Firstly, hello to you all, as this is my first time on this forum.
Forgive me if this is long winded or hard to understand, but I will do my best.
I found you after doing a search on Google for "J Mxxxxxx Bailiff", as I was trying to find out information on this bailiff who has been recently harrasing me and my wife. When I came accross this thread from a few years ago......./forum/showthread.php?184351-rossendales-had-crazy-charges
I was married in October 2012, and after the wedding we decided to lay all our debt cards on the table, no questions asked, as we felt we should clear everything we owed to provide a better future for our family. Between us both we had debts of around 7k, not a large figure, but in hard times, tough enough.
One of these debts was for My wife and her previous partner from years back, joint council tax bill for a meager 95.43. This was originally much higher but my wife had paid most off as her previous was no where to be seen.
Sadly my hours got dropped from 48 per week to 20 per week, but because some of the debts were for over payment of housing benefit, again one of my wife's debts, the council took that money out of what we were now entitled to to pay off the debt rather than go through debt management. Although it was clearing a debt, it meant we had to tighten our belts even further, causing more stress.
As a result of my loss of earnings, we were no longer in a position to make any form of payment to the bailiff J Mxxxxxx who works for Rossendales. We explained to Rossendale's our situation and was advised to contact the council. There response was to apply for a DRO or use them for debt management as they did not charge admin fees. We were told they would contact Rossendale's to arrange a hold on the account until we knew what was happening. Sadly this never happened, which brings us to the core part of this thread.
I received a knock at the door, but by the time I had arrived to answer it (10 seconds roughly), J Mxxxxxx from Rossendale's had already walked off back to his van. I looked down and he had posted a FINAL NOTICE letter through our door for the amount of £294.93. As this was not my own personal debt, I didn't even realise it was for a ridiculous amount, more than 100% the cost of the original debt.
The very next day, he arrives again and knocks at the door. As I answered it and asked who he was, he just showed me a BAILIFF REMOVAL letter. I stepped outside to talk to him and shut the door behind me and he just started to walk off. I started to walk after him asking him why he was here when we were under the impression it was being placed on hold by order of the council he was collecting for, Wyre Borough Council (WBC). Abruptly he said "not interested, I'm coming back tomorrow to take your goods" and handed me the letter.
I told him we own nothing he could take, we already sold everything to pay off what we could and all that was left was the furnishings as part of our tenancy agreement, and a car I use to drive an hour to work every day, so what exactly does he intend to take? He simply continued to walk off and said "I can take what I want and there is nothing you can do about it, I can even break in to your house and not be arrested".
His rudeness got my back up and I'm ashamed to admit I lost control. I called him a bulls#!73r and a pzzzzk as he walked off and he retorted with equally offensive language whilst laughing and shouting kiss your car goodbye. Obviously my wife broke down in tears thinking the car would be taken, and she gave in and said just let him take the car, then its done with, paid and gone. My reply was a resounding "NO, why should we let that guy take our 1k car for a £300 debt, I'd rather sell it and pay him, and others off".
I spoke to my dad who reluctantly gave me £300 to pay the debt and be done with, which I accepted, as I was worried, angry and didn't know what to do. I put the money in the bank and told my wife to pay the debt, if I spoke to him I would probably make things worse.
The next morning, my wife called J Mxxxxxx and said she was able to pay the debt, his reply, good as its now £404.93. She replied er.......no its 294.93, to which he replied what ever, give me your card details. She gave him the details and he told her it would take 30 minutes to process. As she told me of this new supposed cost, I was rather suspicious and started to question all charges. It was at this point I started searching for information on J Mxxxxxx and found this website and others.
I then started to panic thinking we were paying blindly for charges we have no idea about and could be false, JUST as my wife recieved a text saying "Card Declined sorry". I did not understand this as I had exactly £300 in the bank for him to take the funds, so the only reason I could think that it was declined was he had attempted to take a higher amount than agreed. This riled me up again and I moved the funds from the bank to stop him from taking a penny. I wanted this bailiff investigating.
I contacted Rossendales who said they could not tell me the current balance of my account as that was at the discretion of J Mxxxxxx. All they could tell was there was a first visit charge of £24.50, a second visit charge of £18, a van attendance fee of £110 and a Levy fee of £47. I questioned this stating as he had not levied anything nor posted any paperwork stating a levy, surely these charges are illegal and fraudulent? To which she replied, "we have no control of our bailiffs charges and you need to speak to him about it directly".
We tried to contact him to explain his charges but he refused to answer. We text him and he refused to reply. We contacted Rossendale's who contacted him but he wouldn't answer them either but would ask him to contact us asap.
Whilst waiting for him to contact us, we contacted WBC to confirm if these charges were legal or not. I cannot describe the joy to hear he could only charge for first and second attendance, and we should only pay £137.94 NOT £294.93. She also added that he HAD in fact levied a vehicle, but only an hour previous, during the time we were at home trying to contact him directly, yet the reg he had given was not even our car, nor had any paperwork been posted or handed to us, so therefore the levy wasn't even legal. WBC asked us to leave it with them and they would get back to us.
Today I had a phone call from WBC who informed me that I only had to pay the £137.94 to them directly and not to Rossendales and they were sorry for the trouble caused. Case closed......................or is it??
My question to the community is should I make an official complaint regarding Rossendales and J Mxxxxxx in particular?
I'm not trying to score bonus points on what is in my eyes, a victory, but I do worry that this method of adding charges wrongfully, needs to be made aware to those who need to know. Im a strong character but even all of this has emotionally hurt me, and my wife more so, and god knows who else this is happening to every day.
Thank you for your time reading my bla bla bla and I look forward to any constructive comments or advice.
