There is an interesting article in The Times Business section today about a possible debt bubble within the Debt Collection Agencies. Seems ironic! Search, using your favourite search engine, - The Times with "Questions are growing about a possible bubble in the debt industry" It claims financial experts are worried about the expansion of the debt purchasing industry is creating a bubble that will soon burst. They say that most of these 'toxic' debts have scant paperwork; time barred or belong to the poorest sections of our society. Therefore, they will find realising these potential assets will not work. That is they will have difficulty getting the money. Since these DCAs have borrowed heavily to purchase their port folios they will soon run into financial trouble. It goes on to say that these companies have become more aggressive ( and in a lot of cases illegal) in their activities to collect on these debts. They list some of the complaints inc. spitting in envelopes sent out to people. Yuck! Cabot, Lidorff, Intrum, Arrow, Hoist, Lowell are amongst some of the names mentioned as having unstable business models. Hedge fund managers are worried a lot of these companies will go bust. I wonder what will happen to all the debts purchased? sidley

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jun/17/uk-debt-bubble-queens-speech-consumer-credit-loans-spending I noticed quite a few advertisements for 'no interest' loans taken over 4 years with companies such as PC World/Currys - B&Q and a Carpet store. So, it looks like for companies to stay in business they need to sell - people cant afford to buy - so lets tie them up with MORE credit for 4 years !

Hi Guys, I accidentally dropped my iPhone 6 down the toilet about 2 months ago. The damn thing was in my top pocket and slipped out when i bent down to pick something up. Nightmare, as the toilet had bleach in it. I fished the phone out, gave it a very quick rinse, because of the bleach and towel dried it, then stuck it in some rice, as I've heard of people doing this. I called Protect your bubble to start the claim. I left it in there for a day then tried the phone. it was all over the place to start but then began to work properly and continued to do so for the next couple of days, so i cancelled the claim. last week, the phone died after i installed ios9. i took it to the apple store, who opened it up and said that the water damage had finished it off. I explained what happened and they said that they would never replace this phone because of the water damage and more importantly the bleach. I reopened the claim with PYB and sent the phone off to A Novo, who is their repair company. After a few days I called PYB to get an update. they said that the phone is still being repaired. I questioned this because of what Apple said. PYB said that their contract with A Novo was to repair the phone rather than replace and that the phone would be fine. that got me thinking, so I cold called A Novo to get their opinion. They said that they would never repair a water damaged phone, let alone one that had bleach in it. I mentioned PYB and they said that their contract with PYB is to repair 1st and only replace if the phone doesn't pass the 40 point check. They also said that their work is guaranteed for 180 days. Im still waiting for the phone back, which should be Tuesday, so my question is Where do I stand with the repair? My concern is that it may work now but as time goes on , the metallic parts will corrode and the phone may fail outside of the 180 days warranty many thanks EOS-5D

Hi all OK, in Feb this year my son bought for me a Nexus 7 tablet as a random present and in May I decided to insure it with Protect Your Bubble for pennies a week, £3.49 a month which I thought was great value. I drop it I can claim, lose it I can claim, sit on it and I can claim. I hadn't used it for a while so went to it and discovered the screen was smashed like something had been dropped on it So I rang them and thought everything was reasonably straight forward, they wanted the serial number, date of purchase, how much it cost and all the usual grab. Now as it was an on line purchase Google sent an Email receipt showing all the relevant details - Name, address, order number, transaction number and so on so I thought all was good. I was asked to forward this to PYB at their claims email address which I did and heard nothing. So I called them back to be told "Sorry, we can't accept a forwarded email. Print it out and send it to this address" which I did. Next call was "Sorry, but that's a text file and we can only accept digital PDF files as proof of purchase" So I printed out the Email again, scanned it, saved it as a PDF and sent it to them. This still wasn't good enough, they then changed the goal posts to they wanted a PDF file from Google showing the receipt and wouldn't accept anything else. Now I'm not having a go at Google here as they were brilliant, but they can't do this as it's not their policy. As far as they're concerned if the unit develops a fault within the warranty they'd access that and action a repair/replacement based on the manufacturers warranty. Having explained this to PYB, I was told by an arrogant manager that Google are WRONG and they can do this no problems at all despite my being told directly by them, (Google), that they would not. I argued this and asked how they could be so sure that any receipt, even as a PDF wasn't a forgery as I could reset all the Metadata myself and edit the document to show whatever I wanted. I was then told that if I bought it from a shop then I'd have to scan the till receipt along with the card receipt, save it as a PDF and then they'd accept this. I challenged them on what the difference is given all the transaction codes can be traced anyway on the information they have but they still weren't accepting it. In short, I found this company does all it can to avoid claims by making up stupid rules that make absolutely no sense what so ever, (sorry but they can easily check with Google is the transaction codes are authentic without breaching data protection), so I made a few choice comments and hung up. As I paid the premiums by direct debit I got in touch with my bank and in accordance with the direct debit guarantee they are reversing all the debits to PYB over the last few months and putting the money back into my account so I've lost nothing. So folks, there's more than one way to skin a cat! If you have paid by Direct Debit and are running into a refusal to deal with a claim then contact your bank and have the funds removed from their account by electronic force. If you have paid in one go by debit card, your banks fraud department will look at the case and because you have paid for a service you haven't received then they can and will reverse the transactions. If you have paid by credit card, you can ask your card company to invoke Section 75 and have the transaction reversed. In short, if you don't get what you've paid for then you can get your money back through your bank or credit card. Yes it's costly as you have to replace/repair your item yourself but it's far better than having to pay for "insurance" which isn't worth the electronic paper it's written on and having to replace/repair the item yourself. This company needs to be hit hard where it hurts and putting out of business because of its unreasonable and atrocious practices. It's nothing short of con artist stagnant pond life with the way it behaves and the unbelievable excuses it comes up with for not dealing with claims are not acceptable on any level. I really hope this helps a few people out there who have been ripped off by these [problem]mers.

Hello Everyone, I recently lost a phone and had the phone number blocked within two hours, but it took two weeks for me to get a crime number from the police( because of work and the police messing me about) Now "protectyourbubble" who I took out insurance with have declined to pay for a new phone as they say it took me too long to report it to the police and have now stopped my insurance with them. Is there anything I can do about this? Thanks in advance Roo