Need of advice in regards to hfo

[Reidy82]

Hi everyone

I'm new here so i am not sure if i am posting this in the right section. If not i appoligise in advance and please move this to relevant section.

 

I am looking for some advice for my father in regard to a company called HFO.

 

In 2004 my dad had a barclaycard credit card and has recently been contacted by hfo in regards to an outstanding balance they say he owes them in the sum of nearly 5000 pounds.

 

My dad did previously have a account with barclaycard but it was only in the range of a few hundred pound

he owed them but in the same year my dads health detterorated as he was diagnosed with kidney cancer and was admitted to surgery instantly in which a massive tumour was removed

and he went through large amount of treatment and tests and admittedly never got round to paying off the balance.

 

When my father was in hospital at that partifcular time i remember being at my parent house and a phone call came for my dad from barclaycard,

i explained the situation and nothing was heard from them again not by letter, phone call or anything and it genuiley with the way thing had been happen was totally forgot about.

 

On the 17th of this month i recieved a phone call on home phone from someone claiming to be called Andy from hfo quizzing me about my father,

He started off the call hi Louise it's andy could i speak to thomas please, catching me off guard and confused i said my father?? then he said i'm from Hfo we need to speak to him.

 

As soon as i heard this alarm bells began to rang and i asked him how did he get my number? i had not lived with my parents for years.

 

He kept evading my question how he got my number.

 

He asked me if he could speak to my father i told him i did not live with him and hadnt for years and he got rather cross with me like i was lying.

then he changed his approaching asking if my father still stayed at his address and such and asked me to confirm my dads home number which he read out to me.

 

because of the call i refused to answer any questions again asking how he got my number and the phone cut out on there end

weather the person realised i was not going to answer his question or not or weather the call cut out accidently i do not know.

 

Later that day i had three more calls on my mobile this time from the same person asking the same questions.

 

I Again requested how they got my number everytime as well as my mobile they would not answer me so i told them if they refused to answer my question i was not going to answer theres.

 

 

On the same day my father received a letter at his home address from HFO and the letter he recieved was very much full of slanderous sentence.

They tried to imply on the letter that my father had been evading them for years by moving to address

and trying to apply for credit elsewhere and that he has not been placing his name on the voters role also to advade being traced.

 

This alone was not true because my dad has lived at the same address for the last 13 years

and if he had been moving address then why did they send the letter to the same address he has always lived at,

hes has also been on the voter roll every year and he has not applied for any credit since 2004

when he was diagnosed with his cancer and has basically been bed ridden since with all treatment hes had.

 

I contacted citizeans advice for him and spoke to them yesterday in regards to the letter

and they said the would assist my father with this matter.

 

But today my mother phoned me in a panic and very upset that another letter had arrived much worse than the first only

this time a small ariel picture of my parents house was attached to it and the balance from the previous letter had went up nearly 500 pounds.

 

This is really scaring my parents as there talks of balliffs and all sorts on the letter and the picture has scared the life out of them

and i am worried all this will set my dads health on a decline.

 

I really need any and all advice i could get in how to handle this if anyone could help me i would very much appreicate it.

Thank you

Louise

Edited November 24, 2010 by dx100uk
clarity

[DonkeyB]

Calm down. We’ll get you through this.

 

First of all, can you confirm that HFO have been chasing YOU about your father’s debt? And phoning you?

 

Also, has your father had ANY correspondence from HFO prior to this communication?

 

In the meantime, please scan the letters you have received, removing your personal details. We’ll get you to put them up on here in due course (you’ll need 20 posts to do this).

 

Is your father well enough to help us deal with this, for example by contacting Barclaycard? If necessary, we can sort out letters so you can act on his behalf.

 

When do HFO claim to have bought the account?

 

Whatever you do, do not talk to HFO. If you have to, or can’t avoid a call, make sure you record the call.

 

They have so far broken a lot of rules, but we’ll go through the process bit by bit.

 

I’m tempted to get the Mail’s Tony Hetherington involved with this one...

[coledog]

Hi and welcome

 

I would not approach CAB until you have listened to the advice on here. They will probably just be able to offer to write to HFO and agree a small payment, as this is how they work. They are unlikely to advice you on the underhand tactics employed by this company or how to complain about them.

 

The letters are designed to scare you witless and so are the calls. NEVER speak to these people on the phone say, 'in writing only' and hang up.

 

You will need to find out more about this debt and when the last payment was made etc. I will dig out some documents.

[FORMISTER]

I know it's hard, but don't worry. You will get some great advice on this site from people who have been in the same situation as you. They cannot send bailiffs around unless they have a CCJ awarded and the court enforces it.

 

You already have two more than informed people posting on your thread who have given me great advice on my problems and if you give them all the info you can , they will set you on the right path. The only advice I will give you is to listen to their advice!

[coledog]

I would suggest you send this letter to Barclaycard, sign in the dotted box. Enclose a postal order for £10 and send recorded. Hopefully this will reveal how old this is and when the last payment was made. BC have up to 40 days to reply, but hopefully will be quicker.

Standard SAR.doc

[harrassed senior]

As has already been said, baillifs are a long way in the future, if at all, not relevant at all, just their nasty way of trying to scare you into paying.

 

As the account was taken out years' ago, there is a good chance we can help you/your Dad get through this, with very little if any need to large payments.

 

To add to what has already been said, is there a period of 6 years between the last payment and now?

[sillygirl1]

HFO need to be reported for their tactics, and if you follow the advice given they can be sent packing. They are not allowed to send out pics of your house, that is just one rule they have broken, there are others...

[Reidy82]

Thank you everyone for your advice. I will get the letter scanned in the as soon as i can. Do i post them here or is it another section?

 

Donkeyb in answer to your questions.

My father right now is not in a fit state to deal with this because of health problem decling rapidly he has various illness's and he is in and out of hospital on a regular basis and is on a lot of medication and because of this he becomes very forgetfull and is not with it so to speak because of the med's he is on.

 

Before the phone calls and the two letter's he has recieved in the last week there has been no other correspondence been made from hfo that we are aware of. So i am assuming that they have just aquired this debt as this has been the first contact they have ever made and it was very threatening as i said my parents are petrified by todays letter.

 

As you can imagine i am worried for my own dad's sake due to his ill health i am a little worried this will set his health into a deeper decline than it allready is.

 

I have allready blocked the phone number on my mobile that they had called from by adding them to my reject list

I think last payments of the debt would have been around summer of 2004 as that would have been when my father was diagnosed and he was taken in for surgery and that was around the time i remember speaking to barclaycard when they called there home as i was living there at the time and was dealing with a lot of what was going on as my mother was not dealing with things very well with worrying on weather my father was going to pull through for being diagnosed.

 

Thank you coledog i will get this letter printed out and sent to barclaycard as you have suggested.

 

Harassed sensor it would be exactly 6 years since the last payment as i said previously in 2004 was last time any contact from barclaycard was made.

 

I would also like to add to my previous post that the printed ariel picture of my parent home that was added to the back of the letter looked as though the company had got it from google maps as the picture that was printed in the letter was an older view from a few years ago and it was my partner that noticed it and when we looked it up it was indeed the same ariel view.

[dadofholly]

Upload the scanned documents to here.

 

You will need to have made 20 posts before you can add a link to the documents, so when you are ready to upload them click on the triangle below and ask a memeber of the site team to enable you to do this.

 

Alternativley just make another 18 posts with the "bump" in them.

 

Here is a link than can give you some guidance on how to edit and upload your documents. make sure you remove all personal info and agreement numbers etc.

 

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/content.php?115-How-to-open-a-PhotoBucket-account-and-use-it-to-post-pictures-on-the-Consumer-Action-Group

[dadofholly]

I’m tempted to get the Mail’s Tony Hetherington involved with this one...

 

Maybe worth giving him a heads up considering the circumstances involved.

[coledog]

Reidy

 

As well as the SAR, I would also suggest that you send a CCA request to HFO as this should keep them busy and after 12 plus 2 working days you can put the account in dispute until they produce an agreement. Post back if you hear anything

 

CCA Letter

 

CCA letter to send with a £1 postal order by recorded delivery, do not sign. They have 12 plus 2 working days to reply. If nothing valid is received you can send a letter to put the account in dispute and this should stop them contacting you.

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/content.php?414-CCA-request-letter

I also think that you need to make some complaints to the OFT and Consumer Direct (to be refered to Trading Standards) Below are some useful links. HFO have really brroken OFT guidelines here and some serious complaints are needed.

OFT Guidance link

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/content.php?416-The-OFT-Debt-collection-guidance

Complaints

OFT&TS via http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/contact

 

MOJ via http://www.justice.gov.uk/contactus.htm

 

Local MP via http://www.writetothem.com/

[DonkeyB]

Anything doing here, Reidy?