JB0591

I did not advise the OP to inform them of a change of address, so I don't get your point.

R I C H

A UK debt collection agency tracked me down in Canada for what turned out to be a fraudulant American Express transaction to the tune of a few hundred pounds. I'd emigrated for several years and no idea how they found me.

BristolUK

Isn't that generally just at the time of application? Loads of people on these forums still have their UK cards and many have apparently reported their residency here with no effect on keeping the cards.

Rick b

In theory -

Credit Card companies can employ private companies that excel at tracking down delinquent payers. These companies (find them on Google) might find your address. Then they would send you letters telling you about your debt and offering either a reduced final settlement or threaten court action. If you decide to ignore these they could possible take you to court in Canada and try and obtain a judgement against you which could lead to them getting a court order to obtain the judgement (amount the court found you to owe) by confiscating and selling property.

In practice -

a) This will NOT affect your credit record. The UK and Canada run on completely different ways of recording and using credits. The only real possibility you MIGHT (and that is far from guaranteed) have a problem is if your Card was say with HSBC in the UK and you then tried to open a HSBC account in Canada.

b) You didn't say whether the 10k was GBP or $CAN. Either way the simple fact is for a UK bank to hire a lawyer to take you to court and obtain a judgement for that size a sum simply isn't going to happen. Banks like RBS/Natwest run their acceptable loss on these cases somewhere around 40,000GBP. So when someone has walked from a house that isn't worth the mortgage.

c) You say you have little money - well the bank would look at that, there is no way they are going to obtain an expensive International court order against you to only have a worthless piece of paper as you can't pay it anyway.

You have two options and this depends on your views.

1) Write to the bank, be completely honest and upfront. Tell them you have no assets, now live in a foreign country and you will propose to pay X amount (X being what you can afford) as they have next to no chance of ever recovering any more from you.

2) Ignore them, cut up your cards and forget about it if you have no intention of going back to the UK to live.

magnumpi

If you owe let's say, MBNA who are now owned by Bank of America, I think? then I suspect that they will find you, eventually, as you have used your Canadian bank account.

The thing is you are paying minimum payments, plus being charged interest, credit cArd interest, this could be 19'/. Or more, so you will die with the debt most likely.

Maybe you could go to your bank, find out how much you can afford to borrow, let's say 6,000 -10,000 dollars, write to them and offer them the above. It maybe possible to do this via online private message via your online account.

Then if they accept, pay your bank the money and watch the debt reduce each year.

sheadboy

MBNA have been owned by TD since December 2011. Canadian collection laws are a joke really, all the banks can do is call you asking for the money and ruin your credit rating. they eventually sell the debt to a collection agency who then take over the calling

Almost Canadian

Nonsense. Canada would not have jurisdiction over this issue so there is no way one could persuade a Canadian Court to issue a judgment in such circumstances.

I used to work for such a firm of lawyers in the UK and we received such instructions all the time. Such firms have software that can produce the necessary documents at a push of a button and will case manage the entire process. The only real issue is service of the Claim Form. Once that obstacle is overcome, default judgment is easily obtained. What defence does the OP have?

Once default judgment is obtained in England and Wales it is a relatively cheap and easy process to obtain a Canadian Order to to enforce the Judgment in Canada. Once this is obtained, one could execute the Judgment in Canada. Now, it is relatively easy to avoid enforcement, but it requires withdrawing all deposits from all of your bank accounts, not owning any property and changing jobs regularly. Easy to do, but a pain in the arse.

Unless the OP doesn't want to work in Canada and/or has no assets. The process is inexpensive and an attachment of earnings Order can be obtained very easily. Each time one is obtained, one would have to change jobs, so avoidance is possible but, as I said above, is a right royal pain in the arse. Try explaining to your new employer why you left your last job.

Yes they do, they just need the motivation to do so.

Until they come for you in Canada

magnumpi

They may not bother for 10,000

BUT

If 10,000 is owed now, with mounting interest and late fees ect this could escalate at a rapid rate, 50-100,000 could be owed in 5-10 years, then they will want to talk, and maybe you be married by then, have a house, boat, or car, or condo they could sell .

tribec

First, the debt is a UK debt. But credit companies in Canada buy debts off Mastercard and visa and now, the Canadian resident or citizen owes the debt to a Canadian company. If you live in Alberta, you can ignore all the collection agencies for 2 years without making a payment and the debt is wiped away. This is different for other some other provinces. A collection agency will usually be given 6 months to get you to pay. After that the debt will be sold to a different collector. You do not have to accept a phone call, reply to a letter or even give your real name if you should speak to them. With the 2nd agency, you can now start to bargain. You should be able to get 75 cents on the dollar. After a year about 50 cents and after 18 months, if this is when you speak to them, you should get it settled for about 30 cents on the dollar. However, be warned, because this debt is now owned by a credit agency in Canada, it will be on your credit report as a delinquent payment. A company that specializes in this for credit card companies is International Credit Executives (ICE). Understand your options fully. Do not believe a word they say as they are trained to bully and scare you, but it is all poop. A great book to buy and read is 'Wolf at the door' by Mark Silverthorne who used to be a lawyer for these agencies. Don't be pressured by people who don't know or care about your situation and read that book. Get informed before you speak to the agency and if you can, make them wait, then they will deal with you.

Almost Canadian

As I have said lots of times before, for some businesses the amount owed is irrelevant, they wish to ensure that everybody knows that if you owe them money, they will sue.

The firm I worked for used to receive instructions from a national retailer that sold plumbing parts that instructed us to issue proceedings against every debtor. They petitioned all into bankruptcy that they could. They supplied builders and wished to send the message of "pay us, before you pay your other creditors or else"

dgagitw

It's worth pointing out that UK court judgements are quite easy to enforce in many parts Canada. If the credit card company obtains an order against you in the UK, they can, in principle, get a Canadian court to give them the same judgement without the need for a full retrial. It varies by province but here's some stuff about Ontario:

http://zvulony.ca/2010/articles/us-j...nts-in-canada/

The firm I used to work for in the UK did this once in a commercial case, although the amount of money involved was a lot more than 10K.