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Not sure it's a good idea to mention other DCAs on a public forum, but I can tell you categorically that the people who got the CCJ way back - 1999 if I remember correctly - are not the same people chasing the debt now.

The CCJ dropped off about 6 years ago. If I remember correctly they stay on your credit file for 6 years? So there's no CCJ showing on my credit file as far as I'm aware. Many of these DCAs seem to be affiliated to each other but it's neither of the two you mention.

Thanks for your swift response Andy, but ye olde braincells are rusty these days and I'm a little confused by what you wrote. I wonder if you could clarify the following point? It is my understanding that once a creditor has a CCJ for a debt, the Limitation Act does not put any time limits on how long they have to enforce that judgment, although as you intimated, if a CCJ is more than 6 years old, and the creditor wants to use bailiffs or High Court Enforcement Officers, they must first get permission of the court. The question is, can I still use the Limitation Act 1980 Section 5 clause: “An action founded on simple contract shall not be brought after the expiration of six years from the date on which the cause of action accrued.” Assuming that the cause of action was the CCJ? Many thanks.

An old old debt has come back to haunt me. For the record, I have not responded to the debt collection agency (DCA) and have at this stage, no intention of doing so. However, if this is the 'debt' I think it is, it seems to have been purchased by another DCA. The last correspondence I had with the previous DCA was, I think, over 10 years ago. What I need to know first is this. Is an old judgement (probably 1998/1998) still enforceable even after years of no-one chasing it and even if another debt collection agency has purchased the debt? What I then need to know is this. Can I request the court to set aside this judgement given the following facts: Firstly, the previous DCA never sent me notice of going to court - and I mean I had no knowledge of the CCJ before it came through my letterbox. This was 1998 or 1999 if memory serves - I can't remember exactly but that feels about right. At that time I had no knowledge of debt collection guidelines or that I could have gone back to court within 30 days to request a set aside. Anyway, I did start paying as per the CCJ but it became impossible to keep up. So in the early 2000s - I can't remember exactly - I managed to get the court to reduce the repayments on the CCJ to £1.00 per month. The DCA was furious, became abusive, and continually threatened to go back to court. As far as I remember, they never did. However, eventually I sent a series of letters asking them to write off the debt as there was no realistic prospect of my ever repaying it in my lifetime at £1.00 a month. They repeatedly refused. Eventually I wrote saying I would no longer be paying the £1.00 per month and I invited them to take the matter back to court where I was happy to argue my case including that they had not had the courtesy - as per debt collection guidelines - to inform me they were going straight for a CCJ. I heard nothing more from them and as time went on I thought no more about it. However, I have now received 2 letters over the past 6 months from another DCA (the latest yesterday) and the amount of the debt appears to have doubled if not tripled. Their approach is that they are 'aware' that this account is subject to a CCJ but it is their aim to agree an affordable and flexible repayment arrangement etc etc. I have not responded and have no intention of doing so. Given that I am now retired and on a basic state pension and in receipt of guaranteed pension credit, my circumstances are the same, if not slightly worse than they were when I wrote to the former DCA telling them I would no longer be able to pay the £1.00 per month. The next question therefore is, do I keep ignoring this new DCA or do I stand any chance of getting the court to set aside this judgement based on the fact no-one has chased it for 10 or more years? Alternatively, what advice can anyone offer? PS: I think that once a CCJ is in place that one cannot argue statue barred even though it's well over the 6 year period. Thanks for your time.

I got a phone call this morning which went something like this. "Sorry to bother you but can I speak to xxxxx xxxxxxx"? I said I was speaking. "The caller then said I'd just like to confirm we can still contact you at (and stated my address)"? Alarm bells went off at the back of my last remaining braincell and I asked who was calling. We are 2F. I asked from where. Hull. I asked why she was calling me. After some evasive tactics, she eventually said they had a client who had been trying to deliver correspondence to me. I asked again who she worked for and why she was calling me and that I believed she was breaching DPA (and I meant by deceptive tactics). I told her I was ending the call... there's really no point getting into a conversation with debt collectors on the phone for all the reasons stated in these threads. When I google 2F Hull, it comes up with Westcott - who are also mentioned all over these threads. So, is this a new tactic? To call someone out of the blue without even trying to establish they're actually talking to the right person? Just wondered if anyone else had calls like this from 2F Hull?

In answer to the first part of your post, as we both know, the ICO guidance states that they would "normally expect a lender to keep records that are necessary to show an agreement exists and to support filing a default. We would also expect a lender to be able to produce evidence to justify a default record they had placed on a credit reference file. Not having any supporting records may indicate a breach of the data protection principle etc." Consequently, if a signed credit agreement cannot be produced when requested, and the Credit Reference Agency is aware of this, they may well be breaking the Law by not complying with a request to delete such unlawful default records. In answer to your comment re who owns the data, I have asked the ICO to clarify whom the data belongs to and sent a 2nd email request today. If I don't get a response by email soon, I will contact someone I know there and ask him to clarify it. I'm reluctant to do this because he's a fairly senior person and I don't want to be viewed by the rank and file as 'going over their heads'.

How serious are you guys about taking this the distance? Two things: (1) Everything we say or submit must be backed up by evidence to corroborate our contentions. (2) Those who begin should be prepared for the long haul. A quick look at the whois for consumeractiongroup.co.uk shows Marc Gander as the domain name registrant. Has anyone spoken to Mr Gander in the past? I don't know if Mr Gander is still involved. This could probably be ascertained by a quick message via the contact us form.

Yep. So how do we contact one of the main CAG guys? And yes, the Consumer Affairs Minister is probably the responsible man. However, it might be more advisable to find a champion amongst ordinary MPs or Lords first and ask them to approach the Minister on our behalf?

I think one can only fight 'city hall' by banding together in a common cause. The sad fact is, one person cannot make that much of a dent in the wall no matter how much they try nor how honourable their cause. I feel it would lend much more weight to the cause if the CAG would put its name behind it and if we had a clear and concise paper on the issue which we could present to members of both houses of parliament. It is not that difficult to find sympathetic MPs or Lords who are looking to make a mark and there has been much talk about debt and how it affects the average household within those hallowed halls.

Gentlemen, thanks for your comments regarding my post. The reason for this post is, I decided to sign up for a 30 day trial account with Equifax so I could download a free credit report on myself just to be told, after answering all the online questions successfully, that I needed to call them to confirm some details during business hours. More time wasting. I have also discovered that of the 3 main consumer credit agencies; i.e. Equifax, Experian and Callcredit; each of them may hold different information about me. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised at this, it just highlights the inconsistencies and anomalies within this unregulated industry. The point is, even if I get a free credit report from Equifax, I will probably have to do the same thing twice over with the other two before I know exactly why I was turned down for a business bank account 2 days ago. More time wasting. As me learned friend BRIGADIER2JCS said... "The immense amount of time spent writing letters the replies to which never addressed the major points of the complaint and the hours spent trying to explain verbally that the entries were wrong is unbelieveable". Been there .. about 16 months ago... when I disputed 2 entries against my credit file with Equifax. In the end because I was trying to make a living running my own business I just didn't have the time to carry on bashing my head up against the brick wall I encountered at every turn. I disputed these entries (and still do) but I now need to go back again and try to sort this out once and for all because it has become a major issue even with what should be the not really major issue of opening a new business account. This is both bizarre and ironic considering I already have one account with the same bank that turned me down and that account has been run in an orderly fashion for 3 years. I also have another business account with another bank and the same applies, it has been run in an orderly fashion for 5 years. I have BT accounts, numerous trade accounts, 2 mobile phone accounts, and various direct debits, all of which are paid promptly and have never bounced over a 12 year period. None of these including the BT accounts show on my credit file, all that shows is (apparently) 2 defaults which I disputed last year and will now have to dispute to the bitter end this year. Hollywood would kill for a script like this! One positive thing that came out of this issue is that I have now found a bank that will open a business account complete with visa debit card even for those with poor credit history. The only restriction being you cannot borrow on the account. If anyone can benefit from this information send me a private message and I'll give you details of the bank and the account name. I have to say the visa debit card surprised me as banks tend to regard providing a debit card as providing credit. One last thought. If one cannot open a business account to run a business, how is a self employed person supposed to operate? I understand many people who have been refused bank accounts use a friend's or a relative's account, but this can create all sorts of problems for the account holder if the tax office regards it as a partnership - or even money laundering - if one is accepting money into their own bank account on behalf of another. All in all, as BRIGADIER2JCS quite rightly said, you can waste immense amounts of time trying to bring these issues to some kind of satisfactory conclusion. The fact that the establishment (i.e. government) allows these issues to exist in the first place, is just more evidence of the lack of commitment to consumer protection by said establishment.

Apologies for coming onto the thread a bit late in the day, and apologies also if I am misunderstanding, but do you work for a Credit Reference Agency? The reason I ask is that it has been my personal experience of one particular CRA that they tend to do a Pontius Pilate on things when you advise them that you believe there is an incorrect default registered on your file. To simply suggest that data belongs to the lender is another anomaly of a system that has become corrupt through the power it has been allowed to accumulate by the establishment. Unfettered power is not a good thing, not even if those holding the power are right. For power to be just, it has to be fair and impartial, and the system, in my opinion, is neither. The system is funded by the financial sector (i.e. the lenders) and is never inclined to bite the hand that feeds it. Even those charged with regulating the system seem incapable of actually regulating in a fair and impartial manner. As has been stated above, a complaint to the ICO can take a year or more to come to fruition. A complaint to a Credit Reference Agency (CRA) can take you nowhere, because they tend to favour the hand that feeds them - i.e. the lender or DPA or DCA (debt purchasing agency/debt collection agency). The hand that feeds them may well be feeding them bull****, but it matters not, just so long as they pay their membership fees. So, I can't necessarily agree with your contention that if a lender tells Experian that an entry is correct, there is nothing more that Experian can do for you. Experian, as indeed any other CRA, has a statutory duty of care to the consumer (i.e. the borrower) as much as they may have a financial obligation to the lender. I say financial obligation because it is quite clear CRAs make loads of money out of lenders and/or the financial sector. I have heard the term "fair and impartial" applied to credit scoring. Credit Scoring can never be fair and impartial if it is computerised because computers are not infallible, they are only as good as the information we feed into them and very often the information fed in is incorrect. Very often, in CRA terms, the information on credit files is incomplete. Consequently, the only information that those doing a credit check are fed is the often incorrect information fed into the computers. Quite how CRAs are fair or impartial is another of the great mysteries of a corrupt system that uses only the information given to it in many cases by Debt Purchasing Agencies (DPAs) and Debt Collection Agencies (DCAs) without those agencies having provided proof of any alleged debt. For a default to exist, the lender should be obliged to prove to the CRA that a debt exists in the first instance. We all know how that is done in Law, why should it be different with regards to a credit file? Yet it is. Hearsay is taken as proof and information that would not stand up in Court remains on a credit file. If the DPA or DCA or whoever else cannot provide evidence to prove so, then the default should not be allowed to remain on the credit file. Credit Reference Agencies cannot have it both ways. They cannot say, on the one hand, that only the lender can instruct them to remove defaults from a credit file, whilst on the other hand purporting to abide by the ICO's guidance and indeed, the Law pertaining to the DPA. The two are incompatible; the truth usually is incompatible with hearsay, yet the system allows hearsay to rule simply because it has the power to do so and so few mere mortals know how to bite back. Any entry on a credit file that cannot be proven to be legally binding should be removed forthwith, but Credit Reference Agencies simply refuse to do this and so, the never ending cycle of abdication continues. They simply refer the consumer back to the lender or DPA or DCA and most DPAs and DCAs are about as helpful as a nail in the brain. If a DPA or DCA or any other lender cannot produce a signed original credit agreement, they have no rights in Law to enforce or otherwise seek to discredit or harrass the alleged debtor or the information applied to said debtor's credit file. It is because the system is corrupt and because it takes interminable amounts of time to get an incorrect entry modified or removed, that 9 times out of 10, the consumer gives up trying. It's like bashing your head up against the proverbial brick wall... nice when it stops! Hence, the offending information remains on a credit file for 6 years and often longer (another inconsistency and illegality in the system) and the system screws many an innocent party. Does the system care? I don't think so. Does the ICO care? I don't think so. Does Equifax care? No. They are the system.

LOL... now tell us what you really think! Regards JFA

Thanks for the comments JonCris. For the record, I never talk to DCAs on the phone. Anyone who watched the (Channel 4) Dispatches documentary on credit card debt last night will have heard a professional debt counsellor from one of the national debt helpline's say exactly the same thing... don't discuss anything on the phone, you have a right to insist they correspond in writing so you have an accurate record of what is or isn't agreed. The only reason these parasitic DCAs win is through intimidation and because ordinary people do not understand the rights they have. Before I sign off, I'd just like to update everyone who took the time to comment previously. I first wrote to this particular DCA requesting the CCA on the 19th October. I heard nothing after 12 days. They kept trying to phone me. I ignored their calls. They definitely received the request for CCA because it was signed for at their offices. It is now well over the 12 + 30 day limit, which presumably puts them in a situation where they have committed an offence? Can anyone clarify that? Best wishes to all for the coming festive season... and remember... Nill Illigitimi Carborundum! ** Regard JFA ** Don't let the bastards grind you down!

Well, it's now the 13th November and my request for a CCA was signed for on the 19th October. By my reckoning that's 16 working days and 4 past the 12 day deadline I keep reading about on this site. As I have heard zilch from anybody about anything, is there something I should be doing, like writing to Vilcollections informing them they are in breach of something or other? Regards JFA