Hello all I would like to revive this thread in the light of new developments and it might be a good idea to read the thread before continuing below. In summary I defaulted a Vanquis card in 2012, they subsequently reported a default with the CRA's, and sold to Lowells who placed a different and later default date with the CRA's. With the recent judgement about dates of defaults and six year Stat bar rules now in effect I am able to report that this account is now Stat Barred. My reasoning is that according to the recent judgement the countdown starts from the date of the Default Notice from Vanquis which in this case was 25th June 2013. (I have in my possession a default notice from Vanquis dated 25th June 2013 such that this account became Stat Barred 25th June 2019). I subsequently wrote to Lowell offering them my correct and up to date address and using the standard template provided on here advised them that the account was Stat barred (adding one additional phrase to the template saying I was in possession of the Vanquis Default Notice). They have replied saying it is not STAT Barred and say they are going to Vanquis to get account details implying an attempt at Court Action. As a precaution I also SAR'ed Vanquis. Much to my surprise I got a phone call from them asking me what information I required!! I politely told the lady that my expectation was that the law required them to supply me with everything they hold electronically but that I would be satisfied with a copy of the default notice and their customer care logs showing date of issue of the notice. I received the above two documents. The DN matched my own copy so no problem there. I was disappointed to see no reference to them ever having published a Default to any of the Credit Reference Agencies though if memory serves they did default. I have no worries about Lowell as I would expect my Defence and documentation to be sound enough to defeat them probably without it even going to a Hearing. They are relying on their own CRA default which they changed from Vanquis's original default, or hoping that they can persuade me that that is the correct date! (To be clear I am relying on the Date of the Default Notice as being the start of the six year countdown to STAT BAR, not the pseudo default date lodged by Lowell upon account purchase). But I am disappointed that Vanquis have provided no information about the date they originally defaulted me. I would like to challenge Lowell's date and in the process clear up this last negative report on my record. Anybody got any comments or ideas? Thanks in advance.

Hello I was in arrears with business rates to Rushcliffe Council but entered into a repayment arrangement with them. It ran a bit late but I did make all the payments. Just after we had made the last payment we received a letter from Bristow & Sutor seeking the payment and a fee. I tried to use their web system to advise them of the debt having been paid but it did not recognize me. I then sent an email to the only email address I could find for them which happended to be their MD or similar high position, trusting to luck that he would forward it to the right department of his firm. A few weeks ago a Bristow and Sutor Bailiff came on site to collect the arrears and their fee. I advised him it was all paid up and we did a hands free call with the Council Finance department who agreed that our account was up to date with no arrears and could not explain to the Bailiff why he was sent. He then went away empty handed. I have recently received a letter from Bristow and Sutor demanding their fee. I take the view that as I have paid and without the intervention of B&S that no fee is due. Can anyone advise me on any next steps and in particular what to do or say to the B&S agent if they call again? In particular what are my rights in preventing him from seizing goods to pay his fee if he should try that? Many thanks

Following this thread. Just a suggestion, why not SAR Eon? They clearly cant respond in time for your urgent filing but should the case progress you will have loads of data to sift through in order to pick out various dates etc. They might not speak with you because the account was assigned but they cant ignore a SAR.

My first inclination would be to ignore the DCA as they have no power. That leaves you with how to pay Amex. Perhaps a good way forward would be to try and get a bank account for Amex and then pay by periodic instalments using your card number as a reference. Ultimately they will either have to accept the payments or take Court Action (or sell the debt). I wonder though if they have already trashed your credit file by reporting a default or late payments. Probably a good idea to check all three credit reference agencies to see if Amex has done that. Ultimately if you cannot get a bank account from them then set up a savings account and put it there and then wait for them to make the next move. It is quite possible that somewhere down the line long after you have defaulted they will make you a discounted offer. Your savings could go along way towards settling the sum.

DX: throw the morality card in the bin.. I totally agree with this. If it ever gets to Court it will be the laws that apply not morality. Almost by default if you are a card provider, bank or other financial institution you are involved in immorality somewhere along the line.

Thanks Andy. I read the link and now understand. Whilst I was aware that use of the term prevented the other side from using any of the statements you made in court I was unaware of the appropriate (or inappropriate!) use by solicitors. Thanks for the education.

why do you say that Andyorch, would be interested in your views and reasoning.

Hello Have you got any of your paperwork from the Vanquis account? First thing you can do is check if it is Statutory Barred. You should have received a Default notice and provided you did not pay anything after this date or acknowledge the debtg in any other way then the account cannot be enforced in the courts after six years of the date of the default notice. (I mention this because Vanquis are taking a poke at me and my defence will be Stat Barr).

I have no idea if the calls exist. If I was to take a guess then I would say they do exist as the tech to do so is very easy, but I really don't know.

Thanks Andy. Will pass that info on and follow through with multiple threads as they arise.

Thanks DX100uk Her account is still in use as she has paid the fee (several hundred pounds). I want to get to the bottom of what Ebay said and get them to refund the fee if they did say so as she relisted incurring further fees on their advice. I personally also think Ebay is too strong for its own good and I know of a lot of people who have come up against ebay and been unfairly treated. I believe Ebay has broken the law by failing to provide the call recordings and this is leading to an inability to get proof( or otherwise) that they encouraged my Sister in Law to commit further expenses on the promise of a refund.

Hello A close friend of mine and his wife have about a dozen unsecured accounts they are servicing via a Stepchange Debt Management Plan. They are both struggling both financially and with a bereavement in the family. These are various credit cards, catalogue and Debt Buyer accounts. Also, he has a secured loan which he is paying normally. I have assisted him by writing multiple CCA Request letters using the CAG provided templates. One of the creditors has already returned the Postal Order and forwarded the request to the original owner of the account (ha ha), and I expect a few more to follow. I also used the template to produce a letter for the secured loan but I advised him not to send it because I am not sure if the letter applies to Secured loans. I would be grateful if any CAGers can advise if: a). the letter applies to secured loans and if so whether it is possible to stop paying a secured loan until such time as an agreement is produced by the Creditor. b). the best way to handle the Debt Management Plan if there is an intention to stop payments to Creditors not coming up with valid agreements Many thanks.

Hello all The misadventures of my sister in law have appeared elsewhere in these forums and here is another unfortunate story but one that has some useful stuff for other CAGers. My sister in Law was selling a high value business item on Ebay and withdrew the sale. I am not aware of the exact circumstances but Ebay charged her a Final Value fee even though it was not sold via Ebay. However, ON THE PHONE they said that if she re-listed the item on E-bay they would credit her the fee so she did. Subsequent follow up with Ebay lead to them denying anything was ever said and subsequently they put her account out to Debt Collectors. To resolve the situation I thought it was necessary to find out exactly what they did say so I found a UK address for Ebay and sent them the standard SAR letter as found on these pages (obviously adapted for Ebay and her account details). This address WORKS for Ebay and is as follows: Ebay (UK) Ltd Hotham House, 1 Heron Square, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1EJ At around day 25 (rather late in the day) Ebay responded asking for more ID and I advised my Sister in Law to send passport and or driver licence data which she did even though I suspect that the provision of her name, address and Ebay username in the original request should have been sufficient. About a week after the thirty days had expired she received two emails, one being a secured ZIP file containing her data and the other being the Password to extract the data. I was able to extract the data and it is indeed a data dump from Ebay. However, it does not contain any audio files. Records of phone calls are shown but the audio files are not provided. I conclude that either Ebay is not retaining any recordings it makes or they have failed to provide the data. If it is the latter then that is a second contravention of the Data Protection rules (the first being late provision of the data dump). I believe the next move is to write to Ebay to advise them that they are in breach due to late delivery of the data and to ask them to confirm in writing that they do not hold any phone recordings, or if they do then to further advise them that they are in breach for not having provided them. Probably a copy to the Data Commissioner would not go amiss either. This post is for CAG member's interest to put on record here that UK Ebayers can write to the above address with a SAR and get a response. Also I welcome any comments and suggestions regarding the next move.

If the case was brought before a UK civil court would UK rules apply or foreign rules? I wonder if the original contract would strate what jurisdiction it's terms would be decided by? I note that UK contracts frequently have a clause that says in so many words that any disputes will be interpreted under UK law.

It is the usual rubbish. It is cunningly designed to frighten you because it uses some words designed to provoke an emotional response such as Bankruptcy, charging, Warrant etc. If you read it carefully it can be summed up as follows: 1. You were wise enough not to engage with us before and we are a bit pissed about that. 2. Because we are pissed but can do nothing else we are trying to frighten you with all the things someone else COULD (but probably wouldn't) do with keywords. Only our client and his solicitor could if they had a case. 3. More keywords because we are still pissed you have not engaged with us. 4. We have advised our client (though we probably haven't) to refer to solicitors for legal action because 1). we have failed to scare or engage you and 2). we have no power to take legal action ourselves, only solicitors engaged by our clients could do that. 5. We want to help you (for which read we want to help ourselves) and please look at the list of other people who can help you because a). we may be legally obliged to refer you to third party help and b). some of those guys will advise you to engage with us rather than put us to strict proof. This letter should be filed along with it's envelope. No need to respond in any way or have any anxiety about this one.

Just keep all correspondence from now on. What I do is slice open the letter with a knife so it is neat, then staple the envelope to the back of the letter, assuming the contents are harmless I then file it in a foolscap cardboard folder. The reason I keep the envelope is sometimes it has post date stamps (potentially useful) and also a return address on the back of the envelope. This can sometimes be useful if you get a letter purporting to be from another organisation but having the same return address as another item. (Often the case that a bank chases you, you ignore, they then pass the case "across the desk" to their internal debt collector which is one and the same bank with another name pretending to be a proper DCA but really the same people!). Once you cotton on to this sort of trick it takes some of the anxiety out of seeing new parties writing to you.

My strategy for myself and others I have helped is to ignore them, just become a black hole, but save/collect everything. The exception is if you get a letter before action or a County Court Claim pack, then report it here. That happened only once out of maybe 14 cases and with the advice of this site I overcame the claim (the other party withdrew before going to court as they could not provide any paperwork, thanks CAG). I have had one or two persistent players that have continued well beyond the Stat Bar time, I continue to ignore. My collection of letters is now extensive and I treat it with the same reverence others hold for a stamp collection!

yes

"I have had on and off letters/emails and calls for years but I have never replied and i changed my email address which they dont seem to have found! This isn't the first contact its justba new company so does that still mean it counts as 10 years? " As I understand it if you fail to pay a debt in the UK then sooner or later the Creditor will issue you with a Default Notice. From that point on the "clock" starts ticking and if the Creditor or anyone else that buys the debt (so becoming the new creditor) does not start court action by the sixth anniversary of the date of the Default notice (five years if you are in Scotland) then the debt becomes what is known as Statutory barred, often referred to on here as Stat Barred. This means that the legal system considers the debt too old for legal action and will not consider the case. Although you still owe the money the creditor cannot take any legal action to recover the debt and if they do so it should be sufficient to say the action started too late and their case should fail. However, if at any time following the date of the default notice that you "Acknowledged the debt then the clock restarts. An acknowledgement is either a payment you make towards the debt or some correspondence you send (letter or email) in which you admit the debt is yours in some way. In your case the debt is an overseas one and it is possible that the administration of the account is different and follows different rules and laws. Quite possibly they did not issue a default notice in the manner required by the UK Acts. In that case the UK Court would consider the Clock to have started from the time you failed to pay the monthly instalment so you should be in the clear. This is all British law. I do not know how this affects an overseas case but I see no reason why it would be any different as the claim would be in a British Court and be subject to the same rules and procedures. If you have not communicated with the Creditor or its agents for ten years then this one has got cobwebs on it. As before I like confirmation, correction and additional information from other CAGers.

Experian, Equifax and Callcredit. You can sign up to free services that send you an email once a month with your report drawn from these three agencies.

Thanks for that DX, I learnt something there. So my post above should be corrected to cancel point 3. and change point 4. to "Advise all creditors of change of address"

Hello Thought I would add my tuppence to this thread. This is what idrww.com says on their home page with a bit of deconstruction by my amateur self!: International Debt Recovery (IDR) specialises in the collection of cross-border debts for banks and other lending institutions. Traditionally this debt has been hard to recover as non-UK banks struggle to trace residents outside of their own jurisdiction, and often discover that even if they find the individual, the credit agreement is difficult to enforce outside of their own legal system. I think that remains true, still is hard to recover. In association with fully licensed tracing agents using modern field tracking techniques, we believe that we can find any individual. That is probably true. Once found, we then employ a strong and effective legal strategy to recover as much of the foreign debt as quickly and efficiently as possible. As a Debt Collector I would presume they have the same powers as any other debt collector essentially none, so in essence their strategy is first and formost to chase the debtor via phone and letter in the hope that they will give up. The best strategy to deal with this is usually to ignore. They say elsewhere on their site that: ...we will use one of our legal partners to obtain judgments and charging orders against property to secure the debt. That statement implies that they will get a legal firm to do the legal work so I presume they sign up a legal firm to act on behalf of the Creditor as they themselves have no power to bring a case. Also worth noting that where they say "to obtain judgements and charging orders" what they really mean is "to attempt to obtain etc etc..." as they have to achieve a minimum standard of proof to the court which is a signed credit agreement meeting the terms of the UK Consumer Credit Act (unless they are using some other act CAGers please suggest if so) and other documents they are relying on probably to include statements and a default notice (safe to say the latter would probably not have been received by you if you had left the UAE). Going back to their front page they say "We break down the barriers normally associated with recovering non-residents’ debt and their failure to adhere to credit agreements. We are so confident of our approach that we are prepared to offer our combined services on a no-win, no-fee basis. We simply earn a negotiated commission percentage on the full amount recovered. A simple and effective scheme, with no risk at all to our clients." They have to break down the same barriers as any other DCA. First, to get the Debtor to engage with them and second to get them to pay. If that fails then to try a court action which is defendable, probably more so as it is an International debt so harder to enforce in the UK. I think a good action plan to deal with this is as follows: 1. Keep all correspondence including the envelops they came in. File it in chronological order. 2. Ignore all correspondence from anyone about this matter unless you get a letter before action, probably this would come from a partner solicitor but even if you get a "solicitors" letter it is not necessarily a Letter before Action but get back here for advice. Ignore all phone calls, if they accidentally get through to you, stop talking and hang up. You may consider it rude, I consider it rude that they are interrupting you with an unenforceable debt. 3. When you move in with your boyfriend get all your mail forwarded to your new address using the GPO forwarding service, or have it go to a box number for collection. This is to ensure that if they do start court proceedings they will not get a County Court Judgement against you accidentally because you did not receive the paperwork. 4. Consider letting them know your new address so that 3. does not happen. (Would love to see other CAGers views on that). 5. Something not mentioned elsewhere on this thread but you left UAE ten years ago. If there has been no contact in that time then I would imagine that the debt is Statute Barred as it is over six years old so no court action ought to be possible. That seems to me to be the perfect defence and probably nothing else is required if it came to an actual claim. (Again other CAGers opinions welcome on this). 6. Just as a precaution check all three credit reference agencies just in case they have somehow registered a default against you but I am not sure how they would do that. 7. DON'T GO BACK TO UAE. The debt will be registered and you will be arrested at the airport and held. Nothing too much to worry about. Please note I have no legal training but experience and some acquired knowledge so I welcome corrections and comments from other CAGers.

Hi Some guys with more knowledge than me will likely be along to help out. In the meantime did you receive a Default notice and if so do you have it and if so what is the date on it? It is reported elsewhere on this site that after a recent Appeal ruling that the date from which the Statute Bar calculation runs is not the date of the last payment but the date of the Default Notice. If your last payment was made BEFORE they sent you the default notice then the SB date is six years after the Default notice date (or five years if in Scotland). As default notices might be sent several months after you default it could be that the account is not yet stat-barred. However, if you paid anything after the default notice then by their admission the last payment was 22nd February 2013 which was six years and sixty-eight days ago. If the law says that the SB period runs from the Default Notice date then that was before 22nd February 2013 though you might have said to have acknowledged the date with the 22nd February 2013 payment. Either way, it is stat-barred in this circumstance. If you do not have a copy of the default notice I would do a SAR request to Barclaycard asking for your data. When it arrives see what they say about when the Default Notice was issued. With that date and the date of the last payment, you will then know where you stand. I would not myself communicate further with Robinson Way on this or any other matter until you are in possession of the facts. After all the longer you leave it the more likely it is that you will go beyond the SB date even if the default was issued after your last payment. Hopefully, some others will come on and confirm my post or add useful material.

What is the total amount they are asking for? I have been chased by Lowell for some considerable time now for a card debt of around £1500. It is about to become Statutory Barred. I have not during all that time responded to any of their correspondence or calls, I have been a big black hole into which they pour their energies. They probably do not know for sure if I am out here so reluctant to take any legal action as it could be a waste of time and money. This is an effective strategy and I strongly suggest you follow it pending any better and more informed advice coming from other advisors on this site. Bookmark their phone numbers when they ring so you know it is them and let it go to voicemail. Keep all their letters but file them and do not reply unless it is a firm letter before action or a claim form. Then come back on here for advice. Here is a list of numbers from which they have called me in the past which you can put in your phone but of course they might use other ones as well so be cautious. 07900742239 01133086169 08448150652 0844444716 01133086000 01133086035 07900742242 0333 556 5500 0333 556 5501 0333 556 5835 0333 556 5560 0333 556 5561

The Latest bill shows a total of £817 pounds, estimated. As a single occupant I would expect that to be quite a lot less if the meter was read. I have refused to provide meter readings on the grounds that it is none of their business as the consumption is between me and my supplier (previously Iresa, now Octopus Energy).