Hi,

I moved into my property a while ago now, When i first moved in i kept getting letters for the previous tenant from Lowell Financial for an outstanding debt. After sending Lowell Lots and Lots of emails letters etc they still continued to send the letters.

So i decided to write to them for the last and final time and explained that if they dont stop sending these letter i will take legal action, As it was making me sick with worry. Anyway thses letters seemed to stop for a little while.

Almost exactly 6 months to the day, Lowell have sent a letter to my address with the previous tenants name and have also put my name beside it. Im absolutly horrified that they have done this. Surely this is against the law? They cant put someone elses debt ito another persons name......

Im really angry i am now back to square one and yet again sent loads of emails and no reply....... They are so rude and im going round in circles.

The Office of Fair Trading have a list of guidelines by which debt collection agencies must abide, http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/consumer_credit/oft664.pdf

This document contains a list of practices which the OFT consider unfair, including:

2.4(f) "pursuing third parties for payment when they are not liable"

2.6(h) "ignoring and/or disregarding claims that debts have been settled or are disputed and continuing to make unjustified demands for payment"

2.8(a) "sending demands for payment to an individual when it is uncertain that they are the debtor in question, for example, threatening debt recovery action to 'the occupier' or sending a payment demand to all people sharing the same name/date of birth as a debtor in the hope that contact with the correct debtor will be made."

2.8(i) "failing to investigate and/or provide details as appropriate, when a debt is queried or disputed, possibly resulting in debtors being wrongly pursued"

2.8(k) "not ceasing collection activity whilst investigating a reasonably queried or disputed debt."

If you believe any of the guidelines listed above, or any other of the guidelines listed in the document, may have been breached by the debt collection agency in question with regards to their dealings with you, then a complaints form which may be used to report any breaches to the OFT is available here, http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/business_leaflets/consumer_credit/DebtCollectionComplaintForm.DOC

Further information is also available here, http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_resources/resource_base/legal/cca/debt-collection

jt:

Hi,

I moved into my property a while ago now, When i first moved in i kept getting letters for the previous tenant from Lowell Financial for an outstanding debt. After sending Lowell Lots and Lots of emails letters etc they still continued to send the letters

Sorry but if you opened letters addressed to someone else i think you may have actually broken the law yourself, i assume that from what you have said you opened them, if not then i apologise.

That aside though Lowell are a pain in the backside