Mercers Debt Collection

[franmc12]

Hi CL, you can report mercer's to Trading Standards. I did this with one collection agency, but i also wrote down how many times they phoned, and how many letters i had from them. I never heard from them after reporting them.

Best of luck

Fran

[Candylee]

dear 42

sent you private message re: harassment mercers. Hopefully contents will be posted on-line. It is virtually a full time job, contacting all the various FOS, TS, ofcom etc all must be sent recorded, with postal strike forget it! As the women said at mercers, " we are barclays, we can do want we want, we can do anything, we can take away your property and all your belongings!" I am going to write a letter to Gordon Brown and hope to get something done about this threatening behaviour. My biggest fear is that even if i take them to court, probably the Judge will have shares in Barlcays or one of the big banks and it will be a lost case. Need support of other consumers. Perhaps you could get a good thread going RE: Gordon Brown - consumers want to be protected from greedy banks. with regulation which is reinforced. REINFORCED!!!!! yes i am very very angry!!!

[AA99]

We have 4 x BC accounts. 2 are back with BC who have acknowledged our complaints and will reply by 29 October. The other 2 are with solicitors.

 

Mercers have really accelerated their calls of late, all recorded:cool: However, I received one on Monday from a computer recorded voice, saying this was a call for ************ (3 full names - a completely different lady!).

 

Surely this needs reporting:eek:

[BankFodder]

yes. Report it. Report everything. never let up complaining. It may seem to make very little difference that eventually if enough people do it then the authorities may grudgingly take some action

[Desperate Daniella]

Phone FOS and report that conversation. They will log your complaint and give you a reference number which you can then quote to Barclays/Mercers who actually do take notice as soon as you quote the number. You can follow it up in writing, or by email.

[majka]

dear 42

sent you private message re: harassment mercers. Hopefully contents will be posted on-line. It is virtually a full time job, contacting all the various FOS, TS, ofcom etc all must be sent recorded, with postal strike forget it! As the women said at mercers, " we are barclays, we can do want we want, we can do anything, we can take away your property and all your belongings!" I am going to write a letter to Gordon Brown and hope to get something done about this threatening behaviour. My biggest fear is that even if i take them to court, probably the Judge will have shares in Barlcays or one of the big banks and it will be a lost case. Need support of other consumers. Perhaps you could get a good thread going RE: Gordon Brown - consumers want to be protected from greedy banks. with regulation which is reinforced. REINFORCED!!!!! yes i am very very angry!!!

 

Hi CandyLee

 

welcome to the club, I am ver vey angry too. A bit different situation - I have been tryin to cancel a membership with one of the dodgy holiday clubs and the loan with barclays, but they have passed my debt to Mercers who are harrasing me with phone calls and threaten with home visit.

I will join happily join the list !

[42man]

You can email the OFT and Ofcom have a web complaints section you can also fill in...I think you can email trading standards also. FOS, you don't have to send recorded...

[shocking53]

Mercers have been ringing my mobile phone for the past 2 weeks sometimes up tp 8 times per day! I found their telephone number and rang them to explain that I am not the person they want and do not know the person that they want! I bought a pay as you go phone and card from Tesco but apparently Vodafone had recycled my number and it was someone elses!! so I was getting his calls(I am a woman) asking me for money. Mercers to their credit took my mobile number and have told me that I will be wiped off their database because they could clearly see that I had been getting umpteen calls day after day after day. I hope that this helps anyone. If they need their number I will of course place it on here.

[sybtik]

In reply to the above template letter - do these laws still stand in Scotland? They are harrassing me (see my post) taking to insulting me to get me to talk to them, ignoring requests to deal with CAB or put anything in writing and now threatening to send out doorstop people.

 

Many thanks

[baldhead]

Mercers are a vicious bunch of dogs !

We have an IVA in progress , they have the details , case numbers etc..

BUT boxing day i had 7 phone calls from them ! .

My two children have been told not to answer the phone.

These animals have to answer to somebody !

I look forward to the door step visit...baseball bat awaits !

[diddydicky]

Mercers are a vicious bunch of dogs !

We have an IVA in progress , they have the details , case numbers etc..

BUT boxing day i had 7 phone calls from them ! .

My two children have been told not to answer the phone.

These animals have to answer to somebody !

I look forward to the door step visit...baseball bat awaits !

 

nothing that a truecall won't put a stop to!!

[beachcomber60]

Agree with DD, we bought Truecall because of Barclaycard/Mercers & Calders -Truecall stopped them dead in their tracks.

 

Worth every penny

 

'B'

[baldhead]

but why pay nearly £100 to stop these mercers **** phoning you at home ! they are **** and filth ..treat them as such

I have changed my mobile number after phoning the police and getting a crime report number against mercers ,our land line has a block against numbers from you know WHO ! THESE THUGS HAVE TO BE STOPPED ..

[diddydicky]

but why pay nearly £100 to stop these mercers **** phoning you at home ! they are **** and filth ..treat them as such

I have changed my mobile number after phoning the police and getting a crime report number against mercers ,our land line has a block against numbers from you know WHO ! THESE THUGS HAVE TO BE STOPPED ..

 

its a matter of choice (80 quid is nearer the mark)

 

some people cant hack the calls

 

others don't want the embarrasment of "fielding" such a call when they have family or guests in the house

 

when you have lots of cards to sort out it can be a real bonus

 

personally i dont tell the dca's or creditors that i have the device

 

now and then when i respond to one of their letters i moan bitterly at the inconvenience their constant ringing of the phone causes

 

Looking at my call logs i can see that the muppets continue to call in the beleif that even if i am not answering they are annoying me

 

so you see you can even use the truecall to play little games with them

 

also VERY useful for recording their lies .

 

I have one exceptional recording of a creditor telling me there is no signed agreement and that my first use of the card acts as the execution of the agreement

 

Bless!! not their fault that they have so few brain cells

 

but not really into calling people **** and filth- they are doing a job

 

further i think you should rejoice that they are not very good at it- for if they were lots more people would be paying back debts

[Huff&Puff]

£70 from Amazon:

 

TrueCall - The Nuisance Call Blocker: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

[Desperate Daniella]

Boxing Day!!!! That is absolutely outrageous. ****, as you say.

 

I used to tell my five year old not to answer the phone but I've now discovered, by accident because she did answer it one day, that they will just hang up on a child. Anyone who knows me asks for 'Mummy' and of course they say hello to her. DCAs just hang up, or say they will call back.

 

I tell her that it's obviously someone wanting to sell us something which we don't want, and she accepts that without question.

[diddydicky]

£70 from Amazon:

 

TrueCall - The Nuisance Call Blocker: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

 

thats good- getting cheaper - but you need to also have the extra bit as well ideally

[silfield]

After no end of nuisance calls from various companies, but most especially Mercers, my husband bought a True call and it has been worth every penny!

If you can afford one, and they are getting cheaper, I would 100% recommend one!

I am still fighting Mercers, even tho barclays gave me an opportunity to pay reduced amounts in a letter dated 12 January, and said they would give me 28 days to consider my position and would not contact me in that time, low and behold just 2 days later I received two threatening text messages from Calders who are just Mercers/Calders/Barclays!

I have now written with an offer of monthly payment plus a blistering complaint aboutCalders actions. I also sent copies of the text messages.

We'll see what happens!!

[beetzart]

I used to have two accounts with Mercers, both Barclaycard. When I couldn't afford to make informal repayments any more they bombarded me night and day with calls. I was still making payments but much smaller ones. I then found CAG and CCA'ed them. What I got back was pure rubbish and ceased payment. They haven't recieved payment for nearly 18 months now and I haven't heard a thing from them. Deep down I know they will pop up again sometime but in the meanwhile it is nice to be out of their grasp.

[oilyrag]

removed

Edited January 27, 2010 by oilyrag
advice

[AA99]

Mercers hounded us until we got TrueCall too! Now 1 BCard is with solicitors, 2 other BCards with the FOS for over a year and still, the hound. I'd love to be their stationery supplier! They're still sending out postcards too:shock:

[oilyrag]

removed

Edited January 27, 2010 by oilyrag
professional advice to do so

[domtheman7]

I think it is all well and good reporting them to the authorities, but in my experience they either:-

 

a) Work in an understaffed office, have plenty of other work to do and no appetite to take on big banks (remember Trading Standards or "ConsumerDirect" as they seem to want to call themselves, are paid by the local council and every pound spent on that is a pound less on education, road gritting, etc. in the context of shrinking budgets).

 

b) Have no empathy and therefore do not understand the importance (i.e. "well if you aren't paying them back, they are entitled to chase you for payment").

 

or

c) simply don't know how to deal with the big banks and their even bigger firms of lawyers - remember, behind the scenes once you make a complaint there is a lot of correspondence you won't know about going on, where the bank's lawyers persuade trading standards to drop the case.

 

And as for "secondary" regulators, such as OFTEL, Information Commissioner, etc., just forget about it. They do not see it as their core job.

 

There is no way on earth that the OFT are going to close down a High Street Bank, make hundreds of thousands of staff redundant, withdraw billions of pounds from the economy, and - most important - upset the Government, by refusing to give a consumer credit licence to a bank. It just is not going to happen.

 

I think the only way to go, the only way to make them sit up and take notice, is to enforce the law properly. If I owed you money, and you came around to my house DEMANDING to see me, or phoned me eight times on Boxing Day, I would phone the police and you would certainly be arrested.

 

There would be no messing about with complaining to official bodies, writing pointless letters, or issuing civil claims. It would be an investigation, an arrest and then if justified a prosecution to seek to get the offender punished.

 

So that is what I think is the only way we will get this sorted. First offence = £500 fine; second offence = £2,000 fine; third = £5,000 and fourth = £20,000. It won't take long before they realise that they have to stop! And these sort of punitive punishments will have twenty times more of an effect than any civil claim for a few quid damages would!

 

The police won't bring such a claim, so the answer is private prosecution. I know somebody who is privately prosecuting a top name High Street bank (won't say who it is at this stage as there are delicate negotiations going on and the case may settle - if it doesn't I will gladly post their name) at this very moment.

 

It isn't easy, and it is not a do it yourself job, as they employ the top lawyers in the world to defend themselves and it is easy to get tripped up by the rules. But you can get solicitors to help you (I won't advertise on the site as this is against the rules, but PM me and I will give you details if you are interested - I know a firm who has expertise in this and is more than willing to take on the Goliaths on behalf of Davids or Davinas!) and the costs can be deferred to the end of the case and either paid by the bank or claimed from central funds.

 

This is CRIMINAL behaviour and it is about time it was brought home to them that this is the case. What they are doing is just illegal.

[Huff&Puff]

There is no way on earth that the OFT are going to close down a High Street Bank, make hundreds of thousands of staff redundant, withdraw billions of pounds from the economy, and - most important - upset the Government, by refusing to give a consumer credit licence to a bank. It just is not going to happen.

 

You may be correct that they will never withdraw a credit licence from a bank. However we are talking about DCAs here, when we advice complaining to the OFT. There is a real chance of one or more of those losing their licence(s). Which is why it's always worth complaining, IMO.

[AA99]

dom, if it'll cheer you up any, once you've zapped all their calls on a machine, copy their letters (for your records!) and then fold them into paper planes and zap them round the room:cool: