Be aware that if you do have to pay a fee of 25% you also have to pay VAT on top of the amount, making it a bigger percentage than expected. OMWO

How about this for a laugh! http://www.a1klaims.co.uk/testimonials.php - have a read of the supplied testimonial very carefully OMWO

Wow! Compliance Team of the Year, sponsored by Lowell Group Nominees: 1st Credit Mackenzie Hall Group Marlin Financial Group TDX

I don't know, but I'm sure someone else will be able to point you in the right direction. OMWO.

Sounds like a breach of CPUTR - attempting to force you into a decision by providing deliberately misleading information.

Making a payment now won't restart the clock if it is already statute barred - I'd be inclined to write and point out that as it is statue barred you'll be taking the 100% discount option! But do make sure of the date of last payment or written acknowledgement first. OMWO

Is there any way we can use unjust enrichment in defence of claims made by debt purchasing companies when they try and claim the full amount on a debt they may have paid as little as 4% of the face value for (an example rate quoted to me by a judge recently)? Why should someone who only paid £400-£600 for a £10,000 unsecured debt be allowed to claim for a loss of £10,000 and then get it backed up by a CCJ and possibly a charging order? If the OC can afford to write it down by that much, shouldn't they first have to offer the debtor a reasonable settlement offer first? OMWO

If the calls are regarding a debt that is managed by CCCS then give them your CCCS reference and tell them to talk to them and not to contact you any more. OMWO

Watch Restons though. Even if MBNA pass on the documents to them to forward on to you Restons may decide that you aren't entitled to them for some flimsy reason, especially if there's anything that might help your defence of the claim.

Ask them if their monitoring also shows the increase in the costs of petrol, food, gas and electricity.

If I get a recon on this one it has to be fraudulent, for reasons I won't go into at the moment. OMWO

In a recent CCA request I used a variation of the following text - not exactly as it's shown so as not to help the DCA identify me! OMWO

Having been inside IQOR (or Legal & Trade as they were) they have the contract to chase TV Licences. They call out from their offices in Preston but if they aren't calling on behalf of TVL they shouldn't show the CLI for the TVL line, but an alternate one. It's probably unintentional, but it's definitely misleading. I am not and never have been a debt collector by the way!

Subbing...

I meant what you had been posting about dates in this forum - it's best not to give away anything that might be useful to the other side or make their job easier, especially if they don't know it already.

I would advise against putting date information in your postings that might help the other party in 'reconstructing' evidence, so as dates when you (or your OH) were living at certain locations. It makes it easier for them to make sure their 'evidence' fits around these dates. OMWO

I had a situation a while back where I was cold-called regarding a PPI reclaim. They told me I had borrowed from a certain company and would be entitled to a PPI refund. (I had borrowed from a subsidiary of the company with PPI attached but they had refunded the PPI some years earlier without me needing to chase them for it). When I denied knowledge of the company they mentioned I was told I must be wrong as it was on the data they received from a certain CRA. They were also calling my ex-directory, TPA-listed number. If CRAs are selling my financial and personal contact info then I want an opt-out or at least a cut of their fees. It's my data and should not be sold or made available to anyone, and that includes searches by DCAs, claims companies and any other 'interested party' without my knowledge or permission. Where do a lot of these phishing calls/letters come from that turn out to be chasing the wrong person? A DCA can go into a CRA system and get a list of possible matches and start harassing them all regardless of if they the right person or not.

I've no problem with pre-authorised searches for insurance and credit applications, etc., but when it's some speculative search by an unknown entity with no financial relationship with you it is wrong. I assume the CRAs charge a fee for this access, so they are selling my personal data without permission in these days of ID theft.

As the data held by the CRAs is our personal private financial data why can't we have the right to state that no-one is allowed to carry out a search without our express authority, like we do when we fill in a credit application?

If it's an OD then a CCA request is not valid as far as I'm aware.

SAR address: - The Data Controller HFC Bank, Head Office North Street Winkfield Windsor Berkshire SL4 4TD

HFC still exist - they are a part of HSBC but exist in their own right. Their head office is outside Windsor.

There's two distinct types of codes used as well. There's lookup codes which relate to statuses, etc. and there's customer service shorthand notation, rather like text-speak to enable the agent to log details before the next call comes during their wrap-up time. A lot of this type is non-standardised depending how accurate a typist the agent is and needs to be read to be interpreted. I'm not making excuses for them, but as a database programmer myself I understand its not completely simple to provide useful information in a user-friendly format always, especially in older systems that a lot of the banks are still using, some dating back to the Windows 3.1 or even terminal screen eras!

In my experience what you get for a lot of the data is screenshots of incident logging systems, which would make 'translation' almost impossible. This would need every record to be processed into text files which would then make other pertinent information more obscure due to the volume of printed information.

But does it answer the question of whether they can use data from government-provided sources to enhance their non-governmental debt collection/tracing? OMWO