rasen78

Basically, a civil debt is one which is unsecured - ie not a mortgage, or car finance. I would suggest your friend contacts the finance provider directly and asks for payment plan suggestions. The Aus DCA were probably hired to 'trace' your friend. AFAIK, there is nothing to stop a finance provider from attempting to recover monies owed. Most of the time they stop, purely because they cannot 'trace' the debtor.

I am not sure of the legal aspects of the monies being repaid once you are in a foreign country, but in order for the chasing to cease, she needs to be pro-active in contacting the financial provider.

She will need to list an incoming/outgoings list, prioritising them. From this, she will be able to gauge what she will be able to offer as a repayment schedule. FWIW, any outgoings that are non contractual, non essential, will be frowned upon, so things like high mobile contracts (if past the initial contract phase) satellite tv, gym membership.

kellz

Thanks everyone. must be off to bed, bras n things awaits in the morning. I will let my friend know what has been said and if anyone has any more advice, I will pass it on too

hoofie2002

IANAL but here goes after a bit of googling:


If the persons CC debt has resulted in a UK court judgement then the debt owner can seek an order from an Australian court for a judgement which can then be enforced in Australia. There are treaties in effect for such things but their purpose is presumably for much larger sums of money and to prevent assets being moved overseas to protect them.

However that is all theoretical and if there is no UK judgement then there is no chance of a court ordering such an action here for a debt that wasnt incurred here. I would also have thought that the amount is far too small to justify such action. The debt collection mob remember will have bought the debt off the original company for a percentage of it and will want to cajole the person to pay up without going near a court.

The OP's friend really needs to get some advice on this.

Sol2Oz

If they take you to court, answer the complaint and deny everything. Ask them to provide proof in form of "discovery". (Have they even validated that debt with your friend??) Most of these junk debt buyers have absolutely no proof that a person owes the debt other than some type of spreadsheet on a computer that is mostly heresay. I myself have successfully fought one of these junk debt buyers and have won the case. They had to dismiss the lawsuit.

Something else that your friend should know is that the Statutes of Limitations expire on these debts. Most junk debt buyers usually want you to make a payment so that you in your ignorance, you can restart the time clock. But if you default on the debt and enough time passes since you have last defaulted, and you make no more payments, they can't sue you in court if you use Statute of Limitations as a defense.

scrudu

Your friend should know that some debt collection agencies actually sell template letters for businesses to send out to non-paying customers using the DCA letterhead. How this method is legal is beyond me.

This happened just recently to a friend of mine in Perth who was in dispute over costs with a supplier. After receiving a letter purportedly from a Perth DCA, she rang the DCA but they didn't know who she was, or anything about the letter. They explained that it was likely from one of their customers who use their template-letter service. The letter was step 1 in the recovery process. After non-payment of the amount (and repeated attempts by her to resolve the dispute), it then moved on to the 2nd phase when she received a 2nd letter (this time actually from the DCA), as at that stage the supplier had fully engaged the DCA to chase payment.

So, it could be that the UK DCA are at Stage 1 of chasing up the debt (e.g. template threat letters) before possibly moving on to engaging a DCA to chase the funds.

Tramps_mate

How did they know where she was in Oz?

moneypenny20

She's been paying it off since being here, now run into difficulties, a few posts back.

kellz

Thanks everyone. I really appreciate it. She has decided to get all details from this agency as she doesn't want to screw her life here up. I know she appreciates the help I was able to get from you all.