Npower CCJ and HCEO revisit after stopping old payments

[joshcam]

Hi, I'll try and explain this as best I can,

 

last December (a week before Christmas to be exact) we had a visit from 2 high court enforcement officers (their ID was on a laminated card)

 

they said they were from court enforcement services and were acting on behalf of NPOWER for an unpaid ccj that has been transferred up to the high court and they were here to take payment or sieze goods which I think they said was to the value of £2563 - odd,

 

( we said you can see we don't have goods to that value anyway and they agreed)

 

at no point was any paperwork produced to break down any of the companies fee's or anything or any high court writ produced.

 

Now as it was Christmas and my husband was a bit panicked that these people had turned up and put him on the spot

 

he told the officer he'd pay £150 a month on a certain date

(which is completely not do-able in our circumstances with 5 children and myself not working and he shouldn't of offered to pay that amount in the first place),

 

with that the officer said ok i'll text you the agreement when I'm outside in my car and let you know the account details and remind you of date to pay etc and it was exactly that a written text saying

reference number -

Automated line (number)

account number:

sort code:

total amount £2563

instalments on .... every month

 

I was upstairs keeping the children away at this point and came down to find he'd offered to pay £150 every month,

 

I asked if there was any paperwork or anything which there wasn't.

 

he paid £150 for 2 months,

we're currently paying off a fair few debts and it put us under so much strain we could barely pay the rent!

 

we researched a few things online and got mixed messages about high court writs ,

this company in particular what powers they had exactly ,

 

my husband rang the company up explained what had happened and said we'd paid 2 months but we have no paperwork to see where the money's actually gone,

 

no evidence of a high court writ,

no paperwork to say if any fee's are to be added

literally nothing but a bank account + sort code!

 

they told my husband they would email it over,

twice he made this phone call and twice told the same thing with NO EMAIL actually arriving.

 

I decided we'd stop paying as we could be paying anyone without any paperwork.

January was our last payment

 

yesterday they decided to turn up again

(I know with high court they don't let you know they are coming anyway)

 

when we asked for some sort of paperwork to prove this writ existed one of them pulled up a picture on their phone and zoomed in on a stamp they say is from the high court and said this is your writ and there is the stamp.

 

One officer in particular was really agitated when we kept questioning why we had no paperwork to prove where the payments were going,

 

saying they don't need to provide paperwork we are just to pay it as it's an order from the high court ,

 

he told my husband to be quiet whilst HE spoke

(now my husband is as polite as you get so wasn't being rude or anything)

 

but we were promptly spoke over when we were explaining what we wanted to know.

 

They said we are lucky they haven't charged us for this visit or the first one as they have come from London to the south west .

 

Also mentioned was the fact if we didn't pay Npower could apply to make my husband bankrupt.

 

whilst i've spent most of my night researching various options to stop these people coming back as i'm not paying without any paperwork with breakdown of fee's etc

 

we'd really appreciate any advice or pointing in the right direction of what to do next and how to handle the situation.

 

my husband is ringing the county court this afternoon to double check the status ,

 

do we also ring NPOWERS legal dept and see what they've got to say (again the officers said to ring them too)

 

Thank you.

[ericsbrother]

you have failed to start at the beginning,

 

you have said nothing about the debt to Npower or the county court claim they filed against you,

nor what you have done after receiving the judgement.

 

Bailiffs dont just turn up seize good either,

they have to go through certain steps

(they sometimes forget to tell people this as you have now experienced) and there are fixed charges for this regardless of where they come from so their travel is nothing to do with that.

 

start at the beginning and people will offer more relevant advice

[joshcam]

Hi, thanks for your reply,

without my husband here (at work) it's difficult to fill in the gaps,

 

I know he had a long standing dispute with Npower as we had a lot of problems with them when we first moved in (3 years ago)

 

I know he'd received various letters asking for payment from npower themselves and paid vary little.

 

I believe he didn't defend against the ccj being made when the paperwork came through the post and since i haven't seen any judgement paperwork ordering payment,

 

if it has come through obviously to get to this stage it's been ignored and un paid :

( , sorry if that's sketchy but i myself am unsure of exact details/ the ins + outs. perhaps it might be better to get him to pop on this post and fill in the gaps when he's home.

[dx100uk]

You sure they were HCEO??

Very rare for npower to switch courts and use hceo's

 

Are you sure the claimant on the CCJ was npower not a dca debt buyer??

[ploddertom]

Just to short circuit a few posts above.

 

nPower do use HCEOs as have dealt with a few now.

 

As for what happened- the bill(s) have gone unpaid and as you say above if he did not defend the CCJ they will have gained a CCJ by Default.

 

No payment being made then nPower will have transferred the debt for enforcement through the High Court and that is why the visit has been made initially.

[dx100uk]

Thanks PT

[ploddertom]

Before CES visited you there should have been a letter entitled Notice of Enforcement giving you a specific date in which to pay in full or negotiate payment proposals. Did you receive this? If not are you sure your OH hasn't just buried it somewhere.

[joshcam]

Hi,

to be honest I see a few debt letters come through my door,

have a few ccjs already (both of us)

 

 

it's entirely possible it's been opened and put aside/in a draw or binned.

 

 

I guess we must of received this before the first visit or they wouldn't of turned up?

 

Is it right we can apply for something through the court to stop these turning up and pay directly?

 

 

Should we have s copy of any paperwork for payments already made?

 

What I'm personally not keen on doing is continuing to pay money into an account and have no record of payments made or what charges are being/have been added.

[unclebulgaria67]

Yes if you can't pay you can make an application to the court

 

https://www.nationaldebtline.org/EW/factsheets/Pages/highcourtenforcement/highcourtbailiffs.aspx

[dx100uk]

N244 to set it aside

n245 to vary the judgement

both are in our library. legal section.