Good evening people, I have just received a brown envelope marked "urgent" posted by TNT second class. The return address is: PO Box 2066 Starlaw Business Park Livingston EH54 0EB This is important, as googling the address yields very little, except a link back to CAG, albeit with a different post code. I am tempted to simply ring the return address with a pen and write 'return to sender, not known at this address'. This is a speculative threatogram (I have not opened it, but I presume this to be so), as I recently confirmed my name through a Statutory Declaration in order to obtain a passport. Slightly off topic, does any body know whether or not a statutory declaration is published publicly, so that DCA's can locate people? Any alleged debt this correspondence could possibly pertain to would be statute barred, but I think it is important to alert people to the tactics these companies are getting up to. Regards and best wishes.

It certainly sounds suspicious to me, which is why I thought I would post it here. Google might pick up the details I posted in my original post; which hopefully will give others the heads-up when investigating the matter for themselves.

There are no postage details on it, particularly. DX Secure is itself a postal company that offers an alternative service to that of the Royal Mail. I do have my suspicions about them. Their full address is: Secure Mail Services Lt. Registered in England and Wales N. 04072377, Registered Office DX House, Ridgeway, Iver, Buckinghamshire SL0 9JQ. They do seem rather worrying, partly due to the incompleteness of the postcard, but also the rather sinister anonymity this entails.

Hello everyone. I received an anonymous-looking postcard addressed to me by my first name, not by my surname as well. It started off with the We have an important delivery for you that requires a signature hokum; but it looks suspicous. Where there would be a full name, it just has my title and first name; not my surname. Where there is space for a postcode, this is left blank. On turning the card over, I note that the date for which the item is available is blank. I note that there is further bumps pointing to the web site which is www.thedx.co.uk/delivery where you are invited to post in a reference number which takes the form of DX 0000 0000 0GB (where 0 stands for any number between 0 and 9). The phone number quoted is that of the one in the title of the post and the time and date of the delivery is left blank. Are these Edit trying to catch people out? I understand that they do rather a lot of bulk mailing for the government. There are conflicting views about what they will and will not deliver; for example, some popular websites positon them as delivering visa and other credit cards, while their own web sites state categorically that they do not ever undertake to deliver such items. I have looked around the internet and cannot seem to find anything to identify who these people are, so I think it is worth drawing everyone's attention to this, as it could save people a great deal of grief.

What is the position on the apparent commutation of old-style loans to new-style ones? Is it true that if the SLC sells an old-style loan to a DCA it automatically becomes impervious to statute of limitations and therefore gets treated like a new-style loan? Or is that a rumour put out by DCAs in order to mislead and intimidate people?

I forgot to mention that there has been no previous attempts at communication by this Company. Am I right in thinking that this is an outright lie on their part and would also constitute unfair trading practices.

Thanks for the responses so far. I am rather interested in answering the question as to whether or not alleged student loan debt is covered by different provisions in law for recovery that is not protected by the Statute Barred laws governing consumer credit. Given the age of the alleged debt (it would have to have been 1991-1993 or 1997-2000), the six or seven year expiry period would have to have elapsed, as there has been no contact between myself and the student loan company.

I have just received a letter titled "Letter before action" from the above company, citing their client as The Student Loan Company (SLC) and quoting a "Balance Due" of around £6500.00 or so. The letter says: We note with regret that you have chosen not to deal with this matter despite our previous communication endeavouring to assist you in coming to a satisfactory arrangement to settle this account without the need for legal action. It is therefore our intention to progress your account to our pre-litigation system where the relevant validations and checks will be completed. Your account will then be passed to our solicitors who may commence legal action on or around 22 Sep 09. Through the litigation process we will seek an Order of the Court, directing you to pay monies outstanding. If we are successful and it is necessary to do so, we will seek to enforce such an Order with a Warrent of Execution. In the event that we do obtain a Warrant of Execution, a Court Enforcement Officer (Bailiff) will be assigned to attent your address and carry out the warrant. The Bailiff will take an inventory and levy goods. You will be informed that the Bailiff has impounded the goods and you will be asked to sign a Walking Possession Agreement, acknowledging that the impounded goods are in the possession of the Bailiff. If full payment or a satisfactory offer of a payment plan is not made, the Bailiff is authorised to remove the goods for sale to pay the debt and costs. A Walking Possession Agreement means that the goods that have been seized (sic) now legally belong to the Bailiff and can be removed at any time. However, she/he will allow them to remain in your home and you can continue to use them providing you keep your side of the agreement, e.g. you make agreed payments. The fees charged by the Bailiffs will be added to the amount owed. Any additional costs for removing and selling goods will also be added to the amount you owe. You should also remember that any goods you own may lose value over time. This means that if the Bailiff seizes goods to discharge the sum you owe, although the value of the goods will not exceed the amount you owe, it may cost you more to replace them. All of this action is avoidable. It is therefore in your interest to prevent the above course of action by contacting this office immediately to discuss settlement or your proposed arrangement to setle this debt. Our experienced pre-litigation team are on hand to assist you, but this can only happen if you make contact before 22 Sep 09 and failure to respond by the date outlined will result in legal action being instigated. Call now on 0870 084 3514 to discuss the most suitable method of payment to clear this balance or send your payment to P O Box 396, Fleet, Hampshire, GU51 2WZ quoting reference number, nnnann, on the reverse. Alternatively, you can pay by debit or credit card. Yours sincerely On behalf of CapQuest Debt Recovery Limited I was at univeristy for two years between 1991 and 1993 and then I undertook a 3 year course between commencing 1997 and finishing in the year 2000. I have had no contact with the Student Loan Company whatsoever since leaving university. I also note that, given I have had two stints at university and the fact that the rules and regulations around student loans changed in 1997, the CapQuest do not state when this alleged debt was incurred. If I had any loans outstanding with the SLC, would these be statute barred due to the passage of time, or would they still be enforceable? Should I respond to this threatening letter, and if so, how should I go about it? I do find this rather alarming; all this talk of impounding goods and although the language is reasonably moderate, I get the impression that they are trying to intimidate and bully me. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I have just today received a letter from DLC stating that they have been 'looking after my account' since 16/10/01 (in fact, this is wrong, it was earlier than that). They acknowledge that I have been making regular payments, but they are now aggressively pressing for me to increase my payments. They are making veiled threats to withdraw my 'installment rights'. Is there such a thing as 'installment rights', or is it pure bluff, as per usual. They demand that I reply within 48 hours, yet the letter was dated 10th August 2007 and today is 13th August 2007. Should I just write back to them via email (without another signature), to tell them where to get off? So far as I know, if they have a problem with the duration of the outstanding balance, that is their problem and not mine. If they buy a debt at between 10% to 12% of it's face value, then should these blood-sucking Shylocks be complaining anyway?

I like the moniker. I shall make sure I 'accidentally' insert the 'typo' into any correspondence I have with them, should the letters from them become less elliptical and obscurantist.

Since the Drakes DCA seem to be involved in this case (they seem to do a lot of Local Authority dirty work), I should like to relay another case that happened to a near relative of mine, who was living at a private address (neither of us are the owners). The situation is that they clamped his car, while it was parked on a privately owned driveway. I set up a temporary email account that would lead the recipients of any messages to infer that the address was that of a letting agency. The message I sent to Drakes consisted for the most part, of a reminder that it is illegal to trespass on private property when attempting to sequester the assets of another individual who does not own that property. Sure enough, a day later, the clamp had disappeared. It seems that Drakes can be somewhat over-zealous in pursuit of their duties.

DLC and Hillesden Securities are one and the same company. They are part of a group or Parent company called Faccenda Chicken. I once saw a Facenda Chicken van parked opposite where I live, so it is possible that they were reconnoitering the place. If you go to Direct Legal & Collections you will get the chance to see the public-facing persona that the company likes to project to its corporate clients.

I have had a letter from MH (hence my pseudonym), but having googled for information on them, I too found this site. It seems that MH do indeed feed off debt allegations that are, in any event, statute barred. This is all about preying on people who do not have access to the necessary knowledge required to defend themselves from the sort of unlawful and improper conduct that is routine amongst the debt collection 'profession'.

I tried to send you a PM Message, after you wrote to me a few times, but your mailbox is locked, therefore (as it is no secret and I admit fault), I am posting it here so that you can read it. I have removed the message you sent me, as you sent it in the belief that it is a private communique. I am sorry that you have felt it necessary to either edit or Un-Approve some of the posts I have made. As a general rule, I always refrain from using obscenities, ad hominem attacks against other individuals, whether the people in question are on the internet or not, and from making statements that I know (or suspect) to be false. As you have made the edits/amendments and/or deletions, I am unable to find out which parts of my commentary you feel might bring the site into disrepute. I am not being vexatious, confrontational or anything of the sort, it is a genuine case of not knowing precisely where I crossed the boundary. I apologise if I have done something that could bring the site into disrepute or that could have worrying consequences for the site owners, and I shall make doubly sure that I remain on the conservative side of commentary in future. When I made the comments concerning the debt collectors, I was only aying things as I saw them to be, though of course, I am fully aware that many of these DCA's would jump at the chance to prevent people from being able to share ideas or draw knowledge and insight from each other; especially when it is an experience of shared adversity, as seems to be the case here. Once again, I apologise for anything I might have said that could compromise either the site, or the site owners.

Something that is interesting, is that all too often, DLC Operatives and others of their ilk are not even using their real names, because they are frightened of potential repercussions. For example, I suspect that there really is no such person named Sarah Raven at DLC, it is just a pseudonym to cover the identity of the real "person" working for the company. It is also interesting to note that DLC are a member of a group of Companies which is headed by a poultry processing outfit called Faccenda Chicken. They turn over around £300M per annum, yet they seem to have involved themselves in this seamier crooked business of debt collection. I tried to forward the above letter to Rob Franklin (senior debt purchaser), but his email address is not [edited] perhaps he has a vanity address instead.

Indeed, something else I note is that the last time I bothered opening one of their letters (5th March 2007), I wrote an epic letter to them along similar lines to what I have written just recently in response to this one. I am tempted to post the entire letter onto this forum (it runs to 4 pages), in fact I think I shall, as it might be of benefit to others who are in a similar predicament: Mrs Sarah Raven Direct Legal & Collections Buckingham Road Brackley Northants NN13 7DN Dear Mrs Ravens, Re: Your letter dated 27th July (received 1st August 2007) in connection with: Your Clients: Hillesden Securities (MBNA) Account Number: XXXXXXXXXX (Alleged) Balance Outstanding : £X,XXX.XX I write with reference to a letter received from your employers, dated 27th July 2007 (received 1st August 2007), with your name as the signatory. I note that you are making menacing and intimidating noises concerning an alleged debt that you claim is owing to yourselves. If you check your records, you will note that I have been making payments to yourselves under the supposition that you have purchased a debt that is outstanding against me, though I have no personal records of such debt outstanding. You will also note that after having failed a few times (in the course of 3 or 4 years), to meet your unilaterally defined repayment level, I have since reduced this monthly demand to a level that is more fitting to my current financial circumstances. In view of the fact that a). you have failed to produce any evidence under Sections 77/79 of the Consumer Credit Act (1974) that I actually owe you this debt and b). you have failed to produce evidence of statements or transactions, I must infer that your company are a bunch of crooks who prey upon vulnerable people who think they might owe money to somebody, but who are not sure of precisely whom they might owe money to. I have been consistently paying money for a debt that I am not sure is mine for the last 4 years or so (it is easy to be intimidated by aggressive debt collectors), though pursuant to legal advice I have sought, you appear to be over-reaching yourselves again. I have been advised to write to you under separate cover, concerning your allegation that ‘It has now been confirmed to us by trace investigators that, despite previous information supplied to the contrary, you continue to reside at the above address.’ I have never given you any information to indicate that I no longer reside at this address, in fact I suspect this is a deliberate ruse to try to intimidate me and put me in a bad light. If you have any evidence that I myself led you to believe that I no longer reside at this address, then you can prove it when I make my Subject Access Request to you, demanding all records that you are keeping on me. Further to this point, you will note that I have been making a regular monthly payment to your company for a few years now. If I had led you to believe I had moved elsewhere, then why would I continue to do that? You have never received such information from me though you are probably thinking of all the monthly letters I receive from you which go unanswered. My reason for refusing to answer regular, threatening letters is because it costs time and money to do so and I also know that because I am making a payment to you on a regular basis each month, I am doing nothing that is against Civil or Criminal Law. You, however, may be guilty under Civil and/or Criminal Law due to your persistent, continuous harassment of me over an extended period of time. Your threat to take ‘further action’ counts for nothing. No fair-minded or balanced Court in the country will find against me, quite simply because you are getting a regular payment. It might not be as much as you think you would like, but it is all that you are going to get, until such time as my financial circumstances improve a bit. Your attempts to besmirch my character by alleging that you had received information that I no longer reside at this address can be shown for the bullying, aggressive brinksmanship that it really is, because I have recently paid off a debt in total to a company and the reason for that is the collection agency treated me like a human being and not something on the sole of their collective shoe and also, it was an amount that I could afford. Do you see how it works yet? If you treat people as human beings, they are more likely to behave like human beings. Elementary psychology really, but I suppose it must be quite challenging for some. I should also like to add that, due to my regular payment to your company on a monthly basis, my intentions to settle matters (even though I am not sure of the legality of this alleged debt, though I know I can get a refund if it is proven to be erroneous), is amply proven. Therefore, attempting to impute initiatives to abscond are ill-founded and can be shown to be so. Any court of law who sees the evidence of my bank statements will know that I have been consistently paying you for a debt that I am as yet still uncertain that you are entitled to claim from me. The final point you make is that ‘If [you] do not hear from [me] within the next seven days, you will have no alternative but to arrange a visit to the locality to verify the information.’ I would like to know what ‘information’ it is that you think you need to verify? This correspondence confirms that I am at this address. I shall deal with this last point in two stages; firstly the date on the letter as opposed to the date it was received, then secondly, the implicit threat to harass and intimidate me in person As regards the date you imply the letter was sent as opposed to the date it was actually received; I should like to point out that your having dated the letter as 27th July 2007 and my having received it on 31st July 2007 means that I only had two days in which to contact you. This is not fair notice, which is why I think you sent the letter at least 3 days after the date printed on it and also just before a weekend, to ensure that once I recover from the shock of a written assault and intimidation, and once I have drafted, composed and re-drafted a 4-page letter in response, it would be physically impossible for me to send the letter on time. I note that your company have done this to me before when it comes to dating correspondence. Although I was initially vexed by this deliberately dirty, underhand tactic (something a lot of Debt Collection Agencies seem to be guilty of, if various Consumer Advice lines are to be believed), it would appear that your case is even weaker when I am keeping contemporaneous records of every breach of the rules you have been making. Therefore, the only way I could have gotten in touch with you is via telephone, email or ‘fax’. I refuse to be badgered and bullied on the telephone and all advice received thus far warns me to avoid telephone contact as it always ends in frustration, recrimination and bullying. I will not use email to send correspondence of this nature, as a). I do not have an email address (something like [edited] might work, but I am not prepared to wait for the message to bounce back to me), which leaves us with only the fax, which I do not have access to. With regard to the second part of your final paragraph (the part that is of even more dubious legality), is that you do not have any legal right to gain entry to these premises and you are certainly not invited. I do not welcome unwelcome visitors, and any efforts to gain entrance to the premises on your behalf shall be met with the utmost resistance. I am warning you in all seriousness, that if you do send unwelcome representatives (nice euphemism that, by the way), to harass me, then I shall immediately call the police and I shall use whatever force I deem necessary to remove unwelcome intruders from the premises. I can exercise that right under well-known Common Law against Trespass, which is what you will effectively be guilty of, should you attempt to gain entry to the property. I do not expect to hear anything from you unless it is pertinent to the following: A). You are proceeding with court action to recover monies which you are already being paid. B). You actually have the balls (unlikely in your case (unless feminism has caused a mutation in the gene pool)) to actually progress this matter through the courts. On that last point, I should like to remind you that in view of the fact that I have been making good-will gestures of payment to your claims, you are really, very unlikely to get very far unless you find a corrupt, Tory magistrate who despises ordinary people of modest means. Failing the contingencies outlined in A, or B I really do not think there is any point in continuing correspondence, unless it is to either to address the points raised herein, or to answer two subsequent letters I shall be sending you under separate cover. If I am forced to write to you again, merely to answer periodic threatening letters (other than in the two letters mentioned above) in regard to this matter, then. I shall have no choice other than to levy charges for my time expenses and use of resources. Yours sincerely, You will note that her email address is not [edited] but I still manged to contact her, as I ventured [edited] I suppose it is useful to know that they can be contacted very quickly by email (warning: save the Word Document as a PDF, as it makes it harder for them to tamper with your correspondence, in order to incriminate you.

I would like to nominate a few DCA's [edited]. First off is First National Credit, who were hounding me over a Barclaycard from the student days. Secondly, is Eversheds (the Solicitors - [edited]), this was due to the fact that I was only willing to pay so much per month to settle a Halifax account, as I was on low income employment at that time. Thirdly, is Direct Legal Collections (I started a thread about them on here) and again, although they have been getting anywhere between £20.00 and £5.00 per month from me, they still insist on sending aggressive and threatening letters, most of which go unanswered. I have also received a very cryptic and tangential letter from MacKenzie Hall and as I have no information to go on, I refuse to communicate with them. I suspect that if they have legitimate business dealings with me, we are approaching the stage where such matters are statute barred, which means it is not worth me contacting them, only to receive torrents of abuse and intimidation. My last nominee (since they are a DCA) are Cabot Financial, who were only owed £258.57 in connection with a Capital One Credit Card, but as I negotiated a month to settle the account and a reduction to £220.00 and they were generally reasonably well behaved and professional, I have no reason to take umbrage at their treatment of me. They did mention that they would register the account as settled and satisfied on my Equifax entry and ironically, I suspect it is this addition to my credit record which has precipitated a sudden flurry of interest on the part of the other rogues and vultures in the industry.

Thanks everyone for the advice offered so far. I shall follow the chase-up of the CCA and the SAR Request, as it seems that there is some scope for pursuing things from that angle. On another note, they have never received information to say that I have 'gone away', as I have letters for every month for the last few years. The reason they are trying to 'ginger me up' is that I have been paying them just £5.00 per month, which is a perfectly legal amount to be paying after a period of long-term unemployment. I suspect that the accusation that they had to trace me is intended to 'look good on paper' for the Courts, so that it would appear that I am attempting to avoid paying. The fact that I have just settled an outstanding debt with another company is proof to the contrary. Also with the CCA and SAR Requests, any information they puportedly have about attempted absconding would come to light. Once again, thanks for all your help.

Hello everybody. The issue I wish to raise concerns [edited] who operate under the name of Direct Legal Collections (I suspect that 'legal' should be put in quotes, however). The problem is that I have been paying these people a sum of money each month for the last 5 years or so, though I did unilaterally lower the amount paid from £20.00 to £5.00 per month, to more properly reflect my current financial circumstances. I have received a blizzard of aggressive correspondence from these "people", most of which has been ignored to date. Today however, I received a letter from them containing threats to contact them, with the risk of the alleged 'debt' being raised even further. The exact transcript of the letter is as follows: Dear Mr > As you are aware, we are instructed by our above clients to collect this outstanding amount on their behalf. It has now been confirmed to us by trace investigators that despite previous information supplied to the contrary, you continue to reside at the above address. It is essential that you contact our office as a matter of urgency to prevent further action being instigated which may result in the value of the debt being substantially increased. If we do not hear from you within the next seven days we will have no alternative but to arrange a visit to the locality to verify the information. Yours in utter contempt, Sarah Raven TEAM LEADER [edited] As I understand it, a 'debt' that is transferred to a DCA cannot accrue additional charges or interest, so am I right in thinking that this is just brinksmanship and that legally, they do not have a leg to stand on? I do not have any correspondence or evidence to suggest that DLC are the legitimate owners of this alleged debt; nor do I have evidence of a signed credit agreement with the requisite ancilliary documentation that would support a legal claim to the debt. Apart from a few omissions, I have been paying them consistently, month after month for around 4 years. I have been doing this in good faith, because I believed it was possible that I might owe somebody some money from somewhere, however without the requisite legal documentation, it seems possible that I have been being systematically defrauded of monies that do not rightfully belong to this [edited]. The question I am asking is this: if I have made a proposition (which is to pay £x.xx per month, and they have been accepting this sum, then can they legally continue to harass me every month with aggressive and intimidating letters demanding full and final settlement? I am also curious as to whether or not they can arbitrarily ramp up the alleged outstanding balance in order to put pressure on me? Once a debt is referred to default, then no further charges can apply, can they? Or am I wrong about this? As I mention above, there is no legal documentation proving that they are rightfully assigned as the owners of this purported debt. Where do I stand in regard to all this? Any constructive replies gratefully received.