Does a walk in posession still stand after you have moved house?

[witt0018]

Hi, Thanks for reading this, to cut a long story short, my wife let a bailiffe from bristow and stupid (sutor) into out house last october, and they did a walk in posession.

We fell behind with 1 payment, which we genuinely forgot about last month when we moved house.

The bailiffe has called again, but we were out, luckily. I phoned him straight away when I got home and found his notice on my doormat.

He was extrememly unreasonable, and demanded £350 psayment on the day, which he would be back to collect in 45 minutes, or he would force entry into my home by way of a lock smith, which would incur more charges.

I managed to put him off until monday (tomorrow), and have raised the £350 (the total ammount with charges was over £1200), but on reflection, the original walk in posession was for my old address, and before I pay, I'd like to know if it still stands for my new home?

Any advice would be great, should I pay them (which would be by debit card on the phone), or call them and stand my ground with the fact that the original W I P may be invalied, and push for re-instatement of the original agreement.

If they were to call again, could they legally gain forced acess to my home?

Thanks

[tomtubby]

The bailiff is entitled ONLY to the goods listed on the WP.

However, what has happened is the common complaint that our office deals with. This is that you have made a payment arrangement and the bailiff has relayed this back to his office on the very day that you made the agreements. If this was for instance on the 8th of the month, then their computer systems will automatically register that account in default if the payment has not been received in cleared funds on the 8th of each month.

This enables the bailiff to charge an "attending to remove fee" which is what he is now trying to do.

You should check whether there is anything to this effect on the WP.

What items are listed on the WP?

Can you send me by pm ONLY the name of the bailiff so that I can search our database to ensure that he is certificated.

[witt0018]

pm sent to tomtubby, cheers mate

[tomtubby]

Thank you for your pm.

Have you looked at this walking possession to establish whether there is ANYTHING on it to say that the payment musy be made on a certain date?

What date was the WP signed?

Was it the same bailiff who signed the WP? If not let me know by PM.

Has the bailiff provided you with a list of charges?

Have you ever requested a breakdown of the fees and charges?

How much is outstanding on your Liability Order ?

You need to act quickly as sadly a bailiff can break into the premises once a WP has been signed.

It is for this reason that our office now advises that you should NEVER allow a bailiff into your property and that you should not sign a WP.

[witt0018]

Phoned the Bailiffe today, arranged to pay the £350 straight into their holding bank account, which is with Barclays, and costs nothing to pay.

They were very reluctant for me to do this, probably because they weren't making any more money out of me.

The bill turned out to be with 2 councils, I phoned one of them, and arranged low monthly repayments (gloucester City), but the other (tewkesbury borough), were complete Arses, they didn't want to know, and were really rude, so theirs will be paid to the bailiffer, and the 350 went off theirs, followed by 2 payments of 115 over 2 months.

Gloucester city is being paid at £100 per month for 6 months, then 88 for the final 7th payment, then finished. BS were rather annoyed at this, as GC council also took the case from them, and has waived their fees, as the 2 cases had been combined, and 2 lots of charges applied, but only the TBC reference applied to all paperwork, the very understanding lady at the council office thought this unfair, and used this as a loophole to clear them from the account.

Anybody reading this, please make sure you can't sort it out with the council or debtor before you let the bailiffes get their way, they told me that as long as I comunicate with them, let them know whats going on, then they can help.

Also, with bristow and stupid, you can pay into their bank direct without incurring charges, perhaps you should ask your bailiffes, as they don't make it public that you can do this, and are reluctant to do this, so try it, it's like you got one over on them, they don't like it much.

Trev

[tomtubby]

A good result. I had not realised that they had charged "multipule charges" as well. Not allowed.

One very little know fact is this:

Some local authorities have private agreements with their relevant bailiff company that the council receives a percentage of the bailiff fees !!!

This would explain why some local authorities take the side of their bailiffs.