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Hello to all. I'm new, but have noticed since spring you have a fair number of posts re Lowells' Portfolio on here. In June my husband got a County Court claim from Lowell's Solicitors for a debt they say he incurred through an unpaid vodafone account of £321.73. It's almost an amount that, if you are not in poor financial straits, you would pay just to end the matter. But we decided to defend it, because to his knowledge he has never been a customer of vodafone not ever signed a contract with them nor purchased a phone handset from them.
People may not realise, but having a foreign surname ( my husband is Polish) means you get a lot of fake demands for payment. The unscrupulous as in all societies, see foreigners as easy prey: those not fluent in English may be frightened into paying, not knowing their rights or where to go for help. So when my husband received the bills from vodafone, they went in the bin with the other fake demands. From this site, we got information, to write to Lowells asking for proof of the original contract quoting words in italics from above.. Lowell's responded that they are not obliged under the telecommunications act to provide that proof.
One doubt that exists regarding this in my husbands mind is this: In 2008 he was going through a divorce. He had a turbulent few years and he says it is possible that either he blindly signed a phone contract for his ex wife (but then why would the bills be coming to our address, as it would have been done before we met) The other possibilities are that she since fraudulently signed a contract in his name, or someone else has. And this is why it is vital to see the contract. So today, I am putting together letters, ( I'm an English teacher so I tend to be the one who deals with any writing)
A couple of weeks back we ticked 'happy to mediate' on a court questionnnaire.. But when we got the follow up court mediation questionnaire we find you have to be able to say YES to all the questions, one of which is that you do not require any documentation from the 'other side'.
We do require that original document if it exists! The 'court' advised us that we write again to Lowells and ask again for the required proof/document, so that we can mediate. So doing that today.
Please give me your opinion on this and the best way to go forward. It occurs to me that, as I am spending time on this, would we be able to claim still for costs for time spent on this- he did not put in a counter claim on the original CC but disagreed with their claim.
Thank you for reading. I look forward very much to your response
People may not realise, but having a foreign surname ( my husband is Polish) means you get a lot of fake demands for payment. The unscrupulous as in all societies, see foreigners as easy prey: those not fluent in English may be frightened into paying, not knowing their rights or where to go for help. So when my husband received the bills from vodafone, they went in the bin with the other fake demands. From this site, we got information, to write to Lowells asking for proof of the original contract quoting words in italics from above.. Lowell's responded that they are not obliged under the telecommunications act to provide that proof.
One doubt that exists regarding this in my husbands mind is this: In 2008 he was going through a divorce. He had a turbulent few years and he says it is possible that either he blindly signed a phone contract for his ex wife (but then why would the bills be coming to our address, as it would have been done before we met) The other possibilities are that she since fraudulently signed a contract in his name, or someone else has. And this is why it is vital to see the contract. So today, I am putting together letters, ( I'm an English teacher so I tend to be the one who deals with any writing)
A couple of weeks back we ticked 'happy to mediate' on a court questionnnaire.. But when we got the follow up court mediation questionnaire we find you have to be able to say YES to all the questions, one of which is that you do not require any documentation from the 'other side'.
We do require that original document if it exists! The 'court' advised us that we write again to Lowells and ask again for the required proof/document, so that we can mediate. So doing that today.
Please give me your opinion on this and the best way to go forward. It occurs to me that, as I am spending time on this, would we be able to claim still for costs for time spent on this- he did not put in a counter claim on the original CC but disagreed with their claim.
Thank you for reading. I look forward very much to your response
