{"id":11211,"date":"2010-12-15T16:21:09","date_gmt":"2010-12-15T16:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/?p=11211"},"modified":"2019-11-18T12:44:57","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T12:44:57","slug":"creditor-harassment-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/creditor-harassment-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Harassed by a Creditor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If we cannot pay our bills as they fall due there is often a price to pay in terms of creditor hassle, hounding and harassment.  Credit card providers in particular seem to be the most aggressive in  pursuing debtors by letter, phone calls and other means. Can we do  anything about it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>It will come as some comfort to harassed debtors that MBNA has been  found guilty by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) recently of hounding  customers who found themselves in financial difficulties. Even where  customers had engaged the services of a third party or an agent to act  on their behalf MBNA sent confusing debt collection letters to their  customers particularly where offers of reduced payments had been made.  Customers who made offers of reduced payments could not tell if MBNA  were accepting or rejecting their offers, so confusing were the letters  they received from the biggest credit card lender in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"335\" height=\"359\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Fotolia_49486229_XS.jpg\" alt=\"Harassed by creditors\" class=\"wp-image-11220\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Fotolia_49486229_XS.jpg 335w, https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Fotolia_49486229_XS-280x300.jpg 280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 335px) 100vw, 335px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>MBNA has been ordered to improve its dealings with customers and the  way its in house debt collection section behaves. MBNA must also adhere  to its own policies in terms of contacting its customers directly where  customers have appointed a third party to act on their behalf. Where a  third party has been appointed to act on behalf of the debtor, MBNA\u2019s  direct contact with the debtor is limited in its nature and frequency.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The OFT has said that MBNA co-operated fully during the investigation\n and that they have now agreed to make its debt collection letters \nclearer and to clarify its policies and procedures for dealing with \nappointed representatives. The trading watchdog has the power to impose \nfines of up to \u00a350,000 and to revoke MBNA\u2019s consumer credit licence if \nit breaches any of the requirements imposed by the OFT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If we cannot pay our bills as they fall due there is often a price to pay in terms of creditor hassle, hounding and harassment.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-debt-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11211"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12588,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11211\/revisions\/12588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationaldebtrelief.co.uk\/debt-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}