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Personal Debt and Debt Collectors

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Personal Debt and Debt Collectors

People in the UK live in a society where I am allowed to write to a complete stranger and tell them sternly that they owe me £10,000 and that unless they pay it back to me I will take them to court and repossess their house.

I can do this even if I have never even met the person; I can do this without the slightest evidence that they have ever owed any money to anyone in their life; I can do this ten thousand times every month using automated software, a dodgy mailing list and a heavy duty franking machine.

The chances are that someone will cough up out of sheer terror. If only 0.01% pay me what I want then it will have been worth it, and I will have made around £7,000 profit after my costs.

There is no law in England to prevent me doing this.

Of course, there are procedures to counter this, such as the series of letters laid out in the Write Off My Debt website, but most people don't know about them. To mount a successful defence against this sudden onslaught you would have to know the law in this area quite well, and to be confident of being able to win against these people with the official-looking letterheaded paper.

The Great Industry of Debt Collecting

A Fortune To Be Made in the 21th Century!

It sounds such a Dickensian thing. Most people think of debt collectors as people engaged - for a percentage of monies regained or a similar fee - in recovering back a debt which is owed to a person or a company.

Actually this isn't how it's done. Most debt collectors are more properly debt purchasing companies. They buy delinquent accounts (such as defaulted credit card and bank accounts) for around 10% of the 'value' of the account, sometimes less, sometimes a lot less, and then try to extort the full value of the account from the hapless defaulter, using any one of a number of tactics, most of which break the law.

The law in itself seems to turn a blind eye to these tactics. No figure are currently available for the number of people driven to take their own lives by the greed of the debt purchasers, but suicides undoubtedly exist as they are reported in the media: it's just that no aggregated totals exist.

Many debt purchasers specialise in sending off speculative threats of the kind I described above. They bulk mail people from sources like the electoral register, with no suspicion that they even owe anything, and bully them into giving them money. A tine proportion will pay the money in full. A larger number will phone the number on the letter and the silver-tongued salesperson will inveigle them into making a "very good settlement figure" to prevent them being taken to court.

It's a great screw for people who wouldn't mind selling their grans for a few bob, and the law doesn't mind. If it turns a profit it's all aboard the gravy train.

Debt Purchasers: A Rogues' Gallery

Here is a list of debt purchasing companies which have been bothering people lately. They are in alphabetical order, not in the order in which they have driven people to suicide.
1st Credit
1st Credit
Allied International Debt Collectors
They'll gie ye a Glasgie Kiss!
Apex Credit Management
Specialists in clerical errors.
ARC Debt Collectors
Don't know much about these.
Asset Recoveries
An asset they are not!
Avance Debt Collectors
???
BCW Group
AKA Buchanan Clark and Wells. In a sometime relationship with Apex, they share databases and incompetent procedures.
Blair Oliver and Scott
Grafters for the Bank of Scotland.
Bryan Carter Solicitors
These are solicitors who act for debt purchasing companies.
Buchanan Clark and Wells
AKA BCW.
CL Debt Collectors
More anon.
cabot financial
cabot financial
capquest
capquest
cl finance
cl finance
clarity credit management
clarity credit management
Close Credit Management
Close Credit Management
connaught debt collectors
connaught debt collectors
quite posh sounding, aren't they!
credit solutions debt collectors
credit solutions debt collectors
Debt Managers
Debt Managers.
Indeed! They manage debt for their own benefit, perhaps!
Direct Legal and Collections
The oddly named Direct Legal and Collections are one of the trading names of Hillesden Securities. Direct Legal and Collections sounds more menacing, don't you think? All the better to frighten you with!
Equidebt
Equidebt co.
Eversheds debt collectors
Eversheds debt collectors & Co.
Experto Credite Ltd
Experto Credite Ltd are possibly yet another example of foreign investment capital coming to the UK to take advantage of our Dickensian debt laws (or lack thereof).
First Credit
An alternative search term for 1st Credit numbskulls.
Fredrickson International Ltd
The execrable Fredrickson International Ltd share office space with Bryan Carter solicitors, with whom they are in cahoots (and have a nice little "letterheads for rent" relationship).
Go Debt
Yet to research these people.
Gothia debt collectors
Gothia debt collectors - what a frightening Teutonic name!
Hillesden Securities
Hillesden Securities - specialists in buying and selling CCJ-fixed unsecured debts so that they can threaten people with repossession for having unenforceable non-existent unsecured debts. Bunch of scum.
HO collections
Ho ho ho!
Intrum Justitia debt collectors
Intrum Justitia appear very proper but all is not what it seems.
Lewis Group
AKA The Lewis Group.
Link Financial
Link Financial are chancers who use threats and specialise in phone violence. They all seem to have silly names, work in rented warrens of workstations and their salespeople are commission based.
lowell group
lowell group
Mackenzie Hall ltd
Mackenzie Hall ltd have a nice line in speculative Statute Barred investments; in other words, threatening people for debts which don't exist any more. Based in Scotland.
Marlin Capital
Marlin Capital - the court is out on this one so far....
Mercers Debt Collectors
Mercers are not a memn=ber of the statutory body so they may operate in a slightly more shady way. Will report back on Mercers.
Moorcroft Debt Recovery
They appear to be quite nasty.
Red debt collection
red debt collection
RMA debt collectors
Work for Amex.
Robinson Way and Company Ltd
Not many people have good things to say about Robinson Way but I have no personal experience of them. Yet.
Rockwell debt collectors
As above.
Roxburghe UK Ltd
DK
Scotcall Ltd
I have no experience of Scotcall.
Shoosmiths
Not much data on Shoosmiths yet....
SRJ Debt Recoveries Ltd
I have no experience of SRJ Debt Recoveries personally.
TBI financial services ltd
I have no personal experience of TBI financial services.
Tessera Credit Services Ltd
Tessera Credit Services Ltd are not a company I have had experience of ... yet.
Thames Credit Ltd
Very little known about Thames Credit Ltd at present. Will keep you posted.
Wescot Credit Services
I have had personal dealings with Wescot Credit Services.

The Consumer Fights Back!

Beeks Take Note....

The law should not make it so easy for already aggressive people to be able to make a good living from terrorizing other people, especially when those other people are already vulnerable by being weakened through unemployment, illness, family breakdown or any one of the many misfortunes that precipitates financial hardship.

I will be expanding this article to include a much larger list of debt purchasing companies and also providing useful links for people who want specialist legal help, useful forums related to the subject of consumer debt and also ways of dealing with this on a DIY basis for next to nothing, with a lot of useful resources provided free.

It's time we faced up to the bullies. We live in hard times. A lot of people are going to be without an income in the next 3 or 4 years and therefore at the mercy of these vultures. The people must stand up; the DPCs must learn that they will not be able to intimidate us with impunity.

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gordgoodfellow

Gordon Goodfellow is a researcher, writer and Internet technologist. His business and consumer websites provide value added functionality for their us... more »

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