My father had a £5,000 alleged debt bought outright by Equidebt some years back, who didn't seem too bad as debt collectors go, though others may of course have had different experiences. Before Equidebt bought it it was last with Intrum Justitia, acting as Cahoot agents 'from memory', and with a couple of other Cahoot agents before that I think. He sent one of the early mobs a CCA request with the £1 fee asking for proof of the alleged debt, copy retained and sent recorded delivery, and they sneakily recorded the £1 fee as a payment towards the alleged debt. He then wrote them a letter, copy retained and sent recorded delivery, explaining that they shouldn't have done this and it certainly wasn't a payment towards the alleged debt. The alleged debt eventually became statute barred, but Equidebt obviously didn't realise this. A few months before Equidebt assumed it was going to be statute barred they got a solicitor involved, a genuine legal threat I think and no 'in house' bluff, who was swiftly dispatched after receiving copies of all the relevant letters and proof of deliveries. Equidebt were not amused and I almost felt a bit sorry for them, but it wasn't my father's fault and he couldn't afford to pay. Like I said, Equidebt believed that the debt was not statute barred and if no records had been kept. If they did initiate a court case, then a judge could possibly have found in their favour on that front. My father and I have dealt with multiple debts over the years, being taken to court a combined 5 times in the process (never lost), so I have a pretty good idea about what is regular auto-poop and what might be something to take seriously. I obviously can't definitively state that Equidebt would have taken my father to court. However, the thing that struck me most about the letter he got was the timing of it. It was just a couple of months before Equidebt believed the debt was to become statute barred. On 2 of the past occasions that we were taken to court, it was done in a similar fashion with a solicitors letter being received just a couple of months before a debt was due to become statute barred. I hope that you now understand everything I have said fully. Are you of the opinion that Equidebt never took anyone to court? I honestly don't know if they did, not from forum memory, and don't have the time to trawl through old threads to find out at the moment.