Fighting Debt - a user guide

6) DEBT AGENCIES

b) What Debt Agencies can and cannot do.

Debt Collectors can send letters and call to try to collect on a debt.

They can offer settlement offers and can agree to receive monthly or weekly payment installments from the Debtor.

They cannot call you several times a day if you have not agreed to pay the debt.

Calls cannot be made to you before 8am or after 9pm.

They are required to act in a professional manner and cannot be abusive or intimidate.

Harassment of people in debt by creditors or their agents is a criminal offence under the Administration of Justice Act 1970. It is often difficult to know what to do when you feel a creditor is not dealing with your account fairly.

SECTION 40 OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE ACT

"S40 Punishment for unlawful harassment of debtors"

"A person commits an offence if, with the object of coercing another person to pay money claimed from the other as a debt under a contract, he:

1) harasses the other with demands for payment which, in respect of their frequency, or the manner or

occasion of making any such demand, or of any threat or publicity by which any demand is

accompanied, are calculated to subject him or members of his family or household to alarm, distress or

humiliation;

2) falsely represents, in relation to the money claimed, that criminal proceedings lie for failure to pay it;

3) falsely represents himself to be authorised in some official capacity to claim or enforce payment;

4) utters a document falsely represented by him to have some official character which he knows it has not.