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. ... http://www.squidoo.com/personaldebtanddebtcollectors Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:26:22 -0600 FeedCreator 1.7.2 Mon, 01 Aug 2011 04:31:48 -0600 http://www.squidoo.com/personaldebtanddebtcollectors 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. Mon, 01 Aug 2011 04:31:48 -0600