministry of Justice copyrighted documents to intimidate people into providing data.

The companies are chancers, they look for low hanging fruit and you responding to them not only makes you lower hanging fruit but may be deemed as acknowledgement.  Sure the format in the sticky is safe if used as prescribed but by doing that you tell the debt collection leeches that if they shout JUMP you respond.  That alone can give a firm confidence to seek a CCJ while no response may make them risk averse.

If you get a LETTER OF CLAIM BEFORE ACTION in line with pre-action protocol and practice direction then you can get further advice here, but other than that DO NOT ENGAGE.

You need to understand that if their response is that the debt is valid then you immediately put them in a stronger position than they were in.  It may be and often is that a final activity occurs just before it is about to become statute barred.  Evidence is that a huge amount of debts have been sold from one Debt Consolidator to firms like Intrum who own Capquest and use firms like OPOS and ACI to chase debts that are unenforceable under FCA and CONC rules.  It is not just these vermin but plenty of others.

The first question to figure out yourself when the last payment to the debt was, what the debt was for, if it was a consumer debt they have virtually zero chance of collection UNLESS you are WEAK.   Note the Statute Bar may run from the last payment, the last acknowledgement or the data of default.

Do do not have to answer to door to debt collectors of any type, for consumer debt these tend to be commission only leeches, do not engage them, post videos of them onto YouTube and if you want to make others laugh then try something like the video below.  Otherwise DO NOT ENGAGE.  Nothing in a Statute Bar enquiry response is going to really help you, it will just give you more work because either it confirms it is not stature barred or it confirms it is statute barred the debt collector either carries on or returns the file to the debt consolidator and they send a new firm. Just ignoring them all is the best way.  They can't get a CCJ on used toilet paper debt if they did not within six years. If they got a CCJ then it has it's own six years and they would need to go to Court to get that extended which is extremely unlikely because they would likely fail in their application.

I ignored around £90k of debts and only one very small one actually got a CCJ and that was because they saw spending or credit activity (extension of an overdraft).  These leeches like to pretend that debt is still owed but it is unenforceable and if enough people report the vermin to the FOS and FCA that is the only way this bad practice stops, if they get really big fines or are shut down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61DsmmQozhw

Mountain_Walker2

many thanks for your help.