Woman slams bank for investigator’s evening visit
A WOMAN living in Enniscorthy has blasted Permanent TSB bank after they sent a debt investigator around to her home in Ashbrook shortly before 9 p.m. of a Friday evening.
Separated mother of two Michelle Fowler spoke of how she left the mortgaged property back in 2012.
While the bank pursued Ms Fowler in relation to the debt, she says that she is happy to hand back the keys to the house and for it to be sold and she enlisted the help of the Phoenix Project.
However, just over a week ago, she had an unexpected visitor to the Enniscorthy home that she now rents.
‘I was in the sitting room when I heard a banging on the window,’ she said. ‘I assumed it was a friend of mine so I opened the door. There was a man there and he started asking me questions. I said I wasn’t going to answer questions from someone I didn’t know. He did have some kind of ID badge around his neck, which he flashed at me.’
‘I told him I wasn’t going to engage with him,’ she continued. ‘He told me “I have to find out the location of people who owe money to Permanent TSB”.’
An SNA at a local school, Michelle says that she suffered a panic attack in the wake of the incident and was forced to go back to her doctor for anxiety medication.
William Prior of the Phoenix Project described the incident as shocking.
‘ To make contact with a woman on her own in her home in this manner at this time on a Friday evening is shocking,’ he said.
‘ There were no support services open at that hour and if she had come to harm after this visit, who would have taken responsibility.’
Permanent TSB said they have investigated the matter fully and with the trace company who was engaged to trace the customer in question.
A spokesman said that the agent who visited Ms Fowler had not been informed for what purpose the trace was being made.
‘Neither the trace company nor the agent are given any information about the personal history of the customer they have been asked to trace. Therefore, the claim that the agent said he was tracing people who owed money to the bank does not make sense,’ the spokesman said.
He continued that the agent in question had described his encounter with the customer as ‘ brief, very straightforward and uneventful’.
Ms Fowler says that she feels that the bank is trying to ‘make a liar’ out of her. ‘ They try to catch you on the hop,’ she said.
‘ They do what they want and the government does nothing about it. In fact they seem to support it. It’s disgraceful.’