as i couldn't find the letter i had sent to scottish power, at that time, i decided that i should probably send the letter that harrassed senior suggested. sorry boo, i would probably have taken your advice if i could have put my hand on "that" letter. the day after i'd taken your advice i received a letter from "past due" for the same debt. so i sent them the same letter. really interesting point! the letters from the two dca's don't agree on the amount owed. bcw say, principal £640.17 plus 35% admin £224.06 = £864.23 pastdue say, £696.83 including the 35% admin charge. the morons can't even agree on how much the debt is! do they work on a "think of a number" basis? i do find it strange that they can use the word "principal" without all their computer going into melt-down and their fingers dropping off. then i thought, if i can't find the letter i'd sent to scottish power, maybe i should send them the same letter. there was a small problem, i couldn't find their address. so i attached it as a pdf to an email addressed to their Chief Executive, Nick Horler, asking for a personal appology. Colin @ ScottishPower - 1st post thank you. i've not been patronised that so much for a long time. clearly i'm really stupid and haven't a clue how you bill fuel, etc. a small point, why don't you actually reply to the specific points i raised? by all means, reply in general way if you prefer. let me start you off. why sell the debt without telling them all the information i had given to you? what right have you to sell the debt twice? why should i tell my son anything? why should i do anything you ask? you ignored me when i tried to be helpful, now you can kiss my back-side! (that last one is not actually a question) Colin @ ScottishPower - 2nd post that's not what i said. my other son was painting the property for his mother who, with his step-father, owns the property i must say, you are really good at this patronising stuff! as for a "default marker", great. bring it on! are you going to put this on his mother address? or on the property in question? (which is owned by his mother) either way, ask me if i'm bothered. in fact, why not do both! go for it! finally, and this could have been resolved even quicker if you have taken the trouble to read the very detailed and helpful letter i sent you as for the rest of you who posted, many, many thanks. you're helpful, supportive ... it's just like having a group of really clever best friends! one more word from anyone about this debt, or if i don't get a letter from Nick Horler, and i'll be back asking how to make as big a "poo" storm as possible.

yeah, the wellfare state is really stupid. far better to have hmo's deciding what medical treaments people can have and making millions for a few in the process. as for "find a job", two things 1) thatcher got rid of all the reasonably paid "working class" jobs 2) many, many times more money is stolen from the public purse by the top few percent fiddling their taxes than is paid to welfare cheats. yet we spend far more trying to catch the welfare cheats than the tax evaders. in everything else we spend our money "where it will do the most good", yet here we ignore good sense and pander to the tory lead press - i wonder why? yet some people made a lot of money while the rest of us got into debt. question: who do you think the ones who profited the most might have voted for at the last election? i'm sorry boo but i am really sick of this "unelected" rubbish! when did we change to having a president? we didn't! our system is that a party elects their leader. you vote for your mp and if a party gets more mp's than everyone else then they are elected and their leader is pm. if a pm resigns then the party elects a new leader. there is no election! never has been! there wasn't a election when thatcher stood down, so why should there be one when blair left? the only reason is because the tory press has brain-washed the lemmings into believing that there should have been one. that is was "the right thing to do". DUH? why should we change our system just because the murdoch controlled press want it?

my brother got me into debt with The Associates in 1986. a few yrs after they had really screwed me i'm sure that the then government promised many of those changes. remind me, which party was in power then? i know people who really hate martin lewis and this site simply because if people can reclaim excessive bank charges then "that money will have to come from somewhere else and we'll end up paying". who do you think those people might vote for? LOL

please HELP some time ago i received a letter from scottish power saying that i owed them for money. i pointed out that the debt was not mine but my sons. i added that my son had the same name as me and that he had not lived with me for almost ten years. i told them to contact my son via his mother and pointed out that she owned the property where the debt was incurred, i.e. where they had supplied the power to. to be as helpfull as possible, i also mentioned that my son had definately not lived at the address of the debt during the entire period they were claiming for ( 9/5/2005 - 15/9/2009 ); that he had probably moved out about 9 or 10 months before the end of that period ( i.e. christmas 2008 ) and that he can't possibly have lived there 5 months before ( in april/may 2009 ) as his mother and step-father were having the entire house redecorated at that time, my other son was helping them, and the property was definately unoccupied at that time. now i've had a letter from "buchananclark + wells" saying that 35% has already been added to the debt; that they are going to "instruct a debt investigation officer" to visit me; that they are going to add a further 30% to the debt; that they are also going to commence legal proceedings ... unless i pay, well, they actally say "amicable settlement". what really anoys me is that they say "our client has informed us that they are unaware of any legitimate reason for non-payment" - a TOTAL lie since i've fully explained why they should not be writing to me in my last letter ( which i can't find ).

check the post master? excellent credentials. everyone trusted him. yes, i trusted the post master because everyone else did. afterwards no-one believed me! check someone in nigeria? well, not to trust them was certainly considered to be racist - that was made abundantly clear to me. yet doing any checks, you must be joking! the police said they needed the bank to tell them that there had been a fraud. the bank didn't want any publicity so they refused to do anything. but me "accepting a share of the responsibility" - do you honestly think that's so?

except... the first 419 i saw was in 1990/1991 in the form of a letter from a person who had been personally recommended by someone who runs [ran] my local post office. none of the major banks; advice services; not even the local police knew ANYTHING about these scams. and the internet ... it was only when i contacted citi bank (who the cheque was drawn on) and they threatened to have ME arrested for being in possession of a forged cheque that i knew my gut feeling had any foundation.

?? you sure you got that right ?? so when i'm buying something, MY security depends on what the seller tells me? has this possibly lost something in the translation?

which is also all the 419 [problematic] ask for

it's a known [problem]! i've had very similar supposedly from various banks. do NOT click that link.

yet it is such a really good idea, sending money to email addresses.

so true! just a pity that there's no "valid" alternatives. nice to know that the spirit of competition still lives. p.s. you're no longer perplexed?

i have uploaded a screenshot showing the ToDo section on Paypal to the public area of my Dropbox. here's the link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4685544/ppal0307x%20-%20ToDo%20-%20showing%20Policy%20Updates.png it's a 50kb png file.

Are you on Paypal? Did you receive some new "policy documents" recently? Did Paypal send them to your To Do box? Did you read them? Did you try to acknowledge the changes? Or just delete them from your To Do box? But you couldn't ... Apparently, Paypal say that there is no way to remove the Policy Documents from the To Do box ... but i don't need to read them each time i logon. So what happens next time they update their policies? Presumably they will update the Policy Document that is already in my To Do box. However, from my perspective by then i will have probably learned to totally ignore my To Do box. They say that when they next update their policies they will send an email but what if that's missed? What if it gets incorrectly filtered out as spam? Could this mean that i might miss an important change in Paypal's policies? Does it not seem rather stupid to ask people to ignore a potentially important source of information? If i were into conspiracies i could have some very naughty thoughts about this issue.

well, the logic seemed to be, if i had the cheque then i must certainly be involved in the [problem]. as for the number, i really don't remember. i do remember that they had insisted on ibm ps/2's (i was always a clone person) so i had to source a new supplier and that i was having huge problems arranging transportation insurance for them.

cheers Conniff and borisbeaver it started when the owner of a small post office asked if i would be interested in selling computers to his friend. he implied overseas, did not mention nigeria but if he had it would have made no difference as in 1990/1991 i had never heard of any of these "nigerian" scams. i spoke to various banks and was told that they could clear an overseas cheque in a couple of weeks, three at most. however, when the cheque arrived and i tried to deposit it none of them would give me a clearance date. barclays, after keeping me waiting over 40 minutes, told me that even when the funds had been deposited in my account they could take them back again, even six months later - or longer! so i telephoned the manchester office of the american triple A bank that the cashiers cheque was drawn on. the conversation was strange, i asked about time to clear the cheque, she asked me for the cheque details, e.g. the branch it was drawn on and cheque number. after over five minutes she returned and said that i must post the cheque to her "IMMEDIATELY". i said, "sorry but i'm not going to throw away a cheque for almost £250,000 without some sort of receipt". she said that if i did not agree to post it to her then she could have the police at my address, i had only told her my name and phone number, "within ten minutes" and i would be arrested for fraud. she added that they had "all the evidence they needed to charge me with fraud from what i had already told her" - i.e. that i had been sent a cheque and it's details! the fact that i was in possession of the cheque was "all the proof they would need". i agreed to post the cheque to her but insisted that she sent me a prepaid addressed envelope (to delay things a little). then i went to my local police station. the plod on the front desk listened to my story, took no notes. went away. he came back, there was no-one available in cid to see me but he asked me to repeat everything i had already told him. i thought he'd gone to lunch he was away so long. when he did return he said that the best thing i could do was to go home and do what the bank had said. when i asked if he was not going to make an entry in his "day book", i was told not to tell him how to do his job. when i asked him to please make an official record of my visit, keep a copy of the cheque, anything to prove that i once had such a large cheque, he refused. when i politely said that i had a right to have them make an official record of my complaint he replied that the only right i had was to be arrested if i "didn't leave now". when i asked to see a senior officer to make an official complaint he said i had until he counted to three to get out. i wrote to the then Home Secretary, David Waddington, but only received a "can't deal with anyone outside my constituency" reply. i did return the cheque to the bank. they did tell me that someone went into their Manhatton branch and asked for a $100.00 cashiers cheque some years earlier. that cheque was then altered and duplicated using a colour photocopier. they certainly implied that the same [problem] had been done lots and lots of times and that it was very common and that it was always out of nigeria. after that i had dozens of hand written 419 fraud letters then lots more typed then emails. clearly i made the nigerian mugs list. the owner of the post office continued to be very well thought of but i never used his shop again.

is this a "new" amazon [problem]? i've been to lots of sites found in google but i can't find any reference to this particular con. if it is new, does anyone know how to report it to amazon? i can't find a link/email addy. [problem] details: on friday i got a message, clearly sent via the amazon message system saying that someone wanted to buy an item i had for sale. it was from: r1rsb68yn78n9z8@marketplace.amazon.co.uk it asked me to reply to a yahoo address. i replied saying thank you for showing an interest adding that she would need to buy using amazon. sunday i received an email from: payments-message@amazon.co.uk it's format was exactly the same as the one you receive from amazon when an item is sold ... except for one small addition, this line: Postage Credit: £45.74 it also showed a shipping address which was different from the buyers address. it looked so kosher that i sent an email to my son, i was selling the item for him, saying that it had been sold. then i saw that i also had another email from the buyer. in very good english it asked me to confirm that i would post the goods the next day as it was a present and they wanted to make sure that it would arrive in time. to be honest, i had not noticed that the buyer and shipping addresses were different at this point so i replied that i would only be able to ship to the address that was registered for the credit card as amazon insisted on that. that's when i went back to the Amazon "Sold, Dispatch Now" email and noticed the shipping address was Lagos. as i was almost scammed out of £250,000; almost arrested for trying to report the [problem]; threatened with immediate arrest and prosecution by a triple A american bank in 1990, all for being asked to sell some computers to a company in Nigeria, i was immediately suspicious. however, when i tried to send the email supposedly from amazon to their scams department, i could not find an address. and when i checked my amazon account it showed the item as still being for sale, i.e. unsold. clearly i have no intention of shipping the goods but i would really like to report this to amazon and warn others. is there an amazon [problem] address? is there somewhere to warn other amazon sellers? i have the web address of consumer direct but i won't be able to send the entire email. suggestions please?

cheers buzby. i was hoping there was a way that would cost bt money ... and that millions would follow. maybe, if it cost bt more money by them being morons, they would be forced to change. p.s. "busby", any relation to bt? LOL

actually, i did ask them when i first registered for VAT. i had bought something from a local supplier, when i asked for his VAT number (to write on the till receipt) he refused. he "couldn't give his vat number to just anyone". so i phoned my local vat office and, apparently, "they must issue a vat receipt for any item over £5 if requested". however, they would not say anything further regarding what to do if someone refused except, "well, they have to do it". i even wrote to the vat office but when they didn't reply i didn't want to upset them by pushing the issue. however, i was audited by HMRC twice in the following two years and when some till receipts without vat numbers were disallowed i explained what had happened. again i was told that "they just have to". when i asked about them refusing he said "they can't". when i said "but they did", again i was told that they could not. when i asked what i could do about it he said that "it was up to me" and refused to discuss further.

a couple of years ago BT simply stopped sending a VAT receipt with my bill, i.e. the extra sheet with my bill that shows the VAT amount which i am legally entitled to as it is for something costing more than £5 (as i understand it). i also need the VAT receipt so i can reclaim the VAT. so i phoned them. "i'm sorry about that, ... i can see why that's happened as our system isn't set to send a VAT bill. you say that you have had VAT receipts in the past? i'll sort that out now ... it will only take a moment", they said. adding, "it will take a couple of weeks for the reprinted bill to arrive" - but it never did!. so i rang them again, "sorry about that" then the same. two more weeks, the following months bill arrived - without the VAT portion! and still no reprint of the first bill. this continued without me ever receiving any VAT bills. as they always "claimed" they had no record of any previous requests to switch on the VAT element of the bill, or reprint any bills, i started to write to confirm each call i made but they still had no records of my problem the next time i rang and i never received even one reply. i wrote to their complaints department 3 or 4 times but got no reply! so i wrote to OTELO. they insisted i wrote to the BT complaints department - even though i had told them i had already done so and they hadn't replied. i presume that OTELO must have told BT complaints to reply to me because i received a nice letter that said all the right things but didn't actually do anything! still no VAT receipts. more letters to OTELO who eventually seemed to accept what i was saying and they issued a "FINAL DECISION", "that BT would send me the missing VAT receipts". yes, i was willing to accept this ruling, as long as i got the receipts i needed. but nothing happened. i wrote more letters to BT, sending copies to OTELO. occasionally they did send some bills in reply to my letters, however, some still had no VAT elements, some were for periods that i already had VAT receipts, i.e. before the problem had started, and a few, very few, were sometimes what i was missing. the longer it went on, the more bills they sent me, the more opportunities they had to be stupid by sending me bills they had already sent. originally it was simply all bills from date 1 to date 2 but, after they'd sent a few valid ones i had to keep telling them which ones i had and which i still needed. i spent significant amounts of time checking this (i have always kept all my VAT receipts in VAT quarter order so checking the missing bills was messy). i was also constantly writing to BT as OTELO didn't seem to be doing anything. OTELO even wrote to me saying that the matter was closed - even though the last letter they had from me was that there were still missing invoices. eventually i did get all the missing VAT bills but it took over a year; it has cost me a lot of extra postage, stationery, etc and my time after they had issued their FINAL DECISION. surely, i argued, it is only reasonable that BT should have complied with the ruling without me incurring any further expenses and without one years delay. no they say, BT have complied and that's the end of it, adding "they have no punative powers". is it any wonder that telecomms companies continue to treat customers so badly when the body that's supposed to help is such a pathetic waste of space. please get rid of OTELO and replace it with a garden gnome or something that works! long before this issue was resolved i moved to TalkTalk and i'm very happy there. any suggestions about further actions i could take would be very welcomed. copy sent to my MEP & MP.

the letter to lcs would seem to have done the trick, many thanks. there's even a little icing on the cake too, they replied to me via email, naturally to my cag address, which i retrieved via googlemail. what's so good about that you ask? only that the filters which googlemail use have declared that the email from lcs was spam! i thought about telling them but this is far more fun. thanks again for the help.

i would think that getting evidence that they have ignored your letters would be a good idea, i.e. answer the door but keep the chain on, better still, if you have an access system, hold the entire conversation via that and get them to say who they are, who they represent and why they are visiting your address - while you record the entire conversation for the OFT, Trading Standards, your MP, ... others feel free to add to the list

FYI: "they have received it" ... when the royal mail delivers recorded delivery items to a company they often only get a signature for a quantity, i.e. not for each individual letter! i sent at least 8 letters to TSB and 5 or 6 to Barclaycard yet when i checked the tracking numbers they simply said delivered but did not show any signatures. when i wrote to royal mail about the missing signatures they explained about not getting individual signatures for items, basically, "when there's more than one". somewhere on this site it has been said a number of times that there is an assumption under british law that if you obtain a certificate of posting then the item will have been delivered after allowing a reasonable period. this saves a fortune on postage too!

does the stuff you've sent include the standard letter that says they will be trespassing if they visit you? it withdraws the common law assumption that visitors can even hand deliver letters to you?

i was thinking more of a superhero with CAG on his chest and the words, "protected by my friends"

sent this day ... watch out for the next exciting installment (sorry, flashback to the days of the tanner rush)