Sorry to bother people here who have genuine problems. Today I received a second letter from JDL Holdings (I ignored the first) asking me to contact them. The letters are very generic and don't mention anything other than 'urgent personal business matters'. They have my middle name wrong also, though the first letter is right.

Being a very paranoid person (sorry about the fake email address), I thought I'd check them out. Having searched Google etc this site was the only lead I could find, and JDL Holdings seem to be very shady indeed. Aside from a student loan (not missed a payment yet) I'm free of debt, do not and have never owned a house, have never taken out any finance plans. So understandably I'm now crapping myself at being hunted by debt collector types when I barely own anything as it is!

I'm moving out of my current (rented) address at the end of February. Should I just totally ignore the letters until I move, and then forget about it completely? I get the feeling from reading this site that innocently phoning them is a big mistake. If anyone can give any advice I'd be very grateful.

-- Mr Paranoid (paranoid@hotmail.com), January 30, 2003

Answers

From what you say you have done nothing wrong, in which case (especially given the error in your name) it looks like JDL have mistaken you for somebody else who really *does* have a debt problem. It is important you do answer their letter to find out who they think you are, because otherwise you could easily end up with a dodgy credit record through no fault of your own, which is likely to make your life unnecessarily difficult. You are right however that you should not telephone, as in my experience the staff of these companies are extremely rude, insulting and unwilling to listen to you. Write a letter and send it by recorded delivery. Good luck.

-- Melody (mbc109@york.ac.uk), January 31, 2003.