Anybody Here Familiar With European Debt Collection Laws?

@carl669

As tempting as that is, they’ve been using other methods of communicating with me.

I’ve gotten 2 letters in the mail (on the same day) from the company claiming I owe money, as well as emails from both them, and their collection agency.

@TickledLizard
Are you in the US currently? Then US law applies. This won’t stop them from sending you letters, unless you go the all the steps. And then the can ignore the law, to a point, if they are outside the US. But I don’t think they can get thing from you or mess up your credit. Not an expert tho.

This sounds like a “needs expert” things it if gets troublesome.

Just a thought.

I THINK!!! (Emphasis on think)
PERHAPS
You can them in small claims court in your jurisdiction. That’s fairly cheap. As a biz they pretty much have to hire a lawyer in your jurisdiction to defend. This is expensive for them. Really expensive. A court can issue a judgement over this.

I AM NOT A LAWYER AND DONT KNOW ANY AREA OF LAW.

Don’t act without research.

Also not all foreign companies are ethical, some might even fake evidence. But many are ethical

@f00l
more thoughts. If you go thru the proper channels contact all the agencies and get no satisfaction, sometimes you can contact your local Congressperson’s office. Sometimes they help, sometimes they don’t. Even if you love or despise them.

Any sometimes next election, they want $, so use Google Voice or Skype or whatever if you care about that, when you call Washington.
…

If you are dealing with a normal dept of a normal company, it made not be as bad as I recount below. If you are dealing with a collections dept or a collection agency, they may not care if you owe the debt or not. They simply mean to make you pay. Some companies literally invent debts out of thin air, let them age till in “collection”, then use collection agency tactics to try to get money.

Much depends on the laws of your state, as well.

When they contact you, acknowledge exactly nothing. Not even your name, if they don’t have it already.

Get info from them. Don’t give any info to them of any kind. They may well not be rational ir fair, them may simply be a machine that eats your energy. Don’t discuss with them. Don’t reason with them. Don’t argue with them. Give them nothing.

Make sure every single contact is completely under your control and do not cooperate in any way. Nor even to confirm the date or the weather.

Don’t deal with them at all if you can help it.

You just have to be 100% total jerk. Like a part in a play - you put on the costume, you take it off and try to be human again.

For more info google “collections scripts” and find forums where people who work in the industry recount experiences. You must be your own lawyer, judge, and police officer in every encounter. Always behave as tho they are 150% in the wrong. If you can’t do this, try to find a friend or fam member who is a hard-ass and can take on these conversations for you. Someone who will be an enormous concrete wall. Do this for yourself if you can. Learn to do it.

The people who work in this industry are trained to be more relentless than a shark, and they are punished, or lose their jobs, if they are not pure evil. They made be paid on commission based on what they collect. Some of them will plead w you to pay so they won’t lose their jobs.

Mostly they go away when they figure out you won’t play their game. Unfortunately, not always.

@narfcake

Thanks for that site.

Made a post there, so I’m hoping I could get help.

@TickledLizard
With some caution, and take it for what you paid for it, Reddit?

@narfcake

Someone there told me not to respond since a real collection agency wouldn’t initially contact me via email.

So, that’s what I’ll do for now.

@TickledLizard
If they aren’t going to sue you or hit your credit report, my take would be Ignore Ignore Ignore and Never Respond.

This assumes they don’t have a legit case. Legit cases are new complex. Ideally one would deal with them. Sometimes you are punished for trying to do the right thing. So, individual decisions re those.

@TickledLizard the one thing not to ignore is if you get a summons to court. If you don’t show up then the other side wins by default.

@Kidsandliz

OK, though naturally I am hoping that this gets resolved before it comes to that.

@TickledLizard
Companies will threaten court when they have no intention of going near court.

Likely, going to court will cost them more money than they could ever gain, even if they won. So only a tiny number of debt disputes wind up in court, and those are almost always for a lot of money.

So threats to go to court are meaningless. Letters from lawyers are usually meaningless too - companies hire law firms to generate scary letters - this is cheap for them. A really awful collections unit will lie, pretend all sorts of nonsense, threaten all sorts of bs, possibly even try to harass a victim thru family, friends, neighbors, job - and this last is completely illegal, but some do it anyway.

Much phony or questionable-whether-legit debt stuff goes away if they can’t get a response from their target.

Keep an eye on your credit report tho.

@f00l Specifically,

@MrGlass Credit scores are indeed national. I have separate Canadian and US scores. Anything I do in one country has no effect on the rating on the other, although that wouldn’t prevent US entities from reporting to Canadian bureaux, or vice versa.

@MrGlass
/giphy shark loan

@TickledLizard

And the CFPB

@TickledLizard Sending emails is a good start. Follow up with physical letters to the AG & CFPB, registered. Cost will be minimal if you don’t require a signature. What does Google say about the company and its putative client? Have you looked at the State Department’s site for the country to see whether they have a reporting process you can add?

@PlacidPenguin um… so this is the first time you gave info about who this is. Did you ever do business with UseNeXT?

@jbartus

No.

@PlacidPenguin not even the free trial?

@jbartus

I didn’t even hear of useNext until these emails started.

@PlacidPenguin Weird.

@jbartus

Not really sure what to do.

Curious as to how this will end.

@PlacidPenguin why do they put the commas in such weird places? any why only use one sentence in each paragraph? i smell scam.

@carl669

The sad part is, society is encouraging horrible grammar. Have you seen how kids (and adults) use grammar in texts, and on social media?

@f00l

Yes.

No clue. Its confusing though, because according to their site, payment is necessary before each month. Otherwise service won’t be provided. So regardless of who signed me up, this doesn’t make sense.

Yes.

No clue.

No clue.

Not really.

Lots. No clue. They sent unsigned letters demanding an end to all contact if it couldn’t be proven 100% that it was them. No.

Should I really be that worried about a lawsuit? The amount that they’re claiming wouldn’t justify all of the expenses for them. Still though…

Yes. Didn’t check.

I looked on my PayPal account, there was never anything to them. Would it be to my advantage though that the name they are using is not my “legal” name?

@PlacidPenguin One of the pieces of advice that I saw that made sense to me: if it wasn’t sent registered mail or other confirmed delivery, that letter never got to you. They’re not going to take you to court for a couple hundred dollars, and they will eventually give up. If they try to ding your credit or take other detrimental action then go after them.

@PlacidPenguin
I am wondering if someone got a casual or old version of your name, your email address, and bought service using a phony credit card or other payment account.

I can’t imagine suing over a Usenet bill. Unless you were a reseller buying industrial level services.

It’s starting to sound to me like someone used your id to scam them, they know it, and the collection attempts are just a shot in the dark, they are hopking you just pay and they won’t have to take the loss.

I bet this happens to them thousands of times a day. Same as porn sites, which get hit this way constantly. And Usenet is a primary source of perm and pirated materials, so …

In Texas all corporate threats to sue are pretty much nonsense unless the debt is many thousands. They can’t collect and the suit would cost them more than they could get in any case.

There are exceptions, for home repairs, car repairs, stiff where the debtor can easily get a lien, very large debts. But not many exceptions.

This stuff, coming from a Usenet co, sounds like a “go thru the motions and attempt to reduce the writeoff” routine and nothing more.

@PlacidPenguin
Re name format they used

Are they attempting to bill using a form of your name you have used online, attached to a matching email address? Then I would bet a buncha $ someone sold your info and someone else used it with a purchase stolen payment method and that’s what got this started.

If you think that’s likely, either ignore them, send them the sort of letter you described others sending, or have a lawyer or paralegal send them something.

If watch my credit report if this happened to me I guess.

@f00l according to one story I read about them, they sent collection letters addressed to “Occupant”. They’re just sheisty, trying to intimidate people to collect on fictitious debts, and apparently clearing millions of pounds a year doing so.

@djslack
Then they deserve to share a cage with the bad guys from some horror film. I promise to laugh.

But they did get that name and email from somewhere. Perhaps they are direct buyers of stolen data themselves. In which case it might be worth seeing if they are under investigation over there. Good to know they are assholes.

Since if they get a bad rep it will hurt their Usenet biz, I am thinking that perhaps that biz is not so profitable that they care about losing customers. They may have “pivoted”.

@OldCatLady
Had no idea they were such pure crooks.

It’s really been awhile since I messed with Usenet.

@PlacidPenguin
I keep imagining that UseNext tries to collect a phony amount from an address on Elm Street and a certain notable “Mr Frederick Krueger” shows up in person to pay the bill.

/giphy Freddy Krueger