Help with Egg

[harper]

Hi all, great forum.

 

I have received a number of letters from a company called Red. They seem to have bought a debt from Egg which they say is mine. The problem is that I've never had an Egg card. I contacted them a number of months ago (it may have been as far back as Feb this year) via a telephone call but recently they've sent a Pre-Bankrupcy Petition. I've now found out, I have a catalogue account that I keep up to date which had a crazy high credit limit on, that it's affecting my existing credit and messing with the catalogue account.

 

Is there anything I can do?

[comebackjimmy]

Start by getting some standard processes in place and establishing some working principles:

 

PHONE

 

1. NEVER talk to them on the phone.

 

2. Never call them for any reason.

 

3. If they call you put the phone down without saying anything.

 

4. If they call back leave the phone off the hook for a while until they go away.

 

5. Consider using BT Callminder to handle your inbound calls. Let it take all numbers you are not familiar with or where numbers are withheld.

 

6. Use www.whocallsme.com to identify unfamiliar numbers.

 

7. NEVER admit to the debt, but to avoid doing this NEVER talk to them.

 

The reasons for the above are as follows:

 

 

1. No records of what is said can be produced later on. They can say what they like and you would not have proof they agreed to anything.

 

2. If the calls don’t go the way they want they will become abusive. This is not nice so don't let it happen to you.

 

3. You can inadvertently provide them with information about yourself that you do not want them to have.

 

4. In a debt collection situation you need time to think. You wont have time to think when talking on the phone.

 

5. Play the game on your own turf. Correspondence is your turf. The telephone is theirs.

 

CORRESPONDENCE

 

1. All your communications to them, if any, should be in writing.

 

2. Each letter should be sent UNSIGNED (Reason, they may copy your signature and use it to forge an agreement you never signed).

 

3. Each letter should be sent recorded delivery. Keep a copy and staple the recorded delivery slip to the letter. Also, several days after sending use the GPO track and trace to see if it has been delivered. Print out the screen shot and staple it to the original letter. Better still use Firefox browser with the Scrapbook plug-in. Save the track and trace page with the scrapbook function.

 

4. Keep postal receipts, just in case you wish to claim against the other party later on.

 

5. NEVER acknowledge you owe the money in writing.

 

6. Don't write to them just because they write to you. Any correspondence should have a definite purpose, something you want to achieve.

 

RECORD KEEPING

 

1. File all correspondence you have received in chronological order.

 

2. From now on keep all envelopes the letters arrive in. Open the envelopes neatly and staple the envelopes to the back of the letters. (This is because it might be useful later on to see where the letters came from, and how they were sent i.e. second class, recorded delivery etc.).

 

3. Start a spreadsheet and log all events; correspondence received and sent, phone call attempts by the third parties (Not calls you make because you will not be making any!!).

 

Although it is to be hoped you will be steering clear of the courts you should pout yourself on a war footing and from the very start organise yourself for a potential battle. If you are organised, structured and clear about what you are doing you will be at least on a par with the DCA’s who organise themselves using automated systems and scripts.

 

OK to be clear:

 

1. You are being asked to pay a debt for an Egg card you have never had.

 

2. After a number of letters from Red you have now had a Pre-Bankruptcy petition.

 

3. In some way the fact of being chased for the non existent Egg card is affecting a catalogue account you have which is under control.

 

Question One

 

What exactly is the Pre-Bankruptcy petition? Is it a letter they have sent saying they will make you bankrupt or is it a Statutory demand?

 

If it is just a letter saying they will make you bankrupt it has no legal significance as such, merely being part of their standard threatomatic output.

 

If it is a Statutory demand this is a legal document. It would have a standard layout and have standard sections in it.

 

The job of a Statutory demand is to formally ask you for the money and to put you on notice that the sender will start bankruptcy proceedings if you do not pay up.

 

You will have a limited amount of time to reply to it. If you do not reply to it the creditor COULD, if they were stupid, then apply for you to be made bankrupt. This means a hearing before a court to determine if you should be made bankrupt. In practice this is a very stupid thing for a creditor to do as he will have to pay quite a lot of money to make you bankrupt. In addition any assets you have will then be equally divided up amongst all your creditors and if you do not have any, or enough assets, the instigating creditor will only get a fraction of the amount he wants.

 

A better course of action if he had a good case would be to start a County court claim as if this was successful he would get all the money he is after and any other creditors would not come into the picture.

 

I take the view the creditor is most unlikely to follow through with bankruptcy hearings for the reasons above. This is a standard practice of the DCA’s to scare you and is frowned upon by the authorities who do not want standard processes of the law to be used as psychological tricks by the DCA’s

 

I am not suggesting you ignore it, but I have had four statutory demands which I have ignored and no subsequent Bankruptcy hearing has materialised.

 

The conclusion here then is that whilst potentially serious you should not be too worried about it.

 

There will be some more people coming on this thread to help you deal with the SD so try to get the letter you have received copied, then ON THE COPY delete your personal information, then get it posted on this thread so others can see what it is.

 

They will then be able to tell you how to deal with it. I would say if you choose to respond the method will be to apply to have the SD set aside, as the other party wont have a credit agreement as there is no card. You will get costs against them and have some fun. It is likely you will also be advised to report the DCA as they are using illegal means of debt collection.

 

Question Two

 

How much is the claim for?

 

If it is under £750 they cant make you bankrupt anyway.

 

Question Three

 

You presumably fall into one of the following scenarios:

 

1. Egg thinks you are a/the card holder, still owns the debt and has got the DCA to chase it.

 

2. Egg has sold the debt to the DCA that is chasing it on their own behalf.

 

3. Egg has sold the Debt to another party who has got the DCA to chase it on their behalf.

 

Look at the correspondence and see if Red is asking for money on behalf of someone else. You need to find out who is damaging your credit record, if indeed it has been damaged.

 

Have that information ready for the others coming on here to help you.

 

Question Four

 

Exactly how is this affecting the catalogue account you have?

 

Is it that you have been given a black mark with the Credit Reference Agencies and the catalogue company is reducing your credit limit? Please clarify what is happening and be ready to explain it in more detail to others following.

 

If indeed you have never had an Egg card and you have been Defaulted it should in theory be possible to fix this, and I sniff some possible compensation in the wind for you if you pursue it in the right way.

 

You should write to the three main credit reference agencies for a copy of your credit report. This will show you any adverse information that anybody may have filed against you.

 

Have that information ready for the others coming here to help.

 

I am not legally trained and don't want to advise you on what courses of action to follow. However, I am happy to reassure you on a few points where I have practical experience, and the stuff above is designed to calm you down, get you thinking practically and steer you clear of any pitfalls you may make at the start.

 

There will be other practical help coming along.

Edited November 29, 2009 by comebackjimmy

[harper]

Thank you Jimmy.

 

The letter is as follows:

 

Original Creditor: Egg

Balance Outstanding: £2,016.70

 

Pre Bankrupcy Petition

 

Your account has been reviewed by our Head of Litigation and due to the number of opportunities you have been given to enter into a re payment program and clear your balance it has been decided that your account is to be fast tracked to our bankrupcy division, to consider filing a petition for you bankrupcy.

 

The rest of the letter is bullet points as to how it will affect my credit rating and what bankrupcy involves.

 

 

My catalogue account had a limit of £3,500 to which I've always kept a balance of £100 which is paid off to keep my credit files clean, now I have been told that the reports that my catalogue company (Next) receive on a monthly basis has affected that limit and it is now in effect zero.

 

My only contact with this company has been back in Feb where I questioned where this debt had come from and timescales. I haven't had any further contact with them and I haven't admitted to the debt (which I can't as it's not mine). They told me back then that the debt was taken out in my maiden name (I married over 6 years ago) and at a property that I haven't lived at since 1999. The dates didn't add up but corresponded to a time when my current bank mistakenly sent out a new credit card to that address and the then tennents used the card and ran up debts of just over £1k.

Edited November 29, 2009 by harper

[comebackjimmy]

From what you have posted the letter they have sent you is just another piece of threatomatic andrex designed to worry you.

 

I wont bother to de construct this rubbish but it is unlikely they have a head of litigation, a bankruptcy division or anything other than a bunch of phone monkeys.

 

The important point is that it is not a statutory demand which might require action on your part. This letter requires no response and in my view you need offer none.

 

From what you have posted it looks like Egg still own the debt.

 

It is possible you have been a victim of identity theft. If your bank sent a credit card to the address you used to live they must have received an application from there in the first place.

 

It might not do any harm to write to Egg and state your case which is you have never ordered a card, have no knowledge of the account and give them a full timetable of when you lived there, when you left etc., and ask the bank why they think you are the card holder.

 

Another thing, based on what you say even if this was your debt (and I am not implying in any way that it is) it would be statute barred as it is over six years old. Even asking you for it might be an illegal act on their part.

 

As to the catalogue if I understand it correctly you have a credit limit with them of £3500 but only have a £100 of credit with them. Is that correct?

 

Are you therefore saying they have taken the whole £3500 away from you, in effect closing the account. I still don't understand exactly what the financial transactions and status of the Next account is.

 

They appear to be saying they have reviewed the account in light of recent credit history and don't trust you any more

 

Here are some options:

 

If you only owe them the last £100 pay it off and kiss them good bye. There are plenty of good clothes shops out there.

 

Write to them and ask what adverse information they have received about you that leads to their decision.

 

Get you credit reports from the three main Credit reference Agencies. If adverse information is showing then you can start to get it cleaned up. I would think any adverse information reported about you with regard to the Egg card would have been put on your record longer ago than six years and would have come off by now but you need to be sure.

 

Send a subject access request with £10 to Egg and ask them for all the information they hold about you. This might reveal what they think has happened.

 

Could do the same with Next.

[IdaInFife]

Hiya,

 

Red have prb send this to many people who have the same name.

 

You can send them this:

 

http://www.consumerforums.com/resources/templates-library/86-debt-collectors/573-general-debt-letter-if-you-know-nothing-of-the-debt

 

Ida x

[harper]

Thank you both . I'll start with the link you posted Ida and take it from there.

[maroondevo52]

Yep, sounds like Red on a phishing trip

[harper]

Lucky I don't scare easy.

[harper]

Just to update this somewhat.

 

The debt has been passed to Lowell Portfolio and I wrote to them using the templates on here (thanks) and surprise surprise they've been sending me notifications for the past four months telling me that they're still waiting for statements from Egg. Statements that don't exist so I'm just writing to them now to request that they remove me from their files and remove this debt from my credit file.

[maroondevo52]

Red / Lowell sit beside each other in the same office, don't seem to have a scooby

[harper]

Another update, they are refusing to remove me from their database but still sending their letters telling me that egg are getting my credit agreement from their archive. Surely there is a time limit on this? As they have been supposedly getting this information for over a year.

[IdaInFife]

time to complain then

 

OFT

 

trading standards

 

ICO

 

advise all three of the situaion

[harper]

Thanks Ida, the letters are winging their way to the appropriate organisations.

[harper]

Another update on this:

 

The letters were sent with no response on their part. The debt doesn't show on my credit file and I have washed my hands of the entire farce.

[maroondevo52]

Another update on this:

 

The letters were sent with no response on their part. The debt doesn't show on my credit file and I have washed my hands of the entire farce.