I'm STILL paying off a £750 card I maxed out in 2002! If you miss a couple of months payments they come down on you like a ton of cow shit
Oh I've been there. I have a Barclaycard with only a paltry £450 limit. I borrowed the money on it 3 years ago, and have paid it back time and time again. But I'm still making absolutely no headway in reducing the debt because the minimum payment makes almost no ingress into reducing the amount you owe and the charges for missed payments are so excessive (their particular favourite trick seems to be charging you £30 for being late with a payment, charging that to your account, which then results in you being charged another £30 for making a transaction which took you out of your agreed credit limit. A double charge for one misnomer!).
What really pissed me off though, was neither of the banks contacted me by post or phone to inform me there was a problem.
Talk about a lack of communication. Banks really piss me off!!
I think debt recovery is something which badly needs better regulation. There seemingly is nothing to stop anyone from setting up a debt collection agency, and such agencies often seem to take a case on face value from their client without any proof. Something which springs to my mind is when I was in disbute with SWEB Energy over an unpaid electricity bill which they were trying to hold me to account for even though the bill was for a period from before I moved into the property.
After a fruitless exchange of correspondance which went on for the better part of a year, they ended the stalemate by drafting in 'Knight Debt Recovery Services' to get the money of me, a typical one-man-and-his-group-of-thugs outfit which demanded payment of the disputed bill. SWEB had no further interest in the matter, for they had 'sold' the debt to the agency. Regardless of the fact that I rightly refused payment to SWEB, I did now owe this outfit money, nothing I prodced in regard to SWEB was of interest to them because they didn't care how the alledged debt had come into being, and I was threatened with 'home visits' from their 'outstanding debt enforcement team'. Since the bill was for a relatively modest amount, I actually did end up paying it rather than find out what a home visit would mean, but I remain bitter about it to this day.
My thinking on debt recovery is that it should be there to provide better access to civil justice for the 'little people'. The problem with civil law is that effective enforcement of it can only be viably be carried out by people with enough money behind them to risk taking something to court. Turning that on it's head though, financial institutions, major corporations, and others who can viably afford to sue you in the courts in order to extract outstanding debts, should be required to go down that road - such bodies should not have the option of appointing debt collection agencies as a scare tactic to recover bad debts.
Debt collection agencies would continue as an option for the 'little people' to get their money back - for an independent business seeking to recover money lost in a debtor defaulting on an agreement, not so that Barclaycard can threaten you with visits from 'Mercers Debt Collection Limited' to make their default notices sound more threatening. But, these agencies should be properly licenced and properly regulated to ensure that they do function as bodies which recover bad debts, not groups of thugs which extort money out of people. As a part of this, they should not be allowed to take up a client's case without that client providing significant documentary evidence which supports the claim of bad debt. They should also be required to ask for, and consider, the debtors' side of the story (along with considering any documentary evidence in contrivance of the alledged bad debt which the debtor might be able to supply).
Debt collection agencies, along with wheel clampers, should be provided as legitimate services for persons who genuinely need them, not a group of thugs seeking to get rich quick whilst carrying out work for bodies which are quite able to deal with outstanding debts through the courts.
Above all else though - debt recovery agencies should remain bodies acting on behalf of their clients to secure the return of money to their client in exchange for a comission, the concept of 'selling debt' so that a 'client' can simply offload a debt to a third party which that third party can then demand repayment of is so open to abuse that it should be made illegal.
