Debt collectors, any experience

[suzywong]

Of course this is all utterly hypothetical you understand

let's just say a party owed money in a country in which they were no longer domicile. A debt collection agency had been engaged to call in said debt and had written to said party at a forwarding address. One year later another letter arrives saying; Contact us in 7 days or we will have to issue a warrant, take further action blah blah blah.
Now, should the hypothetical party get its tennants of this hypothetical forwarding address to send the letter back marked " not at this address" and that will be the end of it, or do you think this Debt Collection Agency will send the boys round to my mother, errr to the hypothetical forwarding address, and make her spill the beans that the hypothetical debtor (dh) is in Australia? Whaddya reckon? Hypothetically?

bump

according to some programme that was on bbc last night ( whistleblower) your mother IS NOT responsible for the debt, regardless of the fact that she lives there, it is the debtor NOt the address that the debt agency is obliged to chase for debt.

Of course im no legal eagle,- but there must be some info on the net?

sorry to clarify as i read your post too quick, " no longer at this address" should do the job, they may come to your mothers looking for you, but she would only need to tell them that you are not a resident and that should keep them away.

of course i am only hypothetically assuming its you

oh thanks for that

do you think they would bother chasing over seas? Not that you, tiredemma are an expert or anything

I ditched a student loan in NZ when I left
I am scared to think that if I landed the IRD would leap upon my debtors bones
They have no legal overseas AFAIK

no legal rights overseas d'oh
you could just hypothetically pay it perhaps

no, not worth it- they wouldnt bother.

and i am an expert in it funnily enough, owed a massive amount to Next directory as a 19 yr old, sloped off to majorca to rep for four years, they did contact my dad, and sent a debt collector ( just once) to his house, but course i was away doing bar crawls etc in magaluf.

They never contacted him again, but when i returned i knew it would be a problem and so contacted the agency and offered to pay it off as mt credit scoring would be buggered and i wanted to get a mortgage.

in your ( im assuming!) situation, i really wouldnt worry.

well the person in question has been back here 3 times since the situation occured.

I wonder, it's a tricky one. Well clearly not tricky if you are honest and upstanding and have the money, but you know what I mean

bump, not because I am dissatisfied with your responses, i just want to open it to a wider audience IYSWIM

thanks

now you all know we are poverty stricken cheats

I left a small amount of debt in Ireland which the bank sold on to a debt collectors over here. But they have no juricediction(sp?)over here so the obnoxious little shits who have harrassed me can sing for it. I tried to come to an arrangement with them but they were so rude I had to hang up on them in the end because I was crying. A few months later when I was out they told my then 15yr old dss that he better pack his bags because they were coming to evict him FFS. When I return to Ireland to live I will pay the money back directly to the bank.

When we first moved into our place the previous owner was being chased for several debts - I sent all post back with not known at this address and informed people on the phone that they weren't there and we didn't hear anything of it again.

Some countries will enforce English debts abroad but there would have to be a lot of money at stake I would expect for them to do so. If you ever return here you may not however want this on your record.

thanks for all the advice

they can sing for it

If I hadn't happened to be here, at my mum's house on the day the letter arrived, she would just have put not known and sent it back and we would be none the wiserm IYSWIM, so back it goes. She can pull the batty old lady number if they send the heavies round.