It wasn't carelessness just incapacity. I had lost everything that wasn't in storage or the suitcase, a couple of years later the storage was demolished (a row of garages) and there was absolutely nothing I could do to salvage our things in time. I will have to contact the DCAs as a first step and ask for details then perhaps come back to you guys when I have a clearer idea. When I say everything we own is in suitcases it is not poetic. This was about the time when my German wife began to receive prognoses instead of diagnoses and I had to have big-boy heart surgery... we were and remain stuffed. I am a bit surprised at feeling concerned about these debts, I guess I have been trying to find hope in the fact that things can't get worse in any meaningful way and would hate to be proved wrong. Forgive me for trying your patience, I am just digging for clarity. If there are any original creditors involved it would be a huge and risky struggle to get back to the UK for any court action, even with self-representation.

Andyorch, thank you. We seem to have established that the debts are not statute barred because I have been making token payments for the whole period. So this does not give clarity. It is possible that Moorcroft and Wescot could be acting for the original bank or CC companies. DX100uk, thank you. Deforestation sounds bad for my environment but I don't really understand what it means.

Just one point for understanding before I send letters to all the DCAs. You said that Moorcroft and Wescot do not buy debts but collect for clients. you did not mention anything about Cabot or Capquest. I think Cabot has simply taken over the arrangement made with another DCA as I do not remember their name. You also said that if any of the original creditors (you are right, they were all major CC companies or banks) could have taken action and 'crushed' me. This might well be true but would have been fruitless for them. But it does leave me with the impression that while the DCAs might not be worth worrying about their clients, if they are still the big companies, might be. Unfortunately I have lost the records that linked the original creditors with the acting DCAs so I cannot tell who owns the debts. My question is this. Would your advice be different if a DCA, after all this time, were still acting for the original creditor?

This is timely if disappointing but it answers the big question that arose when I read more widely across the forum. There seemed to be a contradiction between the conditions that trigger the statute barring and the continued payments. So, it seems that the six year limit has not started, let alone ended. I have also been through the partial files I have with me and have discovered another problem. The two payments to RW that have the same reference number are for a different creditor, Lloyds. There have been no payments to RW for Barclaycard (and I have had nothing that tells me they act for or own that debt). The amount they are claiming is within five pounds of the balance from Barclaycard from Feb 2014, several years after the plan was agreed. While I cannot, with the information available, link any of the other payments to other DRAs to Barclaycard I cannot from bank records say that they have not been. I have no correspondence from some of the agencies at all and short of contacting all of them for information no way of finding out. My confusion about the Lloyds issue (which has the greatest amount of correspondence for the smallest of the debts) is that they went through three different agencies so rapidly I was unsure about who was doing what for whom. The options seem relatively simple, though. I could cancel all payments, wait for something to hit the fan and then try to sort out the remains. My reluctance to do this is that the other agencies will get contact info in the same way that RW did and my sister will be fighting off the connection between her address and my debt for months. Or I could contact those who are receiving payments and ask for confirmation of details. This too could trigger unwanted attention but it might be preferable to the current mess. Any advice on which direction to take, given who is involved (RW, Wescot, Cabot, Capquest, Moorcroft) and quite what questions would be best to ask, will be gratefully received.

Well, all I can do is to thank you. With all that is happening and is likely to happen soon I could certainly use some relief from the relief of debt. None of the owners of debt have been in touch over the last seven years (per the links through 'statute barred') the fact that I did not have an address where I could expect to stay for a while won't have helped them but I shall not lose sleep over that. I will pursue this with RW and test the reaction before cancelling the other collectors and come back to this thread, if I may, if there are any surprises. Once again, thank you.

That's the plain talk I was hoping for. Right, this could be fun. It will take time for me to get hold of the original information as it is in the UK but I did follow up with demands for evidence of liability, most just did not respond, others claimed that their previous letters constituted that information. One or two of the names have changed, or the agency sold on or something. These are Wescot, Cabot, Capquest and Moorcroft. I will check the old papers that I have here to see if I can link these with the original creditors. From memory these were Barclaycard (now RW) Egg, Santander, Lloyds and one other that eludes me at present. I have checked the reference numbers of the RW payments and they are the same so it is two payments on one issue. This does not touch the CCJ which is owed to an individual of course. But I assume that such a liability does not enjoy the same sort of limitation. One last point of clarification, my personal concern is that the debts still exist and I see no prospect of settlement, but to whom do they exist. I assume that by selling the original debts the original creditors have also sold their claim to the debt from me. But in law, assuming the debt passes to the agency, what is the the liability, the original amount or the discounted (but undisclosed) amount. I am guessing that they paid only a small percentage of the original.

dx100, Andy, thank you both. I am beginning to realize how little I have understood. I have maintained these payments largely to remove any excuse for these people to notify further defaults to CRAs. This and a simple matter of maintaining some sort of sense of integrity myself. The liabilities are real, or were real. The advice all those years ago was to continue the payments for this sort of reason. Perhaps something has changed. Dx100, I do not understand your point about them having more than one of the debts into which I have been 'blindly' paying. To some extent I have just been glad to have shut them up for a few years. Andy, you raise some good questions and I will follow up on them with RW. Forgive my ignorance but what is a section 78 request and how might this help?

fkofilee - it appears so. I was only checking that each of the agency names appeared in the statements, I failed to notice that RW's name appeared too often, the only visible difference between the two monthly transactions was that one was the S/O and the other a D/D. I would never have agreed to a double payment being determined to only do the same thing for all. One point for clarification, if I may. In their letter RW states that if we do not manage to agree a repayment schedule (I have no idea what the last seven years are supposed to be) they will have to put the matter to their lawyers on behalf of their client. It is this last phrase that has me intrigued. I do not believe for a moment that the credit card company has let a collection agency accept the token payments this long. The phrase is obviously meant to imply a bigger stronger client, might I be right to assume that RW has bought the discounted debt and is the client they refer to in the third person?

Feels like a bold move, or non-move, but then I simply cannot offer anything, much as I would like to get rid of the whole issue. Thanks Andy

Just to be clear, the CCJ is from early 2013. The arrangement with RW and other unsecured creditors are older.

The CCJ is unconnected with RW and is more recent it was from the action by former landlord for arrears. They receive the same payment as all other creditors. The balance stated in RW letter appears to be a similar amount to the initial balance of the credit card but I do not have access to the original files from here. I have no idea how the double payment to RW affects things, if at all.

I will be concise as this is not a confessional, if helpers need more information I will respond promptly. I am 67 years old and have seven creditors, one with CCJ. I followed the advice of CAG and offered what I could, a token £5 a month to each. These payments were set up and have run without apparent fault for about seven years. Since doing this I was evicted from my home of sixteen years (the reluctant CCJ with a very patient landlord) and had no valid postal address for some time. In 2013 I had to move to Germany for family reasons. My only income is my state pension and a very, very small private pension. In short, absolutely no spare cash as the pension has to cover room rent and everything else. My assets fit into two suitcases and have no value My sister who is in the UK received a letter from Robinson Way addressed to me. She has told them to remove her address from my file as I do not and never have lived at that address. They have agreed to do this. They are talking as if this were a recent matter, insisting on the establishment of a repayment plan. Obviously I have nothing to offer them and their threats of legal action are not particularly concerning. When the CCJ was issued the judge noted that the matter would not be pursued unless there were substantial assets, which is oddly reassuring now. I intend to contact RW by email so that everything is recorded but before I do I wanted to gather any advice from you good folks. Incidental to this, I do not know what my credit record looks like now. I have lost my CRA access details and it seems not to be possible to open a new subscription from Germany. Finally, (because it is stupidly embarrassing) I have noticed an error in Robinson Way's payments. When I agreed to the monthly payment I established a standing order which is still running. I periodically check that all payments are going out as they should. What I did not notice was that RW established a direct debit, with the same reference number in addition to the standing order. So they have been receiving and taking twice the payment I agreed and this seems to have been going on for the whole period.

Comments, advice and reassurance, all appreciated. Thank you. Does anyone have an answer to the question about the legality of passing on a disputed cliam to DCAs?

I am about to have yet another frank exchange of views with a collection agency, just wanted to see if I am missing anything and make sure I am on solid ground. November 2010- two payday loan companies processed loan applications from someone using my wife's identity. The first we heard of either of them was January 2011 when they issued default notices. My wife called the fraud department at Lloyds and registered the fact. By that time she had returned to Germany to undergo further treatment for extremely serious illness. She has been out of the UK since then and has usually been too unwell for me to even let her know what is happening. I wrote on her behalf, many times, to both companies and denied the liability absolutely and made it clear that I understand our legal position and the fragility of their claims from the outset. Since then both loan companies have passed these claims on to collection agencies, most of whom back off when told that the claim is disputed. Sometimes two or three agencies are acting at the same time. In one case the loan company Pounds to Pocket, has passed a single claim on to different collection agencies under different company names. These guys are by far the worst. We can prove from bank statements that no money was received. Unfortunately Lloyds are as useless as ever and when the companies have approached them they claim not to have a fraud report. I am in the process of establishing lasting power of attorney so that the excellent person in Lloyds vulnerable clients unit can let me have the case number of the report (she found it easily). This has also been reported to the police and we have a number for that report. I was under the impression, but only because of a long silence, that Payday Express, the other loan company, had backed off but they have now come back hard, claiming that Lloyds have reported to them that the money did go onto the account and how it was withdrawn. This is false. But of course if the loan company has false information I suppose they will get a false response. One clear question, is it actually illegal for them to pass a disputed debt to an agency or just an example of bad practice? Obviously it is not easy to get them to respond to me. They get all proper on me and demand a letter of authorization. How they expect to be able to verify such a letter is beyond me. There is no agreement with them and even if there were their own deeply flawed identity verification procedures mean that they do not have a copy of my wife's signature. The nature of my wife's illness means that she is frequently in clinical isolation and has no access to anything more than her mobile phone. She is currently in a hospital in the US. The illness also means that stress is physically harmful to her. One German bank has already acknowledged a claim for victimization, and I go to court next week against another German court on the same issue. The reason for mentioning this is that we have a large file of clinical evidence and the testimony of her doctors at the direct corelation between stress hormones and her condition. My aim, of course, is simply to avoid this as much as possible. There is so little I can do for her but I can do this.

Yes, I jumped through all the hoops and agreed this before it was passed on to the first of the agencies.

In this case it is Lloyds bank on an unsecured loan. I despair of dealing with the bank. No to all of the above. No statements, no verification. The payments are purely token, a gesture of goodwill, they have no material effect.

I have been managing unsecured creditors (for far longer than I intended to) by means of agreed token payments . I am quite clear about the implications of this and have assumed that the creditors are as well. There is no point in going for money that I don't have and this keeps the matter active and continues to acknowledge my liability. Over the last year and increasingly I find that I often get letters from new collection agencies when I have an agreement in place and being maintained with another agency. The old agencies never admit that they are not acting for the creditor any longer, the new agencies never say they are taking the matter over. Consequently there are several debts where I have to deal with more than one agency. What is the legal position on this?

I'd like to ask you about the links in your signature block. All very interesting, and all quite... how to put it, quite fringe. Obviously serious thinking about economic reform is going to have its independent campaigners and its groups of campaigns. But where are the academic sources, the heavyweights, the ones who engage in peer level review. Or should I take it that anything that challenges the current systemic thinking is essentially and necessarily marginalised? Don't get me wrong, I am not antagonistic to such authors or sites. My question comes from two motives, first I am trying to develop my understanding of economics (without having been taught the orthodox views) and second I am expert in the analysis of credibility of online data, especially in evaluating the psycho/narrative indicators that site visitors pick up subconsciously (helping clients to develop the authority of their sites and not sound like dorks, in short). The long and short of this is that these links do not perform well in this respect, with positivemoney as a slightly better example. Can anyone point me in the direction of other sources, it would help my little cause a lot if you could. Thanks all.

Further to this, and any advice would be appreciated. We have just discovered that Lowell have issued a default credit report which is now showing up on my wife's credit record. I was under the impression that companies like them, who purchase second hand debts, were not allowed to add these to the formal credit ref agencies. But to issue this when the debt is seriously disputed has to be wrong. Any advice on what we should do?

Thanks for these comments. They echo my instinct. What a tiresome bunch they are. It worries me though, about the people who work there. Either it is sould destroying work or some people actually enjoy putting people through this nonsense, in which case there are more people with personality disorders than I had thought possible.

Hey guys, I have appreciated the advice given to others on this forum and now need to ask a question or two myself. At the end of November last year a letter was sent by Lowell claiming money for a mobile phone contract allegedly entered into in December 2003. This was addressed to my then fiance, now my wife. When she opened the letter on her return to the UK (she lived in Germany) early in December, she called them to find out what this was about. She was told that T mobile had been trying to recover money owed since 2003. The problem is that she never took out a contract with T mobile. At the beginning of December 2003 she returned to Germany after being in the UK for a couple of years. Just before she left her purse was stolen. She notified her bank, of course, and got an emergency identity card issued at the German Embassy. Two days later someone used her ID to take out this phone agreement. The letter from Lowell was the first she knew of the matter. She called them to ask for evidence of the debt, they guy said this was not possible. Eventually he agreed to send information, but instead and immediately put the matter into the hands of Red. (Both companies well known on this forum apparently) So we replied in writing to both companies, sending the required fee, and following guidance given here. We have now had a reply from Red (on our wedding day of all things) claiming that this type of agreement is not regulated by the provisions of the Consumer Credit Act and that therefore their client (Lowell) has no obligation to supply any information. So, we have a certain case of identity theft from five years ago, a letter from a company we had never heard of about a debt that we know nothing about. They have been told these things but are pursuing nonetheless. It is likely that we could provide evidence of the theft (the notification of the bank, the record of the emergency id card at the embassy and possibly statements from those who were witness to my wife's actions when the purse was stolen (her employer and the family with whom she lived at the time). She can also show that she was living in Germany from that date. (Why they think anyone in Germany would want a T Mobile phone in the UK I have no idea). The questions are.... Is it possible that they can proceed without providing any evidence that the debt exists, that they own it, in the face of rigorous denials? Should we take any other action now? Oh, and incidentally, a matter of detail, the name details on the letters are presumably the details used by the person who stole the purse. The surname is misspelled and letters have been sent to a Mrs Mispelled, although she has never been married before. So the only bits of information that were not on the ID card and other information in her purse are incorrect. Any knowledgeable responses would be greatly appreciated.