HELP!! Turnbull got ex's address from HFO!! says he lives here!! want payment for his debt!

[Mrs E Blackadder]

Just when I thought life had become quieter and the stress had diminished, I now have that awful feeling of 'oh no, here we go again'!

 

After all the hassle of separation, debt, selling my house etc, etc,

I have today received a letter addressed to the ex (aka Mr Blackadder) at MY new address.

It is from Turnbull Rutherford, from here on in know as TB.

 

I opened the letter as I have no forwarding address for Mr B, and to be quite honest even if I did have one, I am NOT a postal forwarding service. The letter was as follows:

 

12 January 2014

 

Mr E Blackadder

Your ex wife's address

Her new life without you

A town probably nowhere near you.

 

 

Ref: 12345

 

 

Dear Mr Blackadder

 

 

Re Mr E Blackadder

Blackadder Mansion

Blackadderville

Blackaddershire

 

 

We are attempting to contact the above named person regarding a personal matter and we have been provided your address as a possible address for our subject/customer.

 

If you are the person named above, please contact our office on telephone 0208 899 6010 quoting the ref number provided above.

 

If however you are not the person named above, please accept out apologies for this contact. If you are able to supply us with information on where our subject may now reside, we would welcome contact from you so that we may update our records appropriately.

 

Yours creepingly

TB (as found in cows) solicitors.

 

Needless to say,

I was absolutely steaming that they should be using my address in an attempt to contact Mr B.

I don't usually ring anyone, but on this occasion I did and vented my fury on the poor soul who answered the phone!

 

I made it quite clear that the address they are using is not for Mr B and demanded that they remove it from their records.

I also insisted that they notify me in writing that this has been done.

 

I managed to get out of them that the 'client' who had passed my address to them was HFO,

and I have said that I expect them also to be notified that they have incorrect information.

Credit to the man on the phone, he was very polite in view of my extreme anger,

and he even gave me his name when I asked for it.

 

He has promised that I will receive a letter from them next week confirming that they will not use my address to contact Mr B

- I have said that if they do write to him again at my address then I will take legal action against them for harassment.

 

However, I am now wondering whether or not to write to them, basically confirming what I said by phone. I thought something along these lines:

 

Dear whoever,

 

Further to my phone conversation this afternoon with Mr Whatever at your offices,

I attach a letter that was posted to my address, and I am now writing to confirm the following information:

 

The address you have used to attempt to contact Mr E Blackadder is incorrect.

He DOES NOT and NEVER WILL live at this address.

This is MY new address and it is not linked to him in anyway.

I do not have any details for the current whereabouts of Mr E Blackadder.

 

Under the circumstances,

I expect you to remove my address from your records and not to connect it to Mr E Blackadder in anyway.

I also expect you to inform your clients (who I believe to be a company called HFO) that they have provided you with incorrect information

regarding Mr E Blackaddder by providing you with the wrong address, and I expect them to remove ALL incorrect information from their records.

 

Any further correspondence sent to Mr E Blackadder at my address either by yourselves or on behalf of any of your 'clients',

shall be considered as harassment towards myself and my family and I will not hesitate to take the matter further.

 

Mr Whatever confirmed that a letter would be sent to me confirming the above information, and I look forward to receiving that within the next few days.

 

Yours

Mrs Blackadder.

 

Any comments or suggestions for improvement to the letter are gratefully received, especially if you have been in the same or a similar situation.

[citizenB]

Hello Mrs E..

 

I too would be steamingly angry...

 

If this were me, I would indeed send a letter confirming the telephone call you made. I would also send a copy to HFO, I think their passing on your new address is probably a breach of DPA. If you dont receive an apology and confirmation that the ex is removed from any address of yours and that they will cease providing your details, then I think your next step should be the Information commissioner.

[Hardupnotfedup]

You should have just answered their question honestly and say you are not that person and have no idea where that person is.

[Mrs E Blackadder]

Thanks CitizenB, I will certainly report to the ICO if they do not amend their records. I feel it is necessary to write to TB as it definitely confirms the situation and they then can't say that they haven't been told.

 

 

I'm not 100% sure how they got my address to link it to Mr B. There are no accounts/mortgages/credit cards etc that would still show in joint names and the ones that have been closed but still show on credit reports are nearing the 6 years and still have the old address on. My credit report shows a link to Mr B, but no addresses are shown, and my report doesn't show any searches that have been made by anyone other than my car insurance company! It's a really tiresome situation and it just leaves you feeling like you are endlessly dealing with something that you didn't start yet are left trying to finish.

 

 

Hardup - if you read the post you will see that I did, indeed, answer their question honestly and as I am a female and not the male they were writing to it would have been quite apparent that I was not the person they wanted.

[sillygirl1]

I would write to the CRAs and ask that a notice be put on your records that you have no contact or connection with Mr Blackadder since x date, it might work...

 

You can also get the Post Office to automatically return to sender (works better from them) any post with Mr Blackadders name on it.

 

If you don't get the letter from Turnbull Rutherford (who are part of HFO anyway) report them to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority and to Trading Standards, the letter was very woolly and I think breaches OFT Guidelines in not being clear - after all if you are not you you wouldn't be replying anyway - would you?

[Mrs E Blackadder]

Hi Sillygirl. I Hadn't thought about Trading Standards, and I didn't even know there was a Solicitors Regulatory Authority! I suspect that TB would get round it all by saying that as the letter was addressed to a Mr Blackadder then I shouldn't have opened it because it wasn't addressed to me. You and I both know that simply sending a letter back to these kinds of people marked as 'not known at this address' simply means that they consider you are lying through your teeth and they send even more letters. However, you can't send a reply to them without opening the letter - they know they've got you every which way!!

 

 

I have spoken to the postman in the past and he has been happy to return things with an official sticker on them saying that they couldn't deliver as the person is not at that address. However, I think that after 6 years or so of battling all of this, I am now of the mind that if it is all put in writing to these people they cannot say that they haven't been told and hopefully the information will eventually filter its way down through the records of all these clowns and they will stop using me to try to get to Mr B.

 

 

Thanks for your advice though - really helpful as I had only thought of ICO if TB don't do what they should.