Cabot Financial

[ScabHunter]

If you are absolutely sure that you last made a payment in 2003 then I would personally not spend £10 on a Subject Access Request. The reasons are twofold -

 

1) It is only just over a month before you reach a point where the issue of when you made a payment in 2003 will be irrelevant, just as long as you are sure that it was 2003.

 

2) Sharklycard, in fact any part of the Sharklys organization, is not renowned for complying with Subject Access Requests. You will almost certainly have to waste more money beyond the £10 to get anything you need.

 

As for Crapbot, I strongly advise saying absolutely nothing to them on the telephone. Just follow the advice given in the BT Phone Book for dealing with nuisance calls.

 

If the telephone is an important part of your life, consider getting a trueCall. Not just for Crapbot, but for every other serial abuser of the telephone system.

 

As NailPost says, ask Crapbot for evidence of the alleged debt and details of any payments made towards it. I would definitely do this in writing.

 

Crapbot have been known to invent phantom payments and go to court even on statute barred debts. Have a read of this instructive thread -

 

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/dca-legal-successes/152289-cabot-say-debt-not.html

 

In your case, you have another layer of defence. You could send a request for your CCA under 78(1) of the CCA 1974, because a Sharklycard agreement from that era will not be enforceable. At least, I have never seen one that is.

 

What I would do is write to Crapbot demanding evidence of the alleged debt and payments made. If they only try to fiddle the books a little bit, by claiming you made a payment in 2004, I would send them the CCA request. Crapbot hardly ever respond to a CCA request within months, and this is a very old account with a provider which is notoriously bad at keeping records.

 

The chances are very strong that they will be over the six year limit, even of the time they allege a payment was made, before they come up with any paperwork. Whatever they do come up with is likely to be unenforceable even if it wasn't statute barred.

 

If they create a fictional payment out of nowhere in a more recent year, I would still send the CCA request. You would then have a situation where they would have to prove the fictional payment just to have a chance in court, and that chance would be severely diminished by the unenforceable CCA. Add on the fact that the penal charges will render the default notice inaccurate, and you would have a cast-iron case even if Crapbot could somehow CONvince the judge of your fictional payment.

 

Sometime in 2010, you will be able to hit them with the statute barred letter. Unless Crapbot are completely insane, that will be the end of the matter.

 

By the way, make sure that any letter which is sent to Crapbot is headed "I acknowledge no debt to your company, nor any company you purport to represent", or similar wording. Don't even give them a sniff of hope of a written acknowledgement.

 

SH

[ScabHunter]

thank you everyone.

 

i have been getting a couple of letters a week and anywhere between 3 and 6 phone calls per day including saturdays.

 

i sent them a cca request back in august and still no response.

 

i think i will sit tight until january.

 

I have some problems with my mortgage lender that i really need to concentrate on at the moment

 

If you have already sent the CCA request and they are in default of it you don't need to do anything. Hopefully, they will still be in default of it when the alleged debt goes statute barred.

 

If they aren't, it is almost certain that a Sharklycard agreement will be defective.

 

As for the telephone calls, get a trueCall if you can. If not, just pull the plug out of the wall or ride out a few weeks of giving them the silent treatment.

 

They are the ones in the desperate position, not you.

 

SH

[ScabHunter]

trueCall only works with landlines and not cell phones.

 

We, or at least the people who use cell phones, need another solution.

 

SH