My dealings with a debt recovery service

I GOT an interesting email from a debt recovery service telling me I needed to call them to fix up how to pay my outstanding debt.

Now I am useless with money so this made my stomach sink to my boots. I felt awful! I immediately rang the number set out in the letter and was met with a reasonably polite young man who asked me for my details.

I have to say, I was wary of doing that because I realise that some of these letters are in fact scams to fish for information from the caller that might help the scammers to empty bank accounts, so I did not give him the information he asked for.

I should say that I did check the company out on the web before I called them and they seemed to be legitimate.

The man I was talking to then refused to tell me how much I supposedly owed because I was not ‘playing ball’ with my details. I did however, manage to glean that the alleged debt was with ‘Talk Talk’ – our telephone provider but because I refused to tell him my full name, date of birth and address, the gentleman (I use the term loosely) then hung up on me.

Not being the greatest on financial matters, I confess to feeling a little sick at the thought of being labelled ‘debtor’ so I rang the other half at his work. He just laughed.

Not the response that I, in my worried state, wanted to hear.

"We pay by direct debit" he said, "every month. On the button."

Just to be on the safe side and just in case something had gone wrong from the banking end, I called Talk Talk to find out what the score was and sure enough they said there was nothing outstanding. Nadir, the lady on the other end of the phone said: "If you get any more letters just ignore them."

All very well for her to say.

Having been put through the wringer, I was not best pleased with the debt company so I tried to email them. It seems that while they have every right to send you and me demanding notes, they are not willing to receive such notes themselves.

No emails are accepted.

I tried calling the number I had called earlier and when another young man answered, I asked when they were going to write their apology to me and he too, like his earlier colleague, hung up on me.

It seems to me that there are those who ride roughshod through other people’s lives and they do not care one iota about the mayhem and the upset they cause. My experience was relatively mild and I was in a position to fight back. Others are not nearly so lucky.

What kind of a society do we live in where people are found guilty before any questions are asked? And then when they are proved innocent, no apology is forthcoming? It is institutional bullying of the very worst kind. Perhaps I need to change my phone provider.

You too? –

Susan Brown