If your debt has got to the point where collection agents have been enlisted to recover your debt, it can seem like an unpleasant situation to be in. Although debt collection agents have been known to receive bad press, you’ll usually find that agents will liaise with you professionally and with a degree of empathy. Many debt collection agencies, such as Wescot Credit Services, have strong codes of conduct and compliance regulations to ensure that dealings with the public are professional and efficient.
Debt collection agencies are employed by their client to collect debts on their behalf. This may involve the company selling your debt to the collection agency. In this case you would owe the money to the agency rather than the creditor.
The debt collection agency will encourage you to repay the money you owe or hand over assets which can be sold to recover the debt.
It’s important to remember that debt collection agencies are not the same as bailiffs. Generally bailiffs are only called upon in response to council tax debt or as a result of a court order. Debt collection agencies can visit your home but they don’t have the same power as a bailiff. Most agencies will simply contact you by letter or by phone instead.
Debt collection agencies are regulated by the Office of Fair Trading and must adhere to certain directives. This means that they cannot make an unwarranted amount of visits or phone calls to your home or contact your neighbours or your work. These instances would be classed as harassment. In addition to this, they cannot enter your home without your permission and they cannot fabricate claims about the consequences of not paying your debt.
In most cases the best way to deal with debt collection agencies is to be willing to do as much as it takes to pay off your debt. It is worth negotiating to see if they will give you more time to pay or to see if you can negotiate a repayment plan.
Dealing with a debt collection agency doesn’t have to be scary or unpleasant. Most will communicate with you professionally and calmly and in the unlikely situation that they do not, you are within your rights to report them.
In a one-off exercise, Swift was seeking to identify some 2000 customers who had repaid loans, but were eligible for the issue of small refunds. Wescot Credit Services were able to provide valuable assistance via their Locate range of products and services. Within just a couple of weeks Wescot Credit Services delivered a positive trace on around 80% of the customers in question, which a spokesman for Swift confirmed had “substantially exceeded our expectations” ensuring they have now “repaid the customers and closed down a very successful exercise”.