Hi all, I could do with a bit of help/advise. Nearly 4 years ago, my wife and I bought a house. Ever since we moved in, we have been inundated with letters from various debt collection agencies, all addressed to the previous owner. We have sent all back and explained the situation to visitors etc. Recently whilst on holiday, we received two cards through our door from a company call "Proteus Dispatch". I thought it was suspicious and managed to find out from this site, that it was in fact a company called Varde Investments (some kind of debt collector?). We tried calling the mobile number on the cards, but could not get through to either. A fortnight ago, we had another visit from Proteus. Luckily this time I was home. I explained to the gentleman the situation and even offered him some ID. He said that our address would be removed from their records. Today, we had ANOTHER visit from Proteus. This time, my wife phoned the number on the card. The man on the other end of the phone was very rude and said that he had spoken to our neighbours, who had told him that we were the people he was looking for. I later phoned him and he told me the same thing. I suggested that he contacted the Land registry and also checked the electoral roll. I have been trying to find a contact number or address for Varde or Proteus so i could complain, but have not had any luck. Does anyone know how to contact these people, or do you think my complaints might fall on death ears?

I think that is the problem. As soon as they find out that they have gone away, they just pass it on to the next dca.

Hi, thanks for the advice. We started off by sending envelopes back marked "no longer at this address". This seemed to have no affect. After a while, we started opening the letters. Not interely ethical or legal, but we kinda assumed that the previous owners gave up their rights when they left us to deal with their debts. I called some of the dca's, which only had the affect of getting the debts passed to a new agency. To be honset, we've just been throwing letters away for the past 6 months as nothing we did seemed to having an affect, although the court claim letter did grab our attention. We've been on the electoral register since we moved here and can't see anything on our credit reports, but isn't your credit file done by name? I thought black listing an address was a myth? I think I will write to all the companies on the claim form and copy the court in. I do think these dca's need to try a bit harder to locate people though. I managed to find out this morning, that the debtors are back in the country and I managed to find out where one of them worked just by using Facebook and twitter!

Hi, can someone give me a little advice please? In 2008, my wife an I bought a house from another couple who were moving to America. Within weeks of moving in we started receiving calls, letters and visits from debt collection agencies for the previous owners. It appears that before moving, they ran up all their credit cards, ordered from catalogues and got contract mobile phones, obviously with no intention of ever paying them off. Over the last 3 and a half years, I've made many calls and sent back so many letters. All that seems to happen is it gets passed to another agency. Today however, we received a county court claim form for a debt with MBNA. My questions are this; 1. Should I just ignore the letter? 2. If it goes through the courts, will bailiffs be able to enter our property despite the debt not being ours? 3. Is there any way of notifying the world that these A-holes don't live here? Thank you in advance