Anybody aware of the above collection agency ? My wife had a house with her former partner that was repossesed in about 1993. The mortgage with Alliance and Leicester had been in arrears and her partner had moved out. She then moved out to live with me, he moved back in, couldn't afford the payments and handed the keys back to A&L.

The debt was split and her former partner settled his share about five years ago. We received a couple of letters from A&L but nothing for a few years until recently when DMS have sent us a letter after about £20000.

Anyone know how they operate - have they bought this debt? Is anyone else being chased by them? Should we only deal with the A&L directly - after all we have no idea who this company is, and of course we have no idea how the alleged debt is made up. My wife has no paperwork relating to the house anyway.

We did have some success a few years ago with a company chasing for outstanding lease payments for old company cars. It all went quiet after we requested copies of all relevant paperwork etc

Thanks

-- charles (publishnot@secret.com), September 27, 2001

Answers

What sometimes happens with debts, whether they be shortfalls, loans, credit cards or whatever, is that the original lender will still own the debt, but give responsiblity for chasing it to another company. That company will in turn employ tracing agents and other collection companies to find you and start making demands for payment.

I assume that the letter from DMS refers to the A&L mortgage. If so, then I would suggest that you write back and ask for more information about the debt as this is the first that you've heard you owe money. Also ask for a statement of how the debt has been calculated and supporting documentation. This should send DMS scurrying back to whoever instructed them.

In most cases, these collection agencies are just told to collect X many pounds from a person and if the person doesn't pay threaten court action, bankruptcy etc etc. These letters are usually enough to make people pay up, but if the worm turns and starts asking awkward questions, then the collector has no choice but to refer it back to the original lender.

You might find that if you write back to DMS then you'll get a response saying that your queries have been passed to A&L and that will be it. Then in a few months you'll get a letter from another collection company demanding the £20k all over again.

-- pendle (pendle_666@yahoo.co.uk), October 04, 2001.

we too have had dealings with this company who started to chase us 5years and 10 months after the repossession, we keep asking them the same questions.ie when was the debt registered. the first reply was that the A & l assure us that it was registered. Then nothing, a few months later another letter demanding the money, wrote back again asking the same queation and stating that it was definately not registered in April 1999 when the searches were done by our present lender. Five months later we have received a reply with the same old gobbledogook to our original questions and guess what A&L now say it was registered after April 1999, no reason why it took nearly five years to register it. But I am not giving up after reading this site i am of to post my SARN letters. Wish me luck

-- VALERIE PITT (valerie.pitt1@btinternet.com), February 27, 2002.