Debt Chasers

orraloon

Was going to put this in the TrivialThings thread but started to think of the wider issue, after yet another misdirected call this morning: "Is that Mr X? No, it's Mr O. Click"

Debt chasing firms. I know they exist, and I understand that firm A/bank/whatever will sell on defaulted debts for a discount to 3rd party firms to chase up.

We took over this landline number getting on for 5 years ago, would have been a reallocated BT one as previous owners took the number with them. So assumption has been that whoever had the number before must have done a runner on some debts, hence the periodic wave of nuisance calls, ranging from semi sensible, oh sorry you have been troubled, I'll update our records, through abrupt hang-up to automated messages like the daily series left last week.

Couple of questions. How long after a number is given up do BT reallocate it to active use? Trying to assess for how long this debt has been going, 5 years plus how long.

How widespread are these debt chasing firms? Is this the reality of the UK in the 20teens? From the pattern of calls, get a spate of them for a while, then nothing, then another spate of them, nothing... appears that one debt chaser will have a go at getting some payback for a while, give up, sell(?) the debt on again to the next, and round and round it goes. And all no doubt counting towards UK productivity stats.

At least, I assume, there is no connection made between the debtors' BT number and our address, as haven't had the boys round, as yet...

bendertherobot

Contract limitation is 6 years from demand under loan/agreement etc. So plenty of time. And, once you get a judgment, 6 years to enforce.

veronese68

We get them every now and then, used to just tell them there was nobody of that name here and they'd go. One day I quizzed them further. The address they had was somewhere in North London, we've had our number for at least 25 years and it's an original number for Kingston so nothing to do with the person that gave the number. Person I dealt with on the phone apologised and said they'd take the number off their system and list it as being false. A couple of years later they started again, same name but different company chasing as the debt had been sold on again. This time they were leaving quite threatening messages on the answerphone saying they were going to come round if we didn't call them. Went through the same thing and got taken off again. I expect the debt may be sold again and the calls may come back, do they get more unscrupulous the more times the debt is passed on? Thankfully they don't have my address.