Legal proceedings being threatened against previous owner of house

[centurian]

What they all said.

To a (very small) degree, I have some sympathy with the debt collectors - as they must get told a pack of lies on a regular basis, so when someone is genuinely saying that the person no longer lives there - they can't tell if it's the truth or not, so just keep being plain obnouxious.

Just keep a record of everything - and keep it for at least 6 years. Don't be surprised if you hear nothing for a few years, then get more phone calls as the debt has been sold onto another debt collection agency, who start off the whole process again.

[SueEllen]

Your credit rating depends on what the lender thinks of your credit report. If they see that someone at your address has CCJs against them then I'm pretty sure it will affect their decision.

I checked my credit report and there were a number of people listed as "connected persons" even though I had never met most of them (they just lived at my address before me).

If you are applying for any credit, then you may want to file a "notice of disassociation" saying that this person lived there before you and you have no connection to them having never met them.

They aren't legally allowed to link you any more and it hasn't been that way for at least a good 5 years (probably more).

However it doesn't stop the company taking precautions against a particular property due to a history of 2 or more people in the past running up bad debts. For example the whole of Thamesmead in SE London is supposedly on a blacklist for many companies due to delivery fraud regardless of who lives in the area.

It doesn't stop people if you live in flats in a house that has been converted into flats in the past 20 years and isn't properly recognised by Royal Mail, from purposely associating themselves with you due to your good credit record or even due to the fact you have a TV license so they don't have to pay for one.

It also doesn't stop operators from lazily linking you and other people with the first house/flat number on their system due to your postcode because they can't be bothered to type in your number when they do a credit check. Oddly when you threatened to take this further they very quickly remove the link and the credit search from your records. (Yes Tiscali again)