Wearing the safety mask: What are the options available for a debtor being harassed by creditors?

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Following the massive economic turmoil of 2008, debt has become a common problem everywhere. At a time when almost every single individual is confronting troubles in making ends meet, it’s quite obvious for them to default on their bill payments. Consequently, they get trapped in a never ending cycle of debt. While borrowers are obliged to make their payments within a fixed timeframe, creditors cannot abuse or harass them. Even though lenders are allowed to track you for any due amount of cash, there are certain set of rules and regulations to protect borrowers against unjustified harassment. As a debtor, you do have certain rights, and if you are suffering unreasonable harassment from a creditor or appointed collection agency, there are ways to prevent harassment and lower collection calls. These creditor harassment laws are in strict harmony with the Office of Fair Trading – Debt Collection Guidance and the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations of 2008.

Debt Collection Guidance – An overview

In accordance with this guidance, some types of activities are considered as ‘unfair business practice’ and any creditor acting in this manner could run the risk of losing his consumer credit permit. These types of activities are described broadly as:

Causing excessive tension to debtors, including threats, or forcing debtors into settling the debt by making threats to disclose their indebtedness to others like neighbours and employers.

Misinforming debtors or communicating in an ambiguous way, for example sending letters to debtors that have the look of a court form, or using puzzling legal phrases.

Employing unjust collection techniques, for example, refusing to talk to the debtor’s spokesperson and dealing directly with the debtor instead.

Adding irrational charges, for example, expenses that hold no similarity to the expense of debt recovery.

Acting in a hostile manner when visiting debtors; due to this reason, any visits should be made by prior agreement and with the consent of the debtor.

Unfair Trading Regulations (2008) – Consumer Protection

These set of laws offer added protection to debtors. According to these rules, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) or the Trading Standards can take legal steps against any creditor found culpable of ‘aggressive commercial practices”; this could mean an imprisonment or fine in certain situations. According to OFT rules, actions that amount to ‘aggressive commercial practices’ are:

·         Calls from a debt collector at awkward times or inconvenient places, such as office

·         An intimidation from a debt collector to take legal actions for the collection of debts that cannot be collected through court proceedings

Options available for a debtor

In case you are being harassed by a lender, the first thing you need to do is to keep a track of all the occurrences and the dates of these incidents. Your next step should be to contact the lender through a formal letter. Make certain that you send the letter with recorded delivery and mention that you thoroughly understand the obligations of the Office of Fair Trading – Debt Collection Guidance and the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations of 2008. Besides, the contact letter should include how you would like to be communicated and that you are making the complaint in reference to the guidelines.

Business owner: “Why I won’t work with Balfour Beatty”

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Small business owner Steve Sutherland sacrifices £5m in revenues in protest over the payment practices of construction giant Balfour Beatty.

By James Hurley in The Telegraph

The owner of a construction company is sacrificing £5m – more than 40pc of his turnover – by refusing to work with Balfour Beatty in protest at payment policies which he claims risk putting suppliers “out of business”.

Steve Sutherland, chairman of glazing contractor Dortech, is ending a 13-year relationship with the construction giant because of what he claims are constant difficulties in getting paid for completed work.

Mr Sutherland said his decision will mean losing £5m of Dortech’s turnover, which stood at £12m last year. “We’ve done 80 projects for them so this hurts us a lot. I’d love to work for them again but we just can’t take the risk.”

Balfour Beatty’s approach to payment has caused Dortech severe cash flow problems and resulted in the company making a loss on a series of recent projects, he claims.

In some cases, the company has had to wait more than 200 days for bills to be settled, he said, and “unfair” discounts imposed retrospectively by Balfour Beatty have meant he often ends up losing money. The 20 year-old business has had more than £100,000 “withheld” on recent projects, he claims.
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Mr Sutherland noted that the issue is not isolated to Balfour Beatty, but said he wanted to identify them because suppliers are often afraid of “naming and shaming” companies with poor payment practices. “They exploit their financial clout. It’s not illegal, but morally, ethically? I have my view. I don’t think elephants worry about stepping on ants.”

Mr Sutherland’s issue involves so-called “withholding notices” that construction contractors issue, ostensibly where there is a disagreement over the valuation of work.

Rather than simply submitting an invoice, suppliers “apply to be paid”. Subcontractors complain that this process is often used as a way of reducing the value of bills regardless of the quality or pricing of work.

“The whole process is used as an excuse to avoid paying, drive the cost of the project down and improve their cash-flow. Do they care about the unintended consequences, which is the risk of putting people out of business?” Mr Sutherland said.

“We phoned and emailed one project director more than 30 times with no response. No one will talk to you so you keep working and investing, you get to the end of the project and they want to withhold thousands [of pounds]. We haven’t made a profit on any project with them for some time.”

He said he believes that the management of Balfour Beatty, which has sales of more than £11bn, is “well intentioned” but warned pressure on project managers to cut costs is having dire “unintended consequences”.

“They’re under so much pressure to save money, they’ll do anything to save their jobs. The unintended consequence is small companies going out of business, or just not investing – we certainly can’t afford to invest.”

A recent survey of 250 small construction companies found that 97pc feel unfairly treated by main contractors.

A spokesman for Balfour Beatty said the company “is committed to its supply chain and is at the forefront of Government and industry initiatives supporting the well-being of our suppliers”.

“Balfour Beatty has had a long standing valued relationship with Dortech, spanning many projects. The [most recent] contracts were completed in August with the last of these accounts agreed early in November.”

 

Occupy is not just a few anti capitalists, it is the broad spectrum of the 99%

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I have great experience of business networking.
I was even Chapter Director of BNI Emmanuel in Cambridge and represented London in a competition at the national conference of the Professional Speakers Association (PSA – a great deal of members are high end business consultants), where my topic was about looking out for one another;  http://youtu.be/iax-lpKu9XQ

I had a great deal of support from this community when I joined Occupy LSX because they were aware of my concerns about social injustice and the detrimental effect the Banksters and the Corporatocracy are having on small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that actually employ over 60% of the population employed in the private sector.

However, that support disappeared towards the end of November 2011 because of the amount of anti-capitalist comments being made by Occupy, which were then used by the corporate media (true Capitalism is not a Corporatocracy) to marginalise the movement.

Many times in the GAs I mentioned that Occupy was the 99% against the central banksters and that we are loosing support by promoting anti-capitalism. Yet this is the image we have to fight off now if we truly want the support of the public and to make real change.
A few days ago the BBC actually reported that Occupy was an anti-greed movement. This is fantastic! I can talk to anyone and get them to agree that society is struggling due to the greed of the Corporations, especially employees of corporations right up to high levels within these organisations.
e.g. nothing to do with me but a good example from Channel 4 Dispatches; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipK0ph-nDv0

Corporations are full of people that know that they are just a human resource and that the original idea of incorporating to serve the good of society has been washed away by the monster of an inhuman entity that just seeks profit for the next quarter regardless of the effects to human and environmental resources.

We had these people onside at first, they are the 99% and they know it. They all are fearful of, struggling with the banking crisis and are shitting bricks about austerity. Even if they are well paid they will know family and friends that have had their lifestyles dramatically changed over the last few years. They are not as stupid as the government thinks they are, they can see that the economy is in big trouble just by the lack of business activity in their communities.

We need to get these people back onside.

When I see people making anti-capitalist statements in the name of Occupy I do wonder what side they are on?
Do they really want change or do they want to marginalise any real opportunity for change?

Please remember – We Are The 99% !

Steve

Welcome to the Corporatocracy

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Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.
Benito Mussolini

Look at your media, most of the information that you are exposed to is controlled by corporates.
People can’t talk to their representatives in any western government without being overshadowed by lobbyist for the banksters and the corporations.
How can we have any form of democracy when politicians are bought so easily?

You don’t need to worry about being alive during WWII because WWIII has already been won by the fascists!
Only most of the people are to busy working hard to pay off debt that they got buying crap they don’t need, to notice.
100 years of austerity is what the central banksters have in mind for the 99%

Turn off your TV, delete farmville and inform yourself.
A better world is possible
Our grandfathers of all nations fought and died to stop the fascists of all nations. Do you want their sacrifice to be for nothing?
Every day our governments sneak a little more of our liberty and justice away from us in the name of security.
The mainstream media is not reporting the story!
Heard much about Iceland? The country that sacked it’s parliament and imprisoned the banksters? The same country that has the only economy that is truly recovering?

No?

May be you should start asking WHY!

Interesting interest

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As a teenager, a school associate asked me to lend him some money.
I had just learned about interest, so I offered him 10p at 100% compound interest per day.
After just a few days he had to make me an offer of his dinner tickets for a year or call in the school bully at a crippling cost to his liberty at school.

I find myself looking back and saying interesting how cruel interest can be.

Unlike the Banksters, I let him off with just the return of the principle and a sweetie.

Violent Police

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Disabled guy deserved being assaulted in this video apperently. According to the comments on Youtube. He shouldn’t have tried to calm down a fascist in phyco mode.

Britain is policed by consent. A consent that seems to be dying off. The police will need to use more and more agressive tactics to serve their masters. But with video like this, they will just turn more and more people against them.

 

As some of you know, I have enforced the law and I have worked with many officers both civil and criminal enforcement.
The officer in the clip is a liability and the crowed was actually doing their civic duty by tring to calm the situation down.
Man in Wheelchair assaulted by Police
I would only work with twats like this one once. If that mob wasn’t a bunch of treehuggers then he would have and should have been battered.

What Occupy should be about

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My original point that Occupy is not anti-capitalist seems to have gotten lost.

I believe that Occupy needs to be inclusive to all and by making sweeping statements that is anti this, anti that is exclusive. I would not want anyone to call Occupy anti socialist as much as I don’t want them to call it anti-capitalist.

Occupy I believe is about the 99% taking back the planet from those whose only goal is a short term profit.
A short term profit at the expense of our human resources
A short term profit at the expense of our planets resources
Why is the human race being held back so a few suits can extend their wealth and control.
I think we should be looking for an alternative together. Not an alternative to capitalism or socialism. Like all ‘isms’ they are just a form to control the populace.
Unchecked capitalism leads to the suffering of those who are unable to work,
while,
unchecked socialism leads to no reward for pushing the human race forward.

The main problem is the control of the populace.
Why, why hold them back?
Why work for 40 hours a week for 40 years for 40% of a wage that you couldn’t live on while you were working?
Why must we be described by the profession we take rather than the passions that we follow?

What has happened before will happen again,
the history books are only written by the victors.
If we really want to make a change then we need to educate ourselves and our associates without any blinkers that society may have imposed on us.

Finsbury Sq eviction

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The real Occupiers tried so hard to make Finsbury Sq a true Occupy camp again after the St Paul’s and School of ideas evictions.

When I was a Finsbury, Linda & Beefy sometimes even tried to clear all the rubbish on their own. Beefy tried to get people moving with some success but the total negative mood of people down there, the anarchists that just want to party and trash stuff until the next protest march, together with the people with mental issues wanting to fight anyone they think is messing with their camp or stuff, means that anyone trying to help the camp, improve the camp, quickly loose energy. I got Fed up with it after a few months but most only last a few weeks now.

If I ever Occupy again it will be an office or a short term camp both with a limited select crew.

All I ever wanted in Occupy was to work towards exposing, prosecuting and bringing down the bankster cartels that enslave us and use us as a resource with no concern for our welfare or planet.
People are dying because of the banksters greed and the development of the human race has been put on hold because they only value sort term profits at the expense of us and our planet.
We should be about teaching people how to learn. Not creating factory, office and cannon fodder.
We do not need drones anymore.
We’ve had the industrial revolution period, it’s over, we’re in the information period now. But rather than move the human race forward we are creating XBox robots to fill the shelves at Tescos.
Most of what I did in Occupy St Paul’s and Finsbury Sq was act like a dinner-lady stopping fights and keep an eye on people with issues.

I’m sorry that we have lost Finsbury Sq. It got a lot of unfair comments after the big evictions. It acted as a life-raft to so many Occupiers in the weeks after the eviction only to be effectively abandoned by the movement when the results of problems Occupy already had were condensed on to that tiny square of what was once green.
I’m sorry that we couldn’t support Islington council in its attempts to assist us when Islington’s big neighbour the City of London Corporation was trying to wipe Occupy and democracy out of existence.
I’m sorry that Islington was forced to move against the square because of concerns about the welfare of the residents living in rubbish infested with rats. If they didn’t take this action then there would be a good chance of someone getting e coli or viles disease.
I’m sorry that Islington is now facing the high legal costs of the High Court and enforcement.
I’m sorry that Occupy worldwide has been branded left wing, anti capitalist and is actually moving that way. Our target was the banksters. We were the 99% that is being asked to suffer austerity to bail out the banksters. But now Occupy is just another minority left wing movement.
I’m sorry to my protesting brothers in Syria that faced and still face the threat of real bullets to light a heart shaped bonfire to show solidarity with Occupy LSX in the last days before the eviction of St Paul’s.
I’m sorry that Occupy is alienating the business community. The vast majority of the 99% are employed by or supported by small to medium sized businesses. Businesses whose trade being hurt by austerity. An austerity that was cased by the same banksters that the 99% is being asked to bail out so the banksters can keep businesses in business. Yet the banksters do nothing accept repair their own interests while 1000s of businesses go to the wall, putting 10000s of the 99% in dire straights.

I will continue though,
I will simply go about the task differently,
and I will have a small Occupy banner at every court room victory

I am thankful to Occupy for one thing in particular though. For the rest of my days, whenever I see and abandoned pallet in the street, I will think just one thing and smile; ‘Hmmmm…. Comfy…. mmmm….