Thank you so much for the welcome and the response. If I remember correctly, I read on here that a debt collector showed up at someone’s address. I will have another look for the thread but the person wasn’t home at the time and their mum answered the door and told the collectors that the person in question no longer lived there (if that rings a bell for anyone reading this). It was the first I’d ever heard of anything like that happening too but it was extremely worrying. Would you be able to point me to any legislation that might explain the debt collector non disclosure bit you mentioned? Or anything I could search to read more about it? How long do they send letters for? I move out of my current address in a little less than a year. Would they have given up by then? You are quite right. I have never even skipped tapping in and out on the underground so I’m still wondering what possessed me to think this was a good idea. Never again. Thanks again for the response!

Hi everyone. I am sorry to make what appears to be another one of many threads on this same topic but I would appreciate your advice all the same. Recently my friend and I made a very stupid mistake. We were detained for shoplifting in Superdrug. I make no excuses for it on my end because it was incredibly stupid and risky and I know this. We both have been having financial troubles as we’re both students. Not an excuse of course, but I suppose we had a moment of madness. I was found with an item worth about £8 and my friend was found with goods worth about £49. Police were NOT called. We were ushered into the back room by two security guards and a store worker. No mention of CCTV evidence or anything like that was made so I’m not sure if they have any or what it would show. We handed over our names, addresses and gave them proof of both which was NOT photocopied. We were made to sign something, I think it was an admission of guilt (I can’t fully remember as I was not holding up too well) and acknowledgement of an exclusion notice we were given. Then we were told we would receive a letter in the mail about fines. We were specifically told NOT to ignore the letter else we find ourselves in court and told that if we couldn’t afford the lump sum, we could pay in instalments. My friend asked how much to expect for her fine and was told over £200 or something in that ballpark. I was told to expect around £100, maybe more. I know I don’t have much of a leg to stand on but that price seems incredibly steep and I can’t afford to pay that right now. I don’t have that kind of money. I’ve seen on this forum that you frequently advise people to ignore the letters but outside of mail, what other action can they take? Can they send people to our address (friend and I currently live together) to demand payment? I would really like to avoid that since we live with others who have no idea this incident occurred. How can I prevent debt collectors from turning up at our address? When the letter comes, would it be worthwhile (or wise) to write them back? Maybe asking them to explain how they decided on the fines and to potentially negotiate a lower price. Will our details be kept on any kind of database or file? The exclusion notice served to us states “details of the service of this notice are retained for use in any future court proceedings against you in respect of any subsequent offences you may commit in or on the premises or areas of members displaying a Retail Crime Operation Logo” which lead me to believe that they might. Finally, what are the chances that they might decide to take either of our cases to civil court? We obviously returned all the items. The item I had was worth less than £10 and not damaged. A security sticker was removed but other than that it wasn’t tampered with. The items my friend took were worth just under £50, and she had tampered with the packaging of some of them, so in the security room they stressed that many of them were not in resealable condition and that it took their staff ages and loads of effort (they were gone about two minutes so I think this was a scare tactic) to figure out the costs of the goods because the tags had been removed. I am sorry for the incredibly long rambling read but I would appreciate any help you could give me! ETA: Just wanted to add that I have never done anything like this before and certainly never been caught committing any kind of offence. I have a clean record if that helps anything here at all.