Dealing with THOSE phonecalls

[inapickle]

Hello everyone,
Just thought I would share this with you, dont know if it will help, but seems to have worked for me.
Due to my employment I did not want to risk creditors hassleing me at work, chances are they would call when I was off shift anyway, but constant calls to work work start the drums beating, seen it happen before, so when I wrote to my creditors I added that " under no circumstances are they to try to contact me at work " as it may jeopardise my employment, in my case it is true, while there is no clause in my contract about debt it would be all too easy to make life difficult for me, rightly or wrongly I also added "if you ignore this request I will treat it as harassement" so far I have had no calls at work or have been told about any.

Also, has anyone had those annoying mass telephone sales calling you, they type that phone a 1000 number at the same time and the 1st to answer is spoken to, I contacted BT a year or so ago and they have a service that bars witheld numbers coming through to you, so I signe up to it for a couple of quid a quarter, now I am finding most creditors only use automatic witheld numbers they cant get through, at no time have I refused to talk to anyone, so I cannot be accused of being difficult.

I prefer snail mail for my communication so I have records, recorded phone calls can be deleted.

A bit long but if it helps 1 person worth it.

Regards
Mark

[kallis3]

Hi Mark,

I know what you mean about the annoying phone calls. When we first got into trouble we were having a lot of phone calls from everyone. We did try to screen them, but you don't always think of checking the number before you pick up. We did 'Choose to Refuse', but they only problem with that was that as soon as you refuse one number, they just pick another one to call from! It also was not an option for me to ban withheld numbers as my office phone is a withheld number, so is where my daughter works. Obviously most of the time we use mobiles if we can, but just in case of emergencies we couldn' block it.

I eventually changed my ISP from AOL (waaaay too expensive!) to BT total Broadband. So far I have not paid anything extra on my phone bill (monthly direct debit). I aso took out Broadband talk which comes with it's own number. You can choose to ex directory or not. The old number is still there (we ran two phones for a time), as you cannot use the broadband one if there is a power cut, but once unplugged, people can ring all they like and no one will answer.

I always prefer snail mail for this sort of thing as well, and I always inform the companies that I will not be contacted by phone and they can write to me.

So far this seems to have worked ok.

Creditors meeting next Monday so I hope it will all stop after that!

[TREES57]

I know what you mean about phone calls,just this morning i had Mercers phone me at work(luckily i was alone in the office unlike the other day when the bank phoned me, very embarrasing)anyway i told the woman it wasn't convenient to phone at work and gave her my mobile,at least i can see who's calling on there! I explained that our proposal was on hold as i'd had to get another job due to reduction in hours and o/h was being laid off in 2 weeks.She then asked if i could make a payment of £40 to put the account on hold.I explained that i was unable to as we have between us 22 creditors and if we paid them we would have to offer them all something.She proceeded to tell me that we should expect a doorstop collector and i did realise that there was no guarantee that my IVA would be accepted!I know they have a job to do and it's nothing personel but when they catch you unaware at work it's horrible,and you'd think that they'd realise it's not good to ring people there.Sorry off on one again!

[kallis3]

Mercers are such a pain!!!!!! Fortunately they have never rung me at work (can't remember what I put down on my original application form for the credit card). If they call you again at work, tell them it harrassment. You could always try not confirming your security details with them. If they are not sure they are talking to the right person, they will have to hang up (data protection).

All my correspondence has been via snail mail and the letters have been pretty threatening, doorstep collectors will be calling etc. I am still waiting for them to materialise, but I have never yet heard anyone say that they have been contacted in this way. They have no power to make you pay, and once you havetold them to go, they become trespassers and can be ejected from the premises. They can't tell you what is going to happen at your meeting anyway.
They are just not nice people to deal with, and how they can sleep at night after hassling people I don't know.

Keep your chin up and don't let them get you down!