Fair point. I thought about appending this to the end of that thread but thought it was kind've a separate issue - I have fired off a letter to AOL but haven't heard back from them yet. I suspect if they do it'll simply be to say they've passed any arrears (whether justified or not) to the collection agency and that I should deal with them. In the meantime, I'm trying to decide what to do with the collection guys - if they can't establish that I'm who they're looking for and aren't prepared to say that it's actually AOL, do I just tell 'em to leave me alone, or should I 'assist' them with their enquiries? And is it reasonable to tell them that I don't know who TPH SARL is? Will it be reasonable for them in return, to load up the charges?

So a while ago I had a letter from Advantis Credit, a collection agency of some sort advising me that they were chasing up about £70 on behalf of TPH Services SARL, a company I've never heard of. Basically they wanted me to send them the money within 7 days or they add further fees, effectively doubling it. As I'd never heard of the company, I sent a letter back by recorded delivery advising them of that fact and asking them if they were sure I was the right person and asking them for copies of contracts and prove of provision of goods or services as evidence. They've now written back telling me that Data Protection prevents them from discussing the account with me until they've successfully identified me as the debtor and asking me to phone one of their 'specialist account managers' so wecan discuss it. Everything I've read on this forum suggests (quite vehemently) that I should never speak to collection agencies and should only communicate in writing because they're tricky and devious. So what happens next? My instinct is simply to tell them to get lost until they can provide the evidence that I've asked for, but does this mean that if it later proves to be me they're looking for and the debt is legitimate, they can load on the charges or even take me to court? Thanks for your help!

Seems to me that as long as the thing works and as long as you get the same guarantee that you would with a brand new unit, there's no real problem. I would double check the guarantee/warrantee situation though.

Thanks for this. I'll save a few keyboard miles for my fingers! The wording of the letter suggests that I take no further action once it's sent and let them figure out what's happened. is this correct or should I still get in touch with AOL to see what the problem is?

I got back from work on friday to find a letter from Advantis Credit, some sort of collection agency. It didn't tell me how much they were persuing me for, named a company that I'd never heard of (TPH Services SARL) as their client and demanded that I call them within 7 days. A quick google revealed that TPH Services are actually AOL which whom I cancelled a long standing contract about 18 months ago when I moved house. Given that my mail was redirected to my new address for a full year after I moved, it would seem that AOL just didn't bother to send me a letter if they felt that I owed them money. My instinct is to write Advantis a letter advising them of this and that I am going to raise some sort of dispute with AOl and then send AOL a letter asking them what they think they're playing at. It this the right approach? Thanks all.

Hi, How is the protection I get from the CCA when buying online with my credit card affected if I use my credit card to pay via paypal? My suspicion is that as I'm effectively transferring funds from my card to my paypal account, I'm not covered at all and have to rely on Paypal's policies in the event that the purchased item does not turn up, or is damaged. Thanks, Darren.

Here's my two pence worth. I work as a fraud investigator in the fraud department of a major cough bank cough! In my experience, the bank's obligations are slightly different to buzby's interpretation. The bank that made the fraudulent payment is obliged to refund their customer as they have made a payment outside mandate (good phrase that... make a note!). It does not neccessarily follow that HSBC are obliged to return the funds to the originating bank. There's no legislation that requires them to do so. They can choose to do so if they believe that Zayadee was a party to the fraud, but they take the risk that Z is innocent and will then make a counter claim on them for making a payment outside mandate from his/her account. Z has changed his/her position, assuming correctly that the funds are cleared and available for use and the 'refund' has left him/her disadvantaged. I would suggest a polite but firm letter to the chairman of HSBC stating that as HSBC has paid outside mandate without the customer's permission and disadvantaged Z, that an immediate refund should be made to return the account to the position that it was in befiore HSBC made their mistake. It's also worth mentioning that a review of Z's account will show a salary, direct debits and normal spending which demonstarates that the account was not opened for the puroses of fraud. Including a print of the eBay auction and any correspondence between you and the buyer should satisfactorily demonstrate that, as far as you were concerned, the transaction was a genuine one. Hope this helps. P.S. - hope you don't mind me shortening your name to 'Z'. I'm very lazy!

A couple of years ago, I split with my wife and we arranged for our joint Abbey account to be made sole in my my name by filling out the appropriate forms and sending them into the bank. At the same time, my ex notified them that she had moved. Long story short, they updated all of the addresses to her new address (including the one on my now sole account) and sent all of my statements to her address for a period of about 8 months (it took a while before I noticed the absence of statements as I monitor my account online). Anyway, a phonecall or two later and the address was corrected and I decided not to make too much of a fuss at the time as it seemed to be an honest mistake - no harm was done, the address was updated and I was assured that it would not happen again. Late last year, my ex pushed an (unopened - she's quite honest!) Abbey chequebook through my door addressed to me at her address. So I wrote a long and narky letter to their chief exec, dredging up past mistakes and asking why, when I had been assured that it could not happen again, it had happened again! I've had to chase this a few times with threats of notifying the Information Comissioner and the Ombudsman and such but have finally, this week, received a letter from them apologising for the error and advising that they'd popped £50 into my account 'in full and final settlement'. Well that's lovely and all - £50 never goes amiss - and I could leave it there as no harm was actually done, but both the tone of the letter and the payment were a bit fob-offish and their announcing that a payment (for which I had no opportunity to accept or decline) is in full and final settlement in now way makes it in full and final settlement. And what if my ex was not the scrupulously honest person that she is? What if we had been less amicable in our separation? So really, what I'm asking is... should I just take my £50 and enjoy it, or should I make Abbey work just a little bit harder? (I'm considering going after them for about £200 worth of charges from the period immediately after our separation - would this just confuse the issue further down the line?)

A variation on a theme here. A few years ago, I bought a laptop from Time. It came with Windows XP pre-installed on it and it didn't come with a disk (although there was a licence sticker on the bottom of the laptop with the number on it). Now, some time after Time went bust, the laptop died on me and I needed to re-install Windows. Problem was that I had no disk. I tried a bit of lateral thinking and tried installing it from a friend's Windows disk using my licence number to no avail. I tried contacting Microsoft by e-mail but they didn't feel the need to respond to me. So I've been running a dodgy copy of windows on the laptop for a year or so despite legitimately owning a licence. Of course this means I'm not eligible for updates and I have to get pestered by that speech bubble every 10 minutes or so that tells me that my copy windows is dodgy. So... what responsibility does MS have in regard to ensuring that I have a legitimate copy of their product? Or am I a filthy software pirate that should burn in a special copyrighty level of hell?

Just to add my tuppence to the interpretetation of the Proceeds of Crime Act, it's my understanding that when a Financial Intitution reports suspected money laundering to NCIS they may be required by NCIS to continue operating the account while investigations take place. They can't notify any third party about their suspicions as they may be liable to a tipping off offence. On that basis, I pretty sure they can defend your claim. Obviously if you can prove negligence on their part in opening the account (and you'd have to persuade them to break the Data Protection Act to tell you what checks they did at account opening) then you may be able to persue a claim against them. I'll be very interested to hear how this turns out!

You will find that as the recipient of the funds has made a reasonable offer to return the money your boss isn't going to get very far with legal action. Your boss can't have interest. Your boss should consider himself fortunate that the recipient is prepared to return the funds without argument. The customers of banks are not under any legal requirement to check their bank statements. If this person had changed his or her position (i.e. spent the funds) because they assumed that the money in their account was in fact theirs, then they have a good case, subject to a test of reasonableness, to return only part of, or none of the funds.

It may be that your bank is concerned about a type of fraud known as 'uncleared effects fraud' or 'crossfiring', where cheques are used to make 'complex' payments and funds are stolen from the bank by taking advantage of delays in the clearing cycle. Your branch may have been hit by a sizeable one recently and have tightened up their process as a result. Differing procedures are quite common in 'high risk' branches. You could point out that you don't fit the 'profile' of a fraudster - particularly as you have banked with them for so long. Have a nice holiday!

'Course the other thing we see quite a lot is that the cheque turns up for 10 times the amount required for the car. The 'buyer' realises his 'mistake' and asks you to pay it in then send him the difference by transfer. Then the cheque gets returned, leaving you well and truly out of pocket. They're not usually to worried about collecting the car, though!

Working days, perhaps? Of which (arguably) there were 18. I guess it depends on what the agreement says on the subject.

You can also go to Disclosure Scotland and make the request online for £20. It's pretty quick, although they quote 6 weeks - I had to use it recently as my employer decided that all staff in 'sensitive' roles had to be retroctively checked out.