Formal Complaints With a Debt Collector

[jaizan]

One of my former foreign student tenants succeeded in opening accounts at some mobile phone companies, some of which were using a false address (one of the neighbours).
He returned to his country in the far east about 5 years ago.

I've written various letters & made formal complaints to two debt collection companies.

One company (C***t) claimed they had proof he was living at the address. That lie was one of several things I complained about in my previous formal complaint. They wrote back & confirmed they had made further checks and now know he doesn't live there. They also said we would not hear from them again.

12 months later, they appointed a company to collect a debt. I quickly stopped that and raised a second formal complaint against C***t.
I've made several complaints this time.
Including not honouring their previous promises.
Also, for trying to collect a debt, when they already confirmed they know the person no longer lives at the address.

After waiting the obligatory 8 weeks, they wrote another letter. They are sending some vouchers to my neighbour. After that, they merely say this should not have happened, without any evidence of recurrence prevention so that we will never hear from them again.
There were a few other inconsistencies in their reply.
For instance, they claim that they appointed this other company to trace the individual, when in practice, that company just sent a letter asking for their money.

So I have not accepted their response to my complaint and I e-mailed them back. They require me to wait 30 days for their response to my latest e-mail back to them.

1 After all this messing around & now we are on the second formal complaint, if responses are unsatisfactory, do I have to accept the long waits between each of their shoddy responses ? It's obvious they just string it out and hope I go away. There's no chance of that. When they say I have to wait 30 days, I immediately put a google calendar appointment in 31 days out so I don't forget.

2 Who regulates debt collectors ? I'm tempted to write to the FCA about this company.

[modellingman]

This (from a company which offers services to trace debtors) might be helpful to you: https://www.debttrace.co.uk/blog/the-le ... -in-the-uk

The article suggests that the Financial Ombudsman Service is involved and may give you some clues as to where to direct your searching. There may be trade associations which have a sort of regulatory role alongside their lobbying one, but I wouldn't bet on that. Although you won't be a typical case for them, the Citizen's Advice Bureau might be able to answer your questions about timescales.

modellingman

[bungeejumper]

Time to be more imaginative, surely? One of the fastest ways to make a company sit up and take notice is to have a good rant on TwitFace or WhatsUp. They have people permanently watching social media for bad reports about themselves. Don't publish any tenant details, which might be considered defamatory - they'll find you instead. Just a thought, anyway.

Some years ago, we were plagued by evening telephone calls from a debt collector working on behalf of Lloyds Bank, and they insisted that somebody in our house owed the bank a considerable sum. But they wouldn't tell us more because they insisted that we already knew all about it. (Kafka would have loved that.) It went on and on, night after night, for months!

Eventually we managed to deduce the name of the person they were seeking. She lived in the same house number and the same-named road as us, but in a different local town entirely. How did we discover her name? She was a town councillor! And as the local press had reported, she had rung up a big debt and then disappeared to Spain.

A couple of stiff letters to the Lloyds customer service division, with a copy-in to the chief executive, and the harassment stopped immediately. Never got an apology, though......

BJ