How many times a day

[trayday]

How many times a day have you had phone calls from your credit card company/bank, telling you what you already know, that you owe them money! how many times do you have to say yes, i know and i will do my best to pay you back.

 

Today i've had two calls from the Halifax regarding my credit card, one this afternoon and another at 8.40 this evening.

 

During the earlier call i yet again explained, i am not working at the moment i have had a breakdown but getting better. but still living on incapacity and disability living allowence, but you must know this as every 2 months you help yourself to £60 of my benefit straight out of my current account. yes came the reply we can do this, its our right you owe us money.

 

I told her i paid £10 last week, was told this was not enough we need more this week. FOUR times she asked me to pay something today and Four times i told her I have no money today.

 

I agreed i would call the debt company they gave me the number for (payplan) if i did this they would stop calling me everyday sometimes up

to four times a day. I requested copies of all my credit card statments under DPA and told her i would go through them and would work out how much i owed them after removing the unlawful charges they have put on my account. She told me the charges were not unlawful that they were in place to stop people from abusing thier accounts. i said so its a punishment and she replied 'yeah kind of' so i asked for the statments and a transcript of the conversation to be sent to me.

 

this evening i had another call asking for payment. i told the young woman i felt this was harrassment and was told they can call upto 4 times a day. i was also told i would be charged for every copy of each statment they sent me and i could only go back 6 months.

[Spiceskull]

Time to strike back, although something tells me you will need a lot of encouragement and support in this. I had a breakdown a few years ago and know what a slog it is to get back together again.

 

In the first instance Dave is certainly right - this is harrassment, it is harmful and a court would not look favourably on this behaviour. Request that it cease forthwith, and follow moderator advice in this all the way.

 

Request all your data under the DPA requirements, and insist that this includes transcripts of your calls. Once they realise what was said they may start to play ball, but I doubt it.

 

After that it really is a case of following advice/procedure from the library/faq and familiarising yourself with what is required.

 

Good luck - nobody deserves this treatment.

[trayday]

Thank you both so much for your advice. i will wright to them Dave, bless you for that.

I have sent my DPA off for my current account but not the credit card.

i asked for transcrips of both calls today and was told that a manager would have to listen to them first.

[natalie]

Please please please go to this website.

 

http://www.cccs.co.uk/faqs/creditor.htm

 

This is the site for the Consumer Credit Counselling Service and this page tells you what your creditors are/arent allowed to do.

 

Guidelines have been put together by The Office Of Fair Trading giving guidance on what activities may be considered as harassment and should therefore be avoided by creditors.

 

Creditors are warned by the Office Of Fair Trading that they should not: -

 

Bring unreasonable pressure to bear on you in default of payment

 

Make nuisance visits and phone calls, or use abusive or threatening language in person, by letter or by telephone

 

Thats just a couple of points, they are acting illegally and I know that the CCCS will help you to get them to stop (report them as well but investigations may take time and you need them to stop immediately.)

 

I know I've harped on about the CCCS before but they pretty much saved my life when I was in a hole. They really do listen and are very sympathetic.

[Spiceskull]

Again - good luck.

[seylectric]

Very interesting post. Last year I placed an ad in Thomsons Directory, but then fell ill and couldn't repay them the £777 owing. Even though I explained the situation, Thomson passed it on to a debt collection agency, who phoned me up incessantly.

 

It was always the same guy, a real motormouth and very intimidating (and I'm not easily intimidated) and he would phone up, we would argue for several minutes (I would stick with my stance of refusing point blank to discuss anything about the account over the phone, nothing more, nothing less). I would eventually have to hang up and he would then repeatedly ring back non-stop, often for a dozen times or more. This went on for about five weeks and at it's peak I recieved over 100 calls in two weeks. I also recieved about 25 letters from the same firm during this period.

 

I eventually asked BT for help and they offered me a service called, I think, "choose to refuse". When somebody calls it gives you the option to block all future calls from that number. You just type 14258 into the p[hone, and there number is then blocked. This is very useful if you get a lot of sales or collectors calls. There is a small monthly charge, about £6 I think, for the service but it stops a lot of calls.

[Mal]

I find that if you refuse to confirm your Postcode/date of birth etc etc as lets face it they could be anyone calling up the calls stop

[queenjayne]

Interesting tip about not confirming date of birth and postcode. I have thought of trying that but never did, yet.

 

I have merely said, on occasion, that I did not wish to discuss this now and I would get in touch myself.

 

I have tried saying that they should put everything in writing, particularly when arrangements made during one phone call seem to have been forgotten a few days later when another individual from the same company phoned to harrass me again; this has happened on more than one occasion. I have been told by one credit card company that they don't send out anything in writing (didn't know whether to laugh or scream at that one); the same one told me they refused to cease phoning me.

 

I too have had my share of health problems - depression, in my case. My only advice is: try to not take it personally.

[Seminole]

You can also cite section 40 of the Administration of Justice Act which offers protection against harassment in these circumstances.

[mikeruss]

in the event of more phone calls say the following - this is from a Motley Fool advice on dealing with debt

--------

I am now taping the rest of this conversation: (Pause for effect) and I am putting you on notice, that I intend reporting you to the Office of Fair Trading, under Section 40 of The Administration of Justice Act 1970, for Harassment. Furthermore, I will from this point on, only communicate with you in writing and if I receive one more telephone call from you or your organisation, I will see that you face criminal proceedings under Section 2 of The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and before you say anything further, you may be interested to know that your consumer credit license will not protect you from prosecution. Are we now absolutely clear on the matter?

----------

Mike

[vix2000]

Thats right. Great advice from Mike. If I answer the phone and don't recognise the voice I always ask them to confirm who's calling before I tell them who I am. If its some telesales or someone I don't want to speak to, I don't speak to them, basically. I just say 'sorry, the householder's not in' (if telesales) or 'sorry shes not in' for anyone else. They don't know who you are and they should not be harrassing you like this. Put a stop to it now. You don't need this added stress.

[trundlecat]

Section 2 of The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 and before you say anything further, you may be interested to know that your consumer credit license will not protect you from prosecution

Mike

 

Just wanted to add my 2 penneth. The police WILL act if you report them for a breach of the 1997 act. They will telephone or write to the offending company and you will be given a crime number.

[Bookworm]

Or do as I do:

 

Go through the "I don't want you to call this number", and add "next time you call, I shall treat this as case of harassment and will deal with it accordingly". Next time, (make sure it's them first, lol), blow a whistle down the phone for 30 seconds, then hang up. I think you'll find they'll stop very quickly.

[Seminole]

Alternatively, when they ask for Mr Bloggs ask who they are. If they are the organisation that you don't want to speak to, just say that you will get Mr Bloggs and then just put the phone on the table and go off to do some ironing, cook a meal etc etc. Eventually they will get the message.

[Guest Alison82]

What about if you just don't speak, stay on the line but in silence they will soon get bored and hang up!

[trayday]

just a quick update, first a big thank you to all who have taken the time to help and give such good advice.

i have emailed the halifax and quoted the wireless and telegraph act at them, havent had a reply (there's a surprise) but also have not had any more phone calls either.

 

still haven't had the transcript of the two phone calls which i requested but have had 6 out of the 24 credit card statments i asked for under the DPA

[brandedcentaur]

Just wanted to add my 2 penneth. The police WILL act if you report them for a breach of the 1997 act. They will telephone or write to the offending company and you will be given a crime number.

 

Not MY lot! I phoned my police station to report a DCA (NCO) which sent a postcard to say they were sending someone round tomorrow (Tues 6 June) in response to a letter I sent THEM telling them to back off as the account in question was in dispute & that I refused to discuss it with third parties. I received another letter from them this morning.

 

Anyway, PC Plod got very frustrated & kept saying it wasn't a criminal offence "Just meet them & see what they have to say, it's just common sense!"

 

The best I could get out of him (when I advised him there could be a breach of the peace) was "Well if you need us, give us a call". Seeing as it took them half-an-hour to attend when I was assaulted 2 years ago, (you ccan SEE the police station from my house!), I don't think it would do much good! So - I wouldn't bother phoning the police!

[trundlecat]

Sad (but true in this day & age), in all cases it all depends on who's on duty when you happen to phone. Luckily the Sgt at our local station is my bro

[miss muppet]

Hi Trayday, hope you are feeling less intimidated by things now. We once had 23 calls one Sunday from Sainsburys which is when we started to fight back, once we had got hold of the CCCS, their self help pack is enormously helpful plus they told us we had been trying to pay too much in token payments, some people are only paying about £1 a day, the afore-mentioned bullies started backing off and we also used all the other tatics that people have mentioned i.e. harassment, we are now on repayment plans and no more telephone calls!

[dellydaisy]

Hi just to say your not alone in all this

I have just taken the advice off here about the wireless telegraphy act letter only time will tell if its done the trick.

Good luck delly x

[delorean]

Capital One done this to me, calling me several times a day, even up until around 9pm/10pm at night. They claimed they were legally entitled to do so. I don't know the law on this so I just put up with it.

 

One time a rep from Capital One called me, I offered to make payments and set up a plan and then she ended up hanging up the phone on me because according to her I was being abusive. I hope they have it recorded so it will prove I wasn't. She just hung up! I noted down the date and time though so if needed I have that to bring up.

[3-ft-ninja]

Hi,

Just a quick note to say that many of the collection companies work through

Anonymous telephone systems and there is a service that you can get from BT which blocks all anonymous calls. I am also under the impression that a collection company is only allowed to call a maximum of twice a day about relivant matters otherwise it is classed as harrasment as they are persuing without intention. Or somthing like that !

hope this helps... (i did notice this post is quite old but i just wanted to get my word in)

Ninja

[trayday]

This topic was closed on 03/07/19.

If you have a problem which is similar to the issues raised in this topic, then please start a new thread and you will get help and support there.

If you would like to post up some information which is relevant to this particular topic then please flag the issue up to the site team and the thread will be reopened.

- Consumer Action Group