If you phone them and cancel it, they should send your e-mail address a confirmation with the title as something like, 'Sorry you're leaving.' If they charge you anything once that is received, then you have grounds to kick up a stink!

Hi Scott, Thank you for the link. We sent the link as you suggested and they sent us a letter back (outside of the 12 days) saying that they weren't able to send back the information we required. What would our next step be? It seems that we should send them a follow up letter stating that since we had given them 12 days, that the debt was now unenforcable and no requests for payments should be sent to us as the account is now in dispute. However, will this lead to court action against us? We are due to go to the bank in the next few days to re-check his credit rating. I checked it in October on Experians free trial and there was nothing on there at that stage, just a small £84.00 for O2, which has now been paid. I was under the assumption that once the debts are sold from the bank to the collection agency, it went straight on the report, however from your above advice, i will recheck that one! Sorry to sound quite to uneducated, but i had no idea about this kind of thing until i found this website! Thanks Rachel

Hi All, My partner of 3 years received a letter on Friday (sent directly to our house) containing papers from both HSBC and Lowells PLC stating that a debt of £7905 has been bought by the debt collectors from HSBC and must be paid. He has no idea where this debt has come from (he has had previous debts with HSBC which have been paid off) and hasn't banked with HSBC for around 4 years. They haven't made any contact with us in the interim, to our knowledge, via our address or his parents address, where he was living when the first debt was paid off. (My point here is; if they have been sending things to another address, how they have magically got the correct address now?) I was wondering the following things: - Are HSBC in breach of any laws if they haven't contacted us before selling the debt onto Lowells? - Can anyone tell me what the proceedure should be and whether we are eligible to ask for proof of 'contact'? - Could the debt be removed as a default from his credit report providing we begin to pay monthly installments (if the debt is proven) as we aren't able to get a mortgage with this on it? I've never dealt with this kind of situation before, so i might be asking very obvious questions; i'm just looking for some advice on what kind of route we should take. Thanks Rachel