Intrum Justitia

MagicMarker

Need a tad bit of help guys...

Moved out of Ireland in December, cancelled all direct debits from my bank before doing so.

Unfortunately, I forgot that my last meteor bill hadn't been paid and this morning my brother emailed me a scanned copy of a letter I have got from these guys.

They say i owe them 225.54 euro or they'll send someone to my house etc!:rolleyes:

Now, I don't mind paying what I owe. But when i spoke to someone in Meteor before i left to cancel my contract, i asked for an estimate on what my last bill would be. Taking into account the calls i had made and paying out the rest of my contract, the guy on the phone said it would be approx 150.

I have no qualms about paying Meteor what i owe them, but i don't particularly want to deal with these goons and pay them money for anything.

I've emailed Meteor, i would rather ring but my mobile phone here doesn't allow international calling, and i have zero money to use a pay phone for that! So i just have to wait on a reply.

Just wondering how fast intrum justitia act on these things? I don't particularly want them knocking on my door, as that's unfair on my family. In fact can they even do that, since i don't live there anymore?

Thanks in advance.

themadchef

Well i can't speak for anyone else but i got a letter from this crowd a few years back for a similar figure.

I had changed from one phone company to another and had been paying by internet transfer. They were paid, and i got cut off? So i cancelled the acc and moved back to old provider. They found all of my payments but one. And i was pretty sure that i paid it. The letters kept coming from the company, i ignored them, then those guys mailed me for the best part of a year. Eventually the letters stopped coming and thats the last i heard from any of them. So from my point of view, you can see why i would think they will stop coming if you ignore them.

Things may have changed in the last year or so though, as i said it's only my personal experience. Please don't take it as advice. Best of luck with it.

MagicMarker

themadchef wrote: »

Well i can't speak for anyone else but i got a letter from this crowd a few years back for a similar figure.

I had changed from one phone company to another and had been paying by internet transfer. They were paid, and i got cut off? So i cancelled the acc and moved back to old provider. They found all of my payments but one. And i was pretty sure that i paid it. The letters kept coming from the company, i ignored them, then those guys mailed me for the best part of a year. Eventually the letters stopped coming and thats the last i heard from any of them. So from my point of view, you can see why i would think they will stop coming if you ignore them.

Things may have changed in the last year or so though, as i said it's only my personal experience. Please don't take it as advice. Best of luck with it.

Cheers Dude.

I'm not really too worried, the only thing that concerns me is them going to my house. That would piss me off no end!!

Anyhoo, i've contacted these guys as well as meteor, so we'll see what happens.

bmaxi

It s a bit early for these guys to be involved. How long do you owe this money? You may find that you no longer owe the debt to Meteor as these guys buy bad debts and collect them. A shower of bullies, get them out of your life asap.

Ruu_Old

I had dealings with them a few years ago when changing phone companies also. Money had not been debited from my bank account and then all of a sudden they (phone company) wanted the entire lump (over a years worth of internet and calls). I wasn't given much notice when IJ gave me a call with a figure that I needed to pay. I called the phone company and we agreed on a more reasonable figure and that took IJ out of the equation.

Oryx

The are a crowd of bullies who use very strong wording in their letters to get you to pay. I advise contacting the meteor and paying them, and requesting that IJ are not involved. I doubt they will call to your house immediately, they tend to send a series of letters first, but I cant say for certain. Sorry.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

I'm in this situation with Three Mobile at the moment, forgot to pay them before leaving the country. Could you get someone back home to pay the bill for you?

No one is allowed to enter your house unless they have a court order to that effect. If, and i say 'if', they call around to your parent's house, then tell your parents to tell them to feck off.

If they don't show a court document (highly unlikely), then that's what they'll have to do.

MagicMarker

Well at this stage, I don't live in Ireland, so they can't go into my family home just because they're my family can they?

I emailed meteor, they said they can't give me any details as my account has been terminated.

I emailed IJ and as yet have had no reply. So, hopefully their customer service is ****e and they don't reply at all.

Slice

Why don't you get your brother to return the letters to sender and state on them 'named person not at this address'. It's not like you live in the country anymore

Musha

I had these guys on to me as well for the grand sum of €20.45 DHL delivered a package and did not collect the Duty owed, I forgot all about it except for the fact that the money was sitting on the kitchen counter for a month, received no contact from DHL then oneday got a nasty letter demanding the money fro IJ phone them up and paid by CC .... vowed never to use DHL again.

You can settle the bill directly with Meteor and they will contact IJ to say case closed. anymore letters from them "return to sender"

wuggy_bear

a bit of advice for you is to do nothing thats my honest opinion, i work for quite a large company but i cant name it here that send down accounts for collection to intrum justia, so i know how they work, if you want more details just pm me and i will tell you but the way it works is that meteor should of sent you out a bill/invoice and then a reminder statement 30 days later reminding you of the payment owed. You can say you never recieved this and you probably didnt but you can ask meteor for the original statment bcos they would of had to send this to intrum for dates for collection period times. then intrum will send out 3 letters , the first giving 30 days to pay or arrange a payment, the second a 14 day later reminding and then the final one a 3 day later. all letters are harshly worded as you know saying you will be reported to the irish credit bureau and your credit rating affected, this is not allowed for amount below €1,270 so therefore if you do not pay they have no comeback, plus intrum will never send out a debt collector for an amount like this as its too costly to get a sherrif order in ireland as they have to go to the district court for these and if they do they are not allowed pass on the courts fees to the debtor that owes the money to the company as its optional to chase for payment or not, most companies write off small amounts like these as they make a bad debt provision of usually anything between 5%-10% of sales as unrecoverable so meteor will have already adjusted for losses, do nothing bcos they can do nothing to your credit rating, the only thing that will happen is if u were to get a meteor phone they prob wouldnt give you a contract phone, but hey theres always vodafone, 3g and 02 and tesco are soon coming into the irish phone market under the 02 brand so you will have plenty of choice.

any more info needed just pm, also i could tell you how many times i was threathened with the joe duffy phone line when i was a credit controller, id be a rich man if i put away those euro's each time.

Sam Vimes

wuggy_bear wrote: »

tesco are soon coming into the irish phone market under the 02 brand so you will have plenty of choice.

tesco are currently in the irish market. their prefix is 089

Sponge Bob

wuggy_bear wrote: »

this is not allowed for amount below €1,270 so therefore if you do not pay they have no comeback, plus intrum will never send out a debt collector for an amount like this as its too costly to get a sherrif order in ireland

Jeez wuggy, did ya get all the way through our education system with no notion at all of what a paragraph is

Nearly a great post , can you edit it into a structure please.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Jeez wuggy, did ya get all the way through our education system with no notion at all of what a paragraph is

Nearly a great post , can you edit it into a structure please.

seconded - looks like a really good post, and thanks for posting it, but it is nearly impossible to read.

mickoneill30

Musha wrote: »

I had these guys on to me as well for the grand sum of €20.45 DHL delivered a package and did not collect the Duty owed, I forgot all about it except for the fact that the money was sitting on the kitchen counter for a month, received no contact from DHL then oneday got a nasty letter demanding the money fro IJ phone them up and paid by CC .... vowed never to use DHL again.

I got one like that a few weeks ago. Letter from IJ saying I owed €14 to DHL. I get packages from DHL occasionally but I didn't remember the bill from them. I paid IJ and now I try to avoid DHL if given the option (which I usually am).

dudara

Roundtower2 wrote: »

seconded - looks like a really good post, and thanks for posting it, but it is nearly impossible to read.

Ditto. It was a really informative post, but some paragraphs and punctuation would make it so much better.

wuggy_bear

Ihis better for you guys to read, i didnt know boards was a place where i had to use stucture and form becasue i was not writing a novel!

A bit of advice for you is to do nothing with Intrum, thats my honest opinion, i work for quite a large company but i cant name it here in Irealand that sends down accounts for collection to intrum justia, so i know how they work.

If you want more details just pm me and i will tell you but the way it works generally is that meteor should of sent you out a bill/invoice and then a reminder statement 30 days later reminding you of the payment owed. You can say you never recieved this and you probably didnt but you can ask meteor for the original statment becasuse they would of had to send this to intrum for dates for collection period times.

Then intrum will send out 3 letters , the first giving 30 days to pay or arrange a payment, the second a 14 day later reminding and then the final one a 3 day later. all letters are harshly worded. It will state that you will be reported to the irish credit bureau and your credit rating affected, this is not allowed for amounts below €1,270 therefore if you do not pay they have no comeback.

Intrum will never send out a debt collector for an amount like this as its too costly to get a sherrif order in Ireland as they have to go to the district court for these and if they do they are not allowed pass on the courts fees to the debtor that owes the money to the company as its optional to chase for payment or not, most companies write off small amounts like these as they make a bad debt provision of usually anything between 5%-10% of sales as unrecoverable so meteor will have already adjusted for losses.

Do nothing bcos they can do nothing to your credit rating, the only thing that will happen is if u were to get a meteor phone they probably wouldnt give you a contract phone, but hey theres always vodafone, 3g and 02 and tesco are soon coming into the irish phone market under the 02 brand so you will have plenty of choice.

If you need any more info needed just pm, also i could tell you how many times i was threathened with the joe duffy phone line when i was a credit controller, id be a rich man if i put away those euro's each time.

murphaph

Roundtower2 wrote: »

If they don't show a court document (highly unlikely), then that's what they'll have to do.

They won't be able to show any such document as the only person(s) legally allowed to enter your house for the purposes of collection of a debt is the County Sheriff and only after a judgement against you in the circuit (IIRC) court.

MagicMarker

Ok, bit of an update on this guys...

I got a second letter from these guys a couple of weeks ago, from the way it was worded it was obvious that no one read my email to them and again they demanded the money. I figured that if they are so unprofessional as to acknowledge emails then i won't acknowledge them.

A coupe of days ago a letter was received from a solicitor to my parents house. I don't know the exact wording but my mother said that it says i have 10 days to pay or i will have no credit rating.

Anyone know what to do from here? It looks like i'm going to have to ring them but i'd like to know where i stand first of all.

thanks guys.

foggy_lad

as per the above post by wuggy bear if the amount is below €1270 it cant affect your credit rating so just do nothing

Lizzykins

I don't know about anything under 1270 not affecting your credit rating? What if you miss a few loan repayments? That will affect your record. I'm fairly sure that the ICB only deal with financial institutions so Meteor could not put your details on the record there. I stand to be corrected though. My advice-pay Meteor and forget about it.

eth0_

Yeah that 1270 figure sounds like it was plucked out of the air. I got a copy of my credit rating recently and the one bad thing on ti was a credit card that I paid off and closed (or so I thought) that was registered to my parents address - there was 30 euro owing on it (government duty) that I hadn't paid off as I hadn't been home and they had TOLD me my credit card account was closed off. So now I have a black mark for not paying my credit card for three months. All Ulster Bank's fault, not mine.

So OP - if I were you i'd ring them, writing letters obviously doesn't work.

Lizzykins

Isn't it litle they have to be doing if they can put a 30 euro debt on the ICB. That's pathetic.

dudara

MagicMarker wrote: »

I figured that if they are so unprofessional as to acknowledge emails then i won't acknowledge them.

Registered letter is the only way to deal with anything serious. e-mails are not a reliable substitute.

Sam Vimes

foggy_lad wrote: »

as per the above post by wuggy bear if the amount is below €1270 it cant affect your credit rating so just do nothing

for a man who insists on inhumanly high standards in everyone he deals with and constantly accuses others of trying to screw him, you don't seem to have much problem screwing a company you owe money to

do you not hold yourself to the same standards as you hold everyone else? should he not pay it back for morality's sake, rather than simply saying "they can't hurt me so f*ck them"?

Gillo

Sam Vimes wrote: »

for a man who insists on inhumanly high standards in everyone he deals with and constantly accuses others of trying to screw him, you don't seem to have much problem screwing a company you owe money to

do you not hold yourself to the same standards as you hold everyone else? should he not pay it back for morality's sake, rather than simply saying "they can't hurt me so f*ck them"?

Nicely put.

AIB put me on the ICB list for an amount well under the €1270 mark, so you can be listed for smaller amounts. That said since meteor aren't a finincial institution my understanding is you can't be listed.

Doctor DooM

eth0_ wrote: »

Yeah that 1270 figure sounds like it was plucked out of the air. I got a copy of my credit rating recently and the one bad thing on ti was a credit card that I paid off and closed (or so I thought) that was registered to my parents address - there was 30 euro owing on it (government duty) that I hadn't paid off as I hadn't been home and they had TOLD me my credit card account was closed off. So now I have a black mark for not paying my credit card for three months. All Ulster Bank's fault, not mine.

So OP - if I were you i'd ring them, writing letters obviously doesn't work.

1270 euro = 1000 pounds. Not so random

foggy_lad wrote: »

as per the above post by wuggy bear if the amount is below €1270 it cant affect your credit rating so just do nothing

I would never, ever, advise someone to not pay something they owe. Think about it for a minute, this is the kind of thing that could come back and bite you later in life. And considering the usual content of your posts foggy, it's quite a hypocritical post.

Registered letter is the only way to deal with anything serious. e-mails are not a reliable substitute.

Best advice you have gotten in this thread. I've said it before in this forum, Email and text are not reliable media for business communications, use registered post or a phone call or its your own fault there is no communication tbh.

Grawns

I am currently being threatened by Intrum Justita in Sweden. I am loathe to pay as I am in dispute with the company involved. EuroTourism ltd. (Must do a longer post about dodgy foreign business practices sometime)

Long story short, I signed a contract with them that was extremely unfair but clever and when I disputed it they put Intum Justitia on to me within 8 weeks. The sum is €562.50

I talked to the branch here and they have no dealings with the branch in Sweden, I talked to the Swedish branch about when would the account be passed to their branch in Ireland and it won't be. They say they will use a local solicitor and I will be responsible for the costs!

The last I heard they were recontacting Eurotourism for documents enabling Intrum to issue proceedings against me ( or my business? I'm not sure).

Imagine my surprise when I got an email ( and not a letter like in the past) from EIS European Information Service( Eurotourism's other name) asking me to kindly pay again! Very surprising and confusing.

Sam Vimes

tbh foggy, you've just confirmed something i've always thought about people such as yourself. the reason you think that everyone is always trying to screw you is that, given the chance, you'd screw them and you think that everyone is like you

eth0_

SDooM wrote: »

1270 euro = 1000 pounds. Not so random

My point wasn't that the figure was a random number, it's more that it's patently UNTRUE.

As I (and other people on this thread) have said, it's complete RUBBISH. I have a black mark on my credit rating for not paying a credit card (that I was told had been closed) for three months. All that was owed on it was 30 euro.

Doctor DooM

eth0_ wrote: »

My point wasn't that the figure was a random number, it's more that it's patently UNTRUE.

As I (and other people on this thread) have said, it's complete RUBBISH. I have a black mark on my credit rating for not paying a credit card (that I was told had been closed) for three months. All that was owed on it was 30 euro.

Ok, got you know.

I did open a feedback thread on people offering untrue and potentially dangerous advice in this forum, this thread is a prime example of it.

Maybe I should bump it.