Please find enclose the letter wording which i used for my claim against Cabot, sent to their CEO. This resulted in a cheque by return form them. I write following a court claim issued by you as mentioned above. I appreciate that you will have no knowledge of the circumstances of this specific claim but in light of your firms conduct in this matter I feel I have no alternative but to bring this to you for your urgent attention. This was a matter in which your firm initially wrote to me on 27th December 2007 setting out details of an alleged debt in respect of an unpaid loan to the xxx Bank. In an effort to deal with this matter I have written letters to your organisation and to Hodsons Solicitors, whom you nominated to deal with this matter on your behalf following the issuing of proceedings, over a number of months. Unfortunately these letters were completely ignored and your firm proceeded to issue County Court proceedings against me for recovery of the alleged debt. I have today received from Hodsons a Notice of Discontinuance for the claim against me, which I construe as being a full and frank admission of your wrongdoing in bringing a claim against me and the total absence of any evidence in support of my relation to the alleged debt. Following your complete ignorance of my letters, e-mail correspondence and telephone calls, you have now not only wasted my time but your costs and court issue fee at the very least in addition to not recovering the alleged debt. As a result of your total failure to investigate, research, prepare and progress the alleged claim against me I now seek compensation for the time, effort and grievance that this matter has caused me personally. I have written over 10 detailed letters to yourselves, Hodsons and the Court. In addition to this, I have spent a long time drafting my defence, part 18 request for further information and allocation questionnaires. My defence alone was 38 pages in length. Further, and in addition, I also had to research the matter to ascertain my rights and how to deal with the claim effectively. I would estimate that I have spent at least 10 hours of my own time in dealing with this matter. As I am a Lawyer in a large city centre firm with a charging rate of £145.00 per hour, this would have cost you £1450.00 had I dealt with it as a formal case under cover of the firm I work for. Given that the value of your claim was over £5000.00, this matter would have been allocated to the fast track making costs payable in their entirety. By way of settlement at this stage, I seek payment for the time, expense, stress and inconvenience in dealing with this matter in the sum of £500.00 in line with the OFT guidance for compensation for claims without specific financial loss. As part of the inadequacy of your firm’s proceedings you also made three entries on my credit file showing your companies name as searching my record. This would obviously have an affect on other company’s decisions when reviewing any credit applications that I may make. As your claim has now been dropped in its entirety I fail to see that these entirely unauthorised searches can have provided you with any information which you used in support of your proposed claim against me. Therefore in order to ensure that your firms actions have not unduly affected my credit position I require confirmation from you in writing that no adverse entries will be made against my credit record together with confirmation that no further searches will be carried out against me. Had your company properly investigated this matter from the outset as opposed to saying that it was for me to prove I was not the debtor you sought then this whole situation would have been avoided. Indeed had any heed been paid to my correspondence you would have noted that I had provided the necessary proof that I was not the debtor whom you sought and these whole proceedings could have been avoided. Should you not be willing to meet the costs that I have incurred in dealing with this matter and settle this matter now, then I shall have no option but to make a formal complaint to the Office of Fair Trading setting out your companies lack of competence in detail and requesting that they impose any penalties within their power. I willcommence court action for compensation arising out of claim xxxxx through the county court if you do not provide a satisfactory settlement to this within next 21 days. If you wish to discuss this matter, then please do contact me using any one of the methods below. Obviously, you will need to change it slightly. Regards, Dave

So, These seem to be new kids on the block. I recieved a couple of letters from these. I have never used Scottish Power so i know it is not me they seek. I sent them an e-mail detailing this, but they, like all the others, persist. Their last letter said I had had my chance, and now they could advise their client to issue, which they may do if I do not pay up. I have now sent them a final e-mail, asking them to re-read my others and to look up the word JURISDICTION. Has anyone here had any dealings with these idiots? I have never phoned a DCA, but this one is tempting purely for YouTube purposes! Dave,

Simple searches cannot be removed and cannot be seen by potential creditors. Dave,

Hey, I went to bed so was unable to respond last night. In response to all the queries above regarding my posts I will say the following: A contract does not have to be signed and a DCA would be able to show a contract had been made by them asking you to pay, and then you making payment. Whether this be a single payment or a number of frequent payments a contract has been made. This giveds them proof of a legal contract upon which they could bring action and then it would not matter about the legal validity of the debt, the only matter would be that you agreed to pay £xx per month for x months. They would not even need the credit agreement. I'm sorry if this goes against peoples thoughts on the DCA's and believe me, I'm in the same boat as you people: however, one shoudl serviously consider recinding on any contracts made with DCA's. Now, off to work. Dave,

And in addition, if I were a DCA and you stopped paying me, I would sue you immediately for breach of contract. They would then be in a winning situation from the start, with all the evidence they require. I'm afraid, thet once someone agrees to pay, the disservice to oneself is already done. Dave,

Are you drunk, sir? What you have said has relevance; however, there could be serious repercussions for people who do this, and then the DCA's do take valid action. Dave,

As you guys have said, it is of course beneficial to ask the DCA's to supply the information prior to them issuing a claim, because then you can show the court that they have failed to explore all settlement oppertunities thus little weight should be applied to their case.

Hi Dipply, The best way of dealing with Cabot and/or other DCA's is to put them to proof of their claims which, of course, they are unable to do on 99.9% of the matters that they handle. Cabot admitted to me that they purchase only the basic details from their suppliers and this, i believe, is their downfall. They rely solely on 'customers' rolling over and holding their hands up. If everyone challenged them to prove their claims, then they would be in hot bother, quickly. I would suggest to anyone who gets a letter to send a simple return letter requesting that they prove one or all of the things I put in my part 18 request for further information to them at the beginning. And then to suggest that if they are sure of their assertions, to litigate. Dont bother with all these SAR's and CCA letters as these hinder in up to two ways. Firstly, the delays caused give the DCA chance to collate evidence and secondly, the payment you make is wasted as the infromation HAS to be supplied for free post litigation. Personally, I will never pay a penny to anyone of these types of companies without litigation first. You will find that a lot of the DCA's are unwilling to litigate on any matter unless it is of a value over £5000.00 and there is good reason for this. Any claim of less than this amount results in the lawyer getting £80.00 costs. Maximum. Any sum over this will result in standard costs being payable: therefore the DCA's are not going to spend money on an issue fee unless it is worth it for them. In addition, even if you were the correct debtor, they have to prove this to the court before any order will be made against you. It would always be adviseable to get the matter to a hearing pronto if a DCA litigates because this gives them less time to prepare and request any supporting docs that they would need in order to be successful. Further, and in addition to this, their actions would look sloppy to the court if you can prove that they are trying to rely upon documentation that they did not supply prior to litigating. Refer them to the 'spirit of the protocols' here. The court prefer it if you litigate as a last resort and so the DCA's ways do not comply with this at all. Use it against them!! if this does not make sense, please say so and I will try to explain differently. Dave, PS - thanks for the support guys.

Hi Tomterm, I am considering action against the company that provided the CRA with the incorrect info as it was them who caused all the problems. Dave,

It would seem so as my complaint was for this in addition to their incompetence. They paid the figure I suggested to them which makes my regret not putting a larger amount! Oh well, I shouldn't complain regards,

So, I recieved a response from Willem. I think it is quite self explanatory. Woo Hoo! Dave,

Hey, Me and you seem to be in the same situation. Mine has now been passed to the 'pre-litigation department' who have wrote to me saying that will pass it to the 'litigation department' if I don't respond. I responded to their first letter in the same way i do them all, advising them that I do not owe the debt and then invite them to prove it. What I did was get my credit file (well worth the £2.00) and then this will show all debts associated with you that are not statue barred. It also has a lot of other useful things like address associations. (mine suggested that I lived in Derby at one point which is not true). This will also help you decide who to approach for a mortgage as it will give an indication of your credit rating. Anyhoo, I would suggest e-mailing Lowell as you get an autoresponse which you can use in the future if they say you did not respond and tell them to 'begger off' but in a nicer way. If they issue, then I'm sure a lot of people here will assist you. Please read my thread 'How I beat Cabot and Hodsons' if you wish to see how I dealt with a debt I did not owe which was litigated. Welcome to the site, David.

Hey BB, Just to clarify, I am NOT a qualified solicitor. I work as a lawyer, but never saw through the studies. Instead I went for experience behind a desk adn this has paid off for me. I am just very interested in the law and learn by teaching myself what I need to know, when i need to know it. Wellinghoff has only a few days left to respond, then he will feel full force of a CAG member. is his e-mail just wwellinghoff@crapbot do you know? Regards, David.

Can you believe it..... I am now going through the whole process again, but with Lowlife Financial. I have sent them my final helpful letter today and lets see if they pass it to their litigation department!!! I have never even had a Capital One card that they are chasing payment for. Well, here goes again. David,

I can, later, as my scanner is not connected at the moment. The most laughable one in there is that they say "in the event that we make a mistake, or we could have done something better, we will do our best to put this right for you" I think, what they were supposed to say was "Our staff are untrained and do not know the law. As a result, we often cut corners, give misleading statements, fail to provide any information and have no idea if you are the right person, but if you point this out to us, we will continue to defend our position and try to squirm our way out of every situation that arises." Dave,