CapQuest chasing brother for debt he doesn't owe: help please

[shifnal]

Hi!

 

Two weeks ago my brother received a letter from CapQuest telling him that they were chasing a debt. The problem is that the debt is owed by a woman that my brother has absolutely no knowledge of. The only connection is that they share the same surname.

 

My brother lives in a new build and is the original and so far only tenant (his landlord is the local housing authority). No one else has ever lived at the address, and no one of the name used by CapQuest.

 

Added to this my brother has never heard of the company the debt is owed to nor does he have any knowledge of how CapQuest have put the ladies name with his address.

 

I downloaded the appropriate letter for him to send to them telling them that they had the wrong person and the wrong address.

 

Yesterday, (19th August 2010) he received another letter still addressed to the same lady, informing him that it had been passed to CapQuest's legal department and that they would pass it to their solicitors by 23rd Aug is they heard nothing back. They have ignored the first letter and are still insisting that this lady lives at my brothers address, and threatening legal action.

 

I want to know what action should be taken next? The first letter has obviously been ignored and they are insisting that this lady they are chasing is living at my brothers home. He is upset and angry and fears that they will try and take him to court and make him pay for a debt that he has no knowledge of. Thank you.

[unclebulgaria67]

Will the local housing authority help by issuing a letter stating that your brother has always been the sole resident.

 

With companies like CapQuest they can just keep being really silly and will think that your brother is hiding this women in his house. This is why I have suggested getting a third party to confirm the occupancy information.

 

Your brother needs to check his credit record to make sure he has not been linked in anyway. If he has, he might have grounds to seek legal redress for compensation.

 

 

He should check with all credit reference agencies e.g. Experian, Equifax and call credit, as companies will report to different agencies, so records will differ. They all offer a free trial period, but he needs to remember to cancel or he will get charged.

[Bazooka Boo]

Personally, I would just send the letters back in the post RTS not known at this address, and ignore their childish threats, it IS NOT for your brother to prove that this debt is nothing to do with him, it is for them to prove otherwise, by entertaing the fools either by letter or telephone, will only encourage them, so DON'T CORRESPOND with them AT ALL.

 

You don't even need to go to the trouble of getting any third party involved to confirm his innocence, again by doing this it will merely encourage them more, so send the letters back in the post, and ignore the fools.

[dx100uk]

yep

return to sender

unknown at this address

 

dx

[shifnal]

Thanks for all the advice. Letter has been returned with RTS and Not Known At This Address on envelope.

[unclebulgaria67]

Thanks for all the advice. Letter has been returned with RTS and Not Known At This Address on envelope.

 

Wrong thing to do in my opinion. The letter could have been used as evidence and now has been sent back to be consigned to the bin at the debt company.

 

Failure to deal with this head on, will only mean more harassment and problems. Next time your brother wants a mobile phone contact, a mortgage or other financial product and he gets declined, he will regret not doing anything. If his credit records have been linked to this person in error, he has the chance to sort the matter out and claim compensation from those that have misused and mis reported his data.

[dx100uk]

??

a dca cannot put anything on anyone's cra file just because they 'think' someone lives at that AD......

 

dx

[harrassed senior]

Well no, but knowing what they can and can't do has never stopped them doing, and, for the most part, getting away with anything they choose!

[unclebulgaria67]

??

a dca cannot put anything on anyone's cra file just because they 'think' someone lives at that AD......

 

dx

 

I mentioned this, as it appeared from the OP's post that there could be a case of confused identity. As we have read, they do make mistakes and have paid out thousands in compo to a few Caggers, where they have done this in the past.

[Bazooka Boo]

Wrong thing to do in my opinion.

Failure to deal with this head on, will only mean more harassment and problems. Next time your brother wants a mobile phone contact, a mortgage or other financial product and he gets declined, he will regret not doing anything. If his credit records have been linked to this person in error, he has the chance to sort the matter out and claim compensation from those that have misused and mis reported his data.

 

Fantastically ludicrous UB, when has a litigant ever been put to strict proof that they are not the debtor in question? If a DCA/OC is so foolish to place adverse data on anyones CRF without having proof that they are indeed the alleged debtor then the CRA aswell as the DCA/OCcan be sued for damages for processing inaccurate data contrary to the DPA, which stand at a minimum of £1000 per incorrect entry.

 

To entertain these fools in a game of letter ternnis is playing into their hands, making any such reply to them will mean more harassment and problems, if they continue to pursue after being told they are barkng up the wrong tree, that is the time to go in guns blazing..

[Rayne]

Playing into their hands it may well be, but I can almsot see their Acme Auto-Threato-Gram Machine not giving a monkey's and churning out yet another piece of loo-roll. By all means RTS it but if they send another one then keep hold of it and start playing their game, happy in the knowledge that the end result in this case will be a nicely packaged compensation claim for any number of things. keep an eye on the CRF and the first sign of anything to do with this then nail them HARD.

[shifnal]

A copy of the letter has been kept and the details of when the letters were received.

[Bazooka Boo]

There is little to no point in keeping the letters when they are clearly chasing the incorrect person, the fact that they are chasing a female and the recipient is a male is proof enough that this debt has nothing whatsoever to do with your brother, if you send them back RTS, and simply keep a diary of events, when received, when posted back RTS, etc then that will be proof enough 'IF' it ever got to the stage of a court, which it won't, and can't as they have failed miserably to trace the correct debtor, if you keep hold of the letters they will wrongly assume that they have hit their target and continue to torment your brother by continually sending more dross, send them back RTS, there is nothing they can do except find the correct person.

Keeping the letters will only prolong the misery.

[unclebulgaria67]

Keeping the letters will only prolong the misery.

 

Sending them back won't do any good either, unless they are sent back with a complaint letter.

 

I have worked in financial services for one of the largest companies. Returned mail marked 'RTS', is considered low priority work and often does not get looked at properly. I would guess that most debt companies will just bin the letters on return without looking at them. Therefore they will keep on churning out letters in the belief that the debtor lives at the address.

 

I have also been in the situation of receiving loads of letters/phone calls to my address regarding a debtor that has never lived at my address. I kept just returning the letters marked RTS, but this did not stop the hassle. The only way most companies stopped is following a letter of complaint sent by recorded delivery.

 

I believe you can also contact the credit reference agencies to find out who is listed against your address and if there is a mistake you can ask them to look into any errors. The debt companies will often just go by the searches they have carried out with the CRA's, so if the CRA's records are wrong, this can be the cause of the problem.

[harrassed senior]

This probably means there is no 'correct' way of dealing with this problem.

 

If the letters are addressed to 'Mrs/Miss/Ms. then it is clear they are for a female and in theory should not even be opened but, this can be/might be/could be just a typo, someone being overly zealous somewhere along the line, I have myself received a few letters over the years addressed to the wrong gender, but were, nevertheless meant for me.

 

So, to open or not open? That is the first question.

 

Then, once you realise it is not meant for you, what to do, well the above advice covers most options, each way will have its' good and bad points, so it then comes down to personal choice. In my personal opinion, all courses are possible,but the results may differ.

[Bazooka Boo]

Agreed, it is for the OP to decide on the advice that has been given, I agree with UB that they simply toss the RTS letters in the bin without taking any notice of them, hence why my Mother is pulling her hair out with muck hall who don't understand I don't nor ever have lived their, half of me wants to ring them up and say 'here i am!' just so I can bait them again..

[unclebulgaria67]

BB

 

I had this problem, so I contacted Rob Sands their compliance manager, who apologised for the errors. Shortly afterwards, I found out that an offshoot of MH had contacted neighbours asking who lived at my address, as they did not believe me that my relative they were chasing lived abroad. I phoned them up and gave them a right b*llocking.

 

What I think is the case with most of the bottom feeder DCA's, is that they are very badly run. They simply do not invest in staff to attend to the good housekeeping of making sure they deal with their accounts properly. Instead they spend their money on employing more and more collection staff, to keep on making the phone calls and churning out the letters. This is very counter productive and means that they cannot be maximising the potential collections they could be making. If they only spent more time in making sure they had accurate information and had a more efficient process regime, they would be doing a lot better. You only have to look at the losses that some of the DCA's have been making.

 

Not that anyone on CAG is that bothered with incompetent DCA's. Perhaps their ineffectual operating practices are good news to some and a pain in the ass for others.

[Bazooka Boo]

Yes agreed, and if they trained their threat monkeys properly, or at all, and taught them some manners and how to use the Queens English correctly, then they might actually find that in not rubbing up alleged debtors the wrong way they may in fact collect much more money than they currently do.

 

As it is, they use underhand deceptive and dubious tactics in pursuit of their greed for money running roughshod over all they speak to or come into contact with therfore sending people this way in order to find out their rights, and they lose everytime.

 

Surely by now, the amount of complaints that have been generated about these companies, someone somewhere must turn on the light and think, "Something isn't right here" and look into it, the OFT are drawing wages under false pretences IMO.