To be furious at the way the bailiffs talked to my MIL?

[Kathyis12feethighandbites]

They said 'You've been a very naughty girl, haven't you?'

They had, in fact, phoned up completely the wrong person - she has never owed any money to anyone. She has a very common surname but they were looking for someone with a different initial and different address . But still felt able to berate her on the phone and it took her a while to convince them they had got the wrong person and that they should not come round.

But even if someone did owe them money, how f*cking DARE they talk to someone like that? It's just so creepily threatening.

You also quote the second post after the shit hit the fan.

The post which got people riled was "It is totally out of order, but these bailiffs are normally dealing with people on the lower rungs of society that will say and do anything to avoid their social responsibilities."

Yes I take your point oblomov, but like someone else said, the people who are dong things wrong don't care about this stuff, water off a ducks back. The people it affects adversely are not the people that should be targetted - but they get targetted as they are an easy target and thus help people's stats.

I wish I was hard or even shoody

I do a tiny bit of credit control as part of my job. Can't say I like it. Much prefer doing complicated corp tax calculations thank you very much.

I can't stand phoning people and listening to their petty excuses.
You wouldn't believe the tripe I hear as to why someone/companies can't pay an invoice. Actually some of them are so funny we all roar with laughter over it.

I bet you the people that bailiffs chase, will come out with any old lie.

Yes, but there are also a lot of genuine people who have fallen on difficult times, plus this nasty thing about people being pursued for other people's debts.

To generalise about "lower rungs of society" shows a desperate lack of imagination IMO.

Must admit I don't envy you doing credit control though.

Actually i know, i am going to get slaughtered here, but I agree with the post that riled, people. the wording was not the best, but the sentiment is true. I bet you these people would say anything.

You're in a kindly mood oblomov and I'm in a stroppy one

I expect it will be the other way around another time.

I think to come into a thread where people have been saying that they/their families have had contact with bailiffs and say that people who have contact with bailiffs are normally lower rungs etc is asking for trouble personally!

You misunderstand me, I'm that they might have worked as a bailiff and yet not mention this fact when writing on this thread.

I'm not dismissing anyone, I've had some dealings with bailiffs myself from the sharp end actually, but having one anecdotal experience or watching something on telly is not the same as having spent a week seeing for yourself.

Interesting that you haven't responded to the rest of the quote which described the kind of aggressive behaviour. Or do you think that she was making it up?

Jesus, why am I getting into this? I just don't like seeing someone leapt on because they dare to say something out of line with the Guardian-reading majority.

It's something I've been thinking about recently, how we all respond to threads on MN based on our own experiences and prejudices. We read between the lines of what people write and add our own interpretations, based on our own egos and defence mechanisms. Sometimes someone comes along who has some real actual experience of something...

bit of a time lag there, x-post

flim, are we Gaurdian readers ?
i thought we were just dm haters.
and I thought it was intereesting theat on the latest threas where justine defended mn, didn't it say that 70% of us have degrees. no, that can't be right can it ? must have misread that bit.

Kindly mood.
Read that as 'kinky mood'.
ha ha. no, dh is away at football, and I have just posted on the porn thread !!!

I think I am talking to myself and laughing at my own typing. worrying.

porn thread?

film- Do you not think that possibly the bailiff that was being shadowed for the week had great pleasure in telling all the horror stories that he might or might not of encounted to try and make out that the bailiffs were the ones to be pityed.

I know when I was doing my nurse training and was on my HV placement, I was often told stories of neglect, child abuse and so forth. Nobody tells the stories of normal cases because they dont make good stories.

The HV I worked with had a higher than average number of children on the child protection register, however neither myself or the HV would say that all parents living in that area were bad parents. All the same she wouldnt tell stories of the 16 year old mum who was doing a wonderful job and was breastfeeding to boot.

Yes teamcullen I was going to say that and then forgot you are right that obviously someone being shadowed will paint themselves in the best possible light and enjoy telling the person how wonderfully they deal with all these terrible people. Human nature I'd have thought.

sigh, dont you see that you are doing the same thing that you are accusing me of.

many of you have decided that all bailiffs are thugs and their debtors (you are a debtor not a client if you owe money - the council is the bailiffs client) are all poor unfortunate souls.

where you are mistaken is that you havent read my posts, I quite clearly have said all along that the bailiff in question was wrong and that not all debtors are scummy and aggressive - but i do believe there are a lot of scummy and aggressive people in this world. you only have read to the newspapers to see this and those same people are very unlikely to be paying their council tax and this is the main demographic of people that bailiffs have to deal with.

perhaps i should have just joined the mob mentality and said "yeah fucking bailiffs shouldnt be allowed" then I would have had a more open minded responses to my posts.

bailiffs, like traffice wardens, are a necessary evil in this world and i think its too easy to label them all a bunch thugs and bastards.

of course the bailiff I was with could have been on his best behaviour, i think its unlikely but ill never know for sure. but I spent a week with one and i think he would have struggled to keep up an act under the constant pressure, stress and threats that a bailiff receives when they are simply doing their job.

other professions have protection in place, there are signs everywhere in train stations saying that threats will not be tolerated, there is no-one there to protect the bailiff. the bailiff I worked with had been assaulted by debtors.

I once got a letter from an company acting on behalf of a store addressed to a person at my address (diff name) suing for attempting to steal from their shop.

Only me and my family have ever lived at this address and they advised me that the onus is on me to prove I am not that person.

They claimed the details would have been verified by the police but when I approached the Police they knew nothing about it.

Have not heard any more.

The scary thing is that this person knew my address.

upsy what you are missing is that no-one has said that all bailiffs/debt collectors are horrible. Simply that some of them are - based on the experiences of many people in this thread. Plus there have been stories in the media and questions have been asked including in parliament about whether there should be tighter regulation etc. Because there are so many awful stories. Versus your experience of one bloke saying that they "normally" deal with scum.

It took me 20 phone calls and a dozen emails to get a company that owed me money to pay up. But I didn't come on here accusing their employees of being scummy or 'the lower rungs of society'.

And FWIW the middle and upper classes are perfectly capable of taking money that isn't theirs or failing to pay back money they owe. The treasurer of the PTA at a school near me, an accountant by trade, stole the entire PTA funds. But then, he wasn't on 'the lower rungs of society' so I'm sure Upsyone would be very sympathetic to his plight.

He managed to avoid going to trial, too. If you are going to be dishonest, it definitely helps to be middle class.

Upsyone- The "scummy" people who dont have any intentions of paying their council tax, do they actually go to work and pay tax/NI then?

I only ask because it sounds to me that people who sink so low to "avoid" paying Council tax are the same people who have no intentions of getting off their arse and getting a job either. To which case they are exepmt to paying council tax anyway.

Just to clarify, I am NOT talking about the vast majority who actually want to work or have circumstances in which makes it impossible to work.

happyharry. it's unlikely that they "knew your address" - they probably picked one at random. Though it might have been some of your neighbours...?

Have to say that the abusive people my parents have dealt with in the past have been debt collectors and NOT bailiffs.

Yes jollypirate I think there is a distinction to be made there.

Surely someone who abuses/asalts/lies etc is one of the lower rungs of society? imo it has nothing to do with class - you don'w have to be lower class to be scum, but if you're scum then it makes you a lower member of society, no? And that would go for the nasty bayliff as much as for the person in debt trying to avoid repayment.

I think it's naive to suggest that most people are in debt have simply slipped into a situation they can't afford. Of course some people end up in debt due to no fault of their own, I have friends who have recently had to declare bankrupcy because illness and disability has meant they've had to live on credit cards just to survive and it's got out of hand through no fault of their own.

But equally there are an awful lot of people out there with a sense of entitlement. They want something now, so they're going to buy it, now. On finance, a credit card, by whatever means they see fit, even though they don't have the means to pay it back. Now it could be argued that they shouldn't be allowed to get into that kind of debt, but reality is that no-one holds a gun to your head and makes you take out a loan/credit card you can't afford so you can buy that car/tv/holiday you can't afford. People have lost their sense of self responsibility wrt money IMO, and then they still blame others when it comes to having to pay it back.