I’m not your debtor, he’s 800 miles away . . . in the Shetlands!
A.Y. writes: I have received a letter from Lowell Portfolio, claiming an alleged debt of £599 which it says I owe to PayPal. With the letter was a further letter from PayPal, saying it had transferred the debt to Lowell. I rang PayPal and was told that in fact no money is owed on my account, for which I have only ever used a debit card anyway.
YOU told me that you had never used any form of credit with PayPal, so it was impossible for you to be in debt.
However, as a precaution, you decided to close your account and PayPal allowed this, which it would not have done if you had owed any money. What made you particularly concerned was that Lowell was able to supply a letter on PayPal’s notepaper, showing your name and address, and claiming that PayPal had already contacted you about your outstanding balance.
Lowell had also been in touch with you quite recently, chasing debts due to Shop Direct and the JD Williams catalogue company. It turned out that there is someone who shares your name and your date of birth. The big difference is that the real debtor lives in the Shetlands, more than 800 miles from your own address.
Lowell accepted this and dropped its pursuit of you, only to start the ball rolling again, after it took over PayPal’s £599 claim.
So, I asked PayPal to let me see any of its records that would show how the debt arose, and why its letter was addressed to you and not to your Shetlands namesake. Not surprisingly, PayPal had no such records. It told me: ‘We will be contacting Mr Y to apologise and to say we will not be pursuing this matter.’
Lowell was more forthcoming. It buys bad debts at a discount from firms like PayPal, and then tries to collect what it can.
All your details were supplied by PayPal, but Lowell accepts that it had been down this road before and had chased you for payments that were due from the other Mr Y.
In view of this, Lowell has sent you an apology and £150. You have told me you are donating this to charities that are responding to the coronavirus crisis.
Lowell has also made one more point. It says that information held by credit reference agencies has also mixed your real records in with those of the debtor.
It would be a good idea to ask all these agencies for a copy of your file, springclean it, and add a warning that you and the other Mr Y are two very different people.