Hi all,
Just signed up today and said hi in the welcome forums, haven't found a topic that matches our problem closely enough so I'm posting a new request for assistance.
I've read curlyben's sticky in this forum and it's pretty much stopped us killing ourselves with worry, but I'm not confident enough to follow the advice because of an added complication and I would be very grateful of a teensy bit more.
My other half's mum passed away in october 2009 leaving no money but a bit of debt. Bless her, she hadn't known what to do about her affairs so we had a bit of trouble identifying who wanted what. The house wasn't hers but we had access for a while and set up a royal mail redirect to our house which is still in effect.
We wrote to all the other debtors and gave them copies of the death certificate, which names my other half as the next of kin, and they all confirmed that it was all closed but the capital one credit card statement we sent back unopened with 'deceased' written on it - don't ask me why, this was the advice of her father who we foolishly listened to because he is a magistrate.
A few weeks ago we got a letter from teleogram addressed to her mum - we'll call her A - at our address fishing for info. That's what brought me to your site.
We got onto the CAB who advised us to write to capital one enclosing the death certificate which we did. We got another fishing letter from teleogram (crossed in the post i expect) then this afternoon a letter from capquest asking for a figure roughly five times the original debt. I'm presuming the letter we sent to capital one has been ignored, or if it hasn't then they've communicated any new info to capquest, hence the demand this morning.
The letter we got today seems to be the 'Hello' letter from the DCA. It says, among other things,
"...inform you that your capital one account ... has been referred to capquest..."
and threatens us with 'doorstep collection agency' and referral to their solicitors HL Legal. We have had no 'goodbye' letter from capital one, or indeed any communication whatsoever since the statement we returned.
We're clear that we don't owe this debt - my understanding and the advice the CAB gave us at the time is that it died with her mother - so my question is how to proceed: i'd like to send the 'prove it' letter from curlyben's sticky but as their demand was addressed to A and not my other half I don't know whether they're applicable?
Should we just send capquest the 'prove it' letter or should we write to them and tell them that A has died and the debt is contested? Curlyben's sticky advises at one point to try and get the handling of it returned to capital one. Would we still have to write to capquest to achieve that? Or should we ignore capquest altogether and try to sort it out with capital one? I'm very afraid of contacting them at all (horrified to learn that they might actually photoshop your signature!)
I realise that we've not helped our cause by not writing to capital one earlier (last time I trust her father with legal matters...) but I naively figured capital one would be able to independently confirm that she'd died - public record and all that - and as they never sent anything else I assumed they'd dropped it. I'm guessing they've not replied to our recent letter because they've sold the debt on - realistically I guess we will have to write to capquest <shudder>.
Apologies for the long post, I tried to strip out all the details that are common to everyone else's case but as a former tech-support guy I always wanted all the details...
Many thanks in advance for any help, my other half's not got over the bereavement at all and every time we get something from these extortionists it ruins her day. In any case I'm hugely reassured by the advice in curlyben's sticky and elsewhere on these forums : ) Thanks so much!
Just signed up today and said hi in the welcome forums, haven't found a topic that matches our problem closely enough so I'm posting a new request for assistance.
I've read curlyben's sticky in this forum and it's pretty much stopped us killing ourselves with worry, but I'm not confident enough to follow the advice because of an added complication and I would be very grateful of a teensy bit more.
My other half's mum passed away in october 2009 leaving no money but a bit of debt. Bless her, she hadn't known what to do about her affairs so we had a bit of trouble identifying who wanted what. The house wasn't hers but we had access for a while and set up a royal mail redirect to our house which is still in effect.
We wrote to all the other debtors and gave them copies of the death certificate, which names my other half as the next of kin, and they all confirmed that it was all closed but the capital one credit card statement we sent back unopened with 'deceased' written on it - don't ask me why, this was the advice of her father who we foolishly listened to because he is a magistrate.
A few weeks ago we got a letter from teleogram addressed to her mum - we'll call her A - at our address fishing for info. That's what brought me to your site.
We got onto the CAB who advised us to write to capital one enclosing the death certificate which we did. We got another fishing letter from teleogram (crossed in the post i expect) then this afternoon a letter from capquest asking for a figure roughly five times the original debt. I'm presuming the letter we sent to capital one has been ignored, or if it hasn't then they've communicated any new info to capquest, hence the demand this morning.
The letter we got today seems to be the 'Hello' letter from the DCA. It says, among other things,
"...inform you that your capital one account ... has been referred to capquest..."
and threatens us with 'doorstep collection agency' and referral to their solicitors HL Legal. We have had no 'goodbye' letter from capital one, or indeed any communication whatsoever since the statement we returned.
We're clear that we don't owe this debt - my understanding and the advice the CAB gave us at the time is that it died with her mother - so my question is how to proceed: i'd like to send the 'prove it' letter from curlyben's sticky but as their demand was addressed to A and not my other half I don't know whether they're applicable?
Should we just send capquest the 'prove it' letter or should we write to them and tell them that A has died and the debt is contested? Curlyben's sticky advises at one point to try and get the handling of it returned to capital one. Would we still have to write to capquest to achieve that? Or should we ignore capquest altogether and try to sort it out with capital one? I'm very afraid of contacting them at all (horrified to learn that they might actually photoshop your signature!)
I realise that we've not helped our cause by not writing to capital one earlier (last time I trust her father with legal matters...) but I naively figured capital one would be able to independently confirm that she'd died - public record and all that - and as they never sent anything else I assumed they'd dropped it. I'm guessing they've not replied to our recent letter because they've sold the debt on - realistically I guess we will have to write to capquest <shudder>.
Apologies for the long post, I tried to strip out all the details that are common to everyone else's case but as a former tech-support guy I always wanted all the details...
Many thanks in advance for any help, my other half's not got over the bereavement at all and every time we get something from these extortionists it ruins her day. In any case I'm hugely reassured by the advice in curlyben's sticky and elsewhere on these forums : ) Thanks so much!
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