Just discovered a CCJ raised against us
Discussion
I'll try and keep this as close to the point as possible.
My wife applied for a lease on a new car. Credit application was denied. Experian score was 999 prior to credit check which dropped her 20 points but still in excellent category. Called Experian and it turns out our property management agent raised a CCJ against my wife and I for an unpaid locksmith bill from one of our tenants in 2018.
CCJ was raised against an old address of ours from 6 years ago so had she not been refused the credit we would have been none the wiser. I went direct to the agents to find out what the hell was going on, they had no idea how the old address came up for the CCJ, they admitted they had our current address and had been conversing with us via letter within the last 6 years, statements/invoices etc which we had paid at every time.
To add to the situation, they couldn't find any evidence of the locksmith bill ever being raised by them to us, so theres some doubt in my mind it was even our tenant!
So in a nutshell, a CCJ was raised against my wife and I for a bill that was never raised at an address we weren't living in.
As we were still within the 30 day period of the CCJ being raised, I just paid them the bill there and then. They gave me completed in full letters receipts etc and I sent them all straight off to the Northampton courts so hopefully they will clear our name in the next couple of weeks.
I've been sat here quietly simmering over how somebody can completely bugger up someone's financial situation without any form of proof of monies being owed etc. The dealership have kindly said they'll hold her car till next month as we've already paid a deposit and it's a cracking deal, but it got me thinking, what if we were looking for a mortgage or an essential loan for repairs to the house etc? That would have truly screwed us for 6 years.
Is there any comeback I have on the management agency for their incompetence which they freely admitted to and I have in writing? If everything works out ok, I'll leave it be, but if I end up losing out because of this, I'd like to hammer someone's b
ks to the wall!
Thanks.
My wife applied for a lease on a new car. Credit application was denied. Experian score was 999 prior to credit check which dropped her 20 points but still in excellent category. Called Experian and it turns out our property management agent raised a CCJ against my wife and I for an unpaid locksmith bill from one of our tenants in 2018.
CCJ was raised against an old address of ours from 6 years ago so had she not been refused the credit we would have been none the wiser. I went direct to the agents to find out what the hell was going on, they had no idea how the old address came up for the CCJ, they admitted they had our current address and had been conversing with us via letter within the last 6 years, statements/invoices etc which we had paid at every time.
To add to the situation, they couldn't find any evidence of the locksmith bill ever being raised by them to us, so theres some doubt in my mind it was even our tenant!
So in a nutshell, a CCJ was raised against my wife and I for a bill that was never raised at an address we weren't living in.
As we were still within the 30 day period of the CCJ being raised, I just paid them the bill there and then. They gave me completed in full letters receipts etc and I sent them all straight off to the Northampton courts so hopefully they will clear our name in the next couple of weeks.
I've been sat here quietly simmering over how somebody can completely bugger up someone's financial situation without any form of proof of monies being owed etc. The dealership have kindly said they'll hold her car till next month as we've already paid a deposit and it's a cracking deal, but it got me thinking, what if we were looking for a mortgage or an essential loan for repairs to the house etc? That would have truly screwed us for 6 years.
Is there any comeback I have on the management agency for their incompetence which they freely admitted to and I have in writing? If everything works out ok, I'll leave it be, but if I end up losing out because of this, I'd like to hammer someone's b
ks to the wall!Thanks.
Edited by B3NNL on Wednesday 16th September 14:23
How did they manage to raise a CCJ without any evidence to support the debt?
Whenever we take somebody to Court we provide copies of the invoice, copies of communications, copies of the Dunning letters, a timeline setting out the communications.
I'm not sure about your Management Agency but for anything less than £100 we just write it off. It's not worth the hassle of preparing the claim and going to Court (and then the DJ instructing them to pay back at 5p a year).
ETA What to do if you don't owe the money
Whenever we take somebody to Court we provide copies of the invoice, copies of communications, copies of the Dunning letters, a timeline setting out the communications.
I'm not sure about your Management Agency but for anything less than £100 we just write it off. It's not worth the hassle of preparing the claim and going to Court (and then the DJ instructing them to pay back at 5p a year).
ETA What to do if you don't owe the money
So you paid a bill for something that they can't even prove was you?
I've seen on here that you can get the judgement set aside if you can prove you never received any correspondence then you would have went to court and defended yourself.
Now you've paid not sure what you can do apart from use their complaints procedure?
(Will delete this post if the legal eagles on here say I'm talking rubbish)
I've seen on here that you can get the judgement set aside if you can prove you never received any correspondence then you would have went to court and defended yourself.
Now you've paid not sure what you can do apart from use their complaints procedure?
(Will delete this post if the legal eagles on here say I'm talking rubbish)
Edited by SmoothCriminal on Wednesday 16th September 13:24
I would hope not too. I've been advised to keep them updated in all events so it doesn't end up biting me in the arse down the road. It was £148 plus legal costs which took it to just over £200. When I paid, they removed all the legal fees as a show of goodwill
Edited by B3NNL on Wednesday 16th September 14:24
SmoothCriminal said:
So you paid a bill for something that they can't even prove was you?
I've seen on here that you can get the judgement set aside if you can prove you never received any correspondence then you would have went to court and defended yourself.
Now you've paid not sure what you can do apart from use their complaints procedure?
(Will delete this post if the legal eagles on here say I'm talking rubbish)
If it hadn't been for the fact that I wanted this cleared from my records asap I would have contested it, but the chap at Experian explained the quickest way to resolve it was just to get it paid, then fight later if needed. I admit, I was caught in the moment, it was Friday afternoon, everyone about to shut shop, wife was prodding me just to get it sorted. With a week or so to sit and look at it sensibly, yes, in hindsight I may have contested itI've seen on here that you can get the judgement set aside if you can prove you never received any correspondence then you would have went to court and defended yourself.
Now you've paid not sure what you can do apart from use their complaints procedure?
(Will delete this post if the legal eagles on here say I'm talking rubbish)
Edited by SmoothCriminal on Wednesday 16th September 13:24
Having paid it could be a problem. Paying it is pretty much accepting the debt. It would have definitely been eligible for a set aside especially considering
"they had no idea how the old address came up for the CCJ, they admitted they had our current address and had been conversing with us via letter within the last 6 years, statements/invoices etc which we had paid at every time.
To add to the situation, they couldn't find any evidence of the locksmith bill ever being raised by them to us, so theres some doubt in my mind it was even our tenant!"
If you hadn't have paid I suppose you could have paid the set aside fee and then invoiced the agent for that seeing as they are the ones that screwed up.
As mentioned, there should be a paper trail, original invoice, letter before claim etc. I would have requested all of that.
You clearly have a long standing relationship with the agent but it seems they're a bit off to accept payment for something they can't even confirm happened...
"they had no idea how the old address came up for the CCJ, they admitted they had our current address and had been conversing with us via letter within the last 6 years, statements/invoices etc which we had paid at every time.
To add to the situation, they couldn't find any evidence of the locksmith bill ever being raised by them to us, so theres some doubt in my mind it was even our tenant!"
If you hadn't have paid I suppose you could have paid the set aside fee and then invoiced the agent for that seeing as they are the ones that screwed up.
As mentioned, there should be a paper trail, original invoice, letter before claim etc. I would have requested all of that.
You clearly have a long standing relationship with the agent but it seems they're a bit off to accept payment for something they can't even confirm happened...
Countdown said:
How did they manage to raise a CCJ without any evidence to support the debt?
Whenever we take somebody to Court we provide copies of the invoice, copies of communications, copies of the Dunning letters, a timeline setting out the communications.
I'm not sure about your Management Agency but for anything less than £100 we just write it off. It's not worth the hassle of preparing the claim and going to Court (and then the DJ instructing them to pay back at 5p a year).
ETA What to do if you don't owe the money
Exactly! They couldn't even find the original invoice. They don't do electronic apparently, it's all snail mail and they didn't have copies of the invoice to hand. I smell a rat and should have waited for them to find it as no doubt they'll magically find something should I raise a case against them. Needless to say, they will no longer be managing our property!Whenever we take somebody to Court we provide copies of the invoice, copies of communications, copies of the Dunning letters, a timeline setting out the communications.
I'm not sure about your Management Agency but for anything less than £100 we just write it off. It's not worth the hassle of preparing the claim and going to Court (and then the DJ instructing them to pay back at 5p a year).
ETA What to do if you don't owe the money
Countdown said:
How did they manage to raise a CCJ without any evidence to support the debt?
It's actually really easy. Raise a Money Claim Online. You fill out a few boxes with the defendants details and amount owed and pay a fee.If the defendant does not contest then after a period of time you apply for a default judgement. Default judgement gets issued. Result: one CCJ for an amount you typed in to a box, with no supplementary evidence provided whatsoever.
Mind you - getting the CCJ is easy, actually getting the money out of the person is a whole different level of difficulty, as I am discovering.
Thermobaric said:
If you're ready to burn that bridge over this, they might be willing to eat the £150 and refund to retain your custom. Perhaps throw in a few months of free fees as an apology.
Oh its beyond that now, they were under no delusion that they no longer have our custom. The extra work this has caused us over the past week and now waiting for the COVID part staffed courts to process our settlement is a bloody bonus! The nail in the coffin was when they called me on the Friday afternoon to check they had the right email address to send a copy of the settlement letter to, when I asked them why they didn't ring or perhaps email back last month prior to raising the CCJ, they had no answer. Absolute incompetent morons. I have had this happen to me 3 times......
1)Sold property and cancelled the cable subscription part way through a month. Waited for the refund of money paid for the rest of the month and forgot about it. A couple of months later, I got a letter from debt collectors asking for me to pay the amount owed. I looked into it and the buyers of the property confused the st out of the cable company and ended up somehow getting my refund applied to their account and the partial month as well because they did not live at the property. This left my account in debt. The only resolution that would not leave long term damage was for me to settle the account. The buyers of the property also took multiple loyalty card histories/points by calling up the company and trying to change the details. Not their own address though, the name on the card associated with the address. She did all this before we closed on the properties so she did not even own the flat! I should have known something was going on when my cable TV turned off several days before it should have done. You would think it not possible but she managed it. I still do not think it was planned, I think it was stupidity.
2) Bought a car off VW finance. There was one lease payment due and the cost of the car. We sent a cheque for the combined amount as was requested. 3 years later when trying to buy a house it came up on the credit history we had not paid the last lease payment. I called them up and they had taken the full amount towards buying the car. You would think there would be a process for refunding over payments in that case but apparently not.. VW did step in and resolve the situation though.
3)while buying the same house it also came up that I had a $20k debt to a sandwich restaurant. Now, I will admit I am a bit of a fatty. But, I did not have a debt at Blimpies. (yup, thats the name of the restaurant). With some quick digging it turned out someone with a similar name was the real debtor. This was not on my real credit history but still required me to sign a letter stating I was not a sandwich junkie.
1)Sold property and cancelled the cable subscription part way through a month. Waited for the refund of money paid for the rest of the month and forgot about it. A couple of months later, I got a letter from debt collectors asking for me to pay the amount owed. I looked into it and the buyers of the property confused the s
t out of the cable company and ended up somehow getting my refund applied to their account and the partial month as well because they did not live at the property. This left my account in debt. The only resolution that would not leave long term damage was for me to settle the account. The buyers of the property also took multiple loyalty card histories/points by calling up the company and trying to change the details. Not their own address though, the name on the card associated with the address. She did all this before we closed on the properties so she did not even own the flat! I should have known something was going on when my cable TV turned off several days before it should have done. You would think it not possible but she managed it. I still do not think it was planned, I think it was stupidity.2) Bought a car off VW finance. There was one lease payment due and the cost of the car. We sent a cheque for the combined amount as was requested. 3 years later when trying to buy a house it came up on the credit history we had not paid the last lease payment. I called them up and they had taken the full amount towards buying the car. You would think there would be a process for refunding over payments in that case but apparently not.. VW did step in and resolve the situation though.
3)while buying the same house it also came up that I had a $20k debt to a sandwich restaurant. Now, I will admit I am a bit of a fatty. But, I did not have a debt at Blimpies. (yup, thats the name of the restaurant). With some quick digging it turned out someone with a similar name was the real debtor. This was not on my real credit history but still required me to sign a letter stating I was not a sandwich junkie.
Forums | Speed, Plod & the Law | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff