Debt collectors and lawyers after me

I am disputing a mobile phone bill from June 2006 of a now disconnected mobile phone. Unknown to me, my mobile phone was stolen whilst I was overseas and within 2 to 3 days a huge amount had been racked up. The mobile phone company disconnected the phone - I had not been using the phone for 3 months prior to that, and my previous usage was minimal (ie bills < $80 HKD).


My last contact with the mobile phone provider was early September 2006 where I requested to speak to a supervisor and asked for avenues to follow if I dispute the bill. We had been using the email as a form of communication. No reply to my last email.


I am now getting letters from their lawyers threatening to take me to court and voicemails from people whom I believe are debt collectors asking me to call them "urgently".


I would like to get out of this paying nothing or a proportion of the bill, eg 50%. Does anyone have any suggestions?

About 22,000 HKD.


This was racked up over two to three days in the UK by a person who was calling various countries in Europe.


So I imagine it must have been roaming charges (HK to UK), and then the UK to Europe charges of this person's calls.


Thanks

Did you report the theft to the police in whichever country you were at the time? Would suggest you send copies of all correspondence you have exchanged with the provider up until Sept 06 to their lawyer and ask their lawyer to contact the debt collectors and advise you are dealing with them directly.

Hi-


The police don't want to have anything to do with this, except to fill in a report. I guess it makes sense, they must have more important crimes to deal with then chasing up phone calls. I reported it in the UK, they said usually the phone company would investigate if they choose.


I actually don't mind settling prior to the hearing. I'd prefer to settle with the phone company without the involvement of lawyers, but the phone company seem to either have trouble dealing with anything that isn't standard procedure and/or they don't understand written or spoken english as they do not respond to me anymore.


I'm also kind of inclined to let this run its own course. I was hoping someone would chime in with a story of paying <100% of a bill, and the processes they took to enable this.


Thanks for your advice

If you lost in a lawsuit in Hong Kong, you will have to pay their lawyer's bill which may be more than your bill itself depending on how hard you fight the case.


If you did not report to the mobile company immediately after you lost your phone, you may have a hard case.

MXX,for $22,000 they will have to pursue the matter through the small claims tribunal and their legal costs incurred by the law firm they have engaged are unlikely to be awarded against you. At the SCT they will have to prove to the satisfction of the adjucicator that you are the rightful debtor and so any correspondnece you have with the police in both the UK and HK will assist you. If it were me, I would write o the law firm they have engaged and be frank about the theft of the phone and see what they say. Even if this ends up at the small claims tribunal, the adjucicator will try and mediate a settlement without having to make an order against you.

Sinoqie,


Did you read the facts. He lost his phone. Someone use the phone to call.

Guys, thanks for your advices


They disconnected it after a couple of days of fraudulent phone calls, and then I realised it was lost. During that time I believe they had been leaving me voicemails (a) on my HK landline number, and (b) in Chinese. As I don't understand Chinese I am not 100% certain if the voicemails were warning me of fraud. Funnily enough they were able to email me in English a few days later that I owed $22K.


I really think it is appalling I should have to suffer just because I don't understand Chinese. And I get many junk and spam voicemails, I ignore chinese voicemails now. Its discriminatory that they don't have say the message in both Engilish and Chinese when it is important.


Anyway I have police reports and the itemised bill, and I have made contact with the lawyer. I'm not sure how I will go, hopefully it won't go further than the Small CLaims Tribunal.


If anyone has negotiation tactics for me to minimize this bill, please let me know. Thanks again all for your comments.

Don't cave in to them. The whole point is how much time to spend on it. Do you feel that the time and effort you spend on it will exceed the 22k and want a settlement? Do you feel that you don't want to pay the bill coz it's unjust? What do you want? Decide on what your motive is first, then you can plan your strategey.


I would fight them all the way. I am not a lawyer. I just have opinions and some experience. Take it or leave it mate. I am just trying to help. I am assuming HK laws are similar to the UK laws. And I know people's want's and don't wants are the smae.


The authorities here DON'T follow the letters of the law. They get away with it coz people here are afraid of trouble and don't like to run against big institutions.


The records of calls can prove that they were not the calls you would usually make. They are likely to be foreign calls. In England, I had some Nigerian tapped into my landline from outside the house and set up a little business charging his mates to use the line to call home. I had a 3k (sterling) bill. I refused to pay BT and after 8 months of argumnets they dropped it. Just like you I had lwayers on my case and I was waiting for the County Court summon and blow them apart there. I was going to get that into the local papers too. If you are a Brit then you know that UK isn't run by the Prime Minister, but by the hacks on Fleet Street.


Never fight authorities and large institutions on their terms. Fight on your own turf and don't be shying from shots below the belts. They wouldn't.


Look for your opponents' weaknesses. In this case what don't they want? Bad press? High costs? Too many man hours to deal with you?


I am currently advising people on a couple of cases re Police. One case is the Police refusing to answer questions from a young girl who was assualted and put in hospital. Just giving her a run around coz the boy who put her there is from a reapectible family and has a promosing career in banking. She got soft and accepted a bound over. Should have got a custodian sentence out of it. Took 2 hours down at the cop shop the first time coz they were trying to give me the run around too but I am an old hand at this. The other one is more serious and on going so cannot say much here. Never trust the Police. They are not bad or incompetent, well may be they are, and they haven't got better things to do, they just don't want to do anything.


I can tell you what I would do. Find your grounds first, pick the fight and pick the soft spots to hit. Your grounds = facts.


Check your contract to see if anything is said about who's responsible for costs if you loose your phone. You may not be. Read the letter or the spirit of the wordings depending on which best suits your case. Even if you are in letter and you signed it, it can still be challenged on grounds of unfair contracts. If the conditions stipulated cannot be met reasonably, you can challenge it.


Their attempts to contact you may not have demonstrated due dilligence on their part. You have a non Chinese name I presumme. They may not have adequately fullfilled their part of the contract.


Debt collectors, like bailiffs, are bags of fun. They tend to break the laws on everything they do, the intimidation tactics, the phone calls etc. Record the messages. Get them act like bullies and record it.


Document events and communications. Will come in useful to prove that they are not trying to help. Because this can demonstrate bad faith and good faith is implicit in all legal contracts.


Your lawyers are likely to say you cannot go against them but you can. I have only ever used lawyers when I bought and sold houses, not because I needed them but I knew the seller/buyer lawyers were gonna be huge pain coz I was not using lawyers.


Generally, if it's not about slimming, or some celebrity caught in bed with someone else's mistress, the press here don't want to know. But you may strike lucky and someone may want to know. No harm calling anyone you know in the papers. Forget TV news though. You won't find a Jeremy Paxman or Esther Rantzen here.


Now PCCW has alot of bad press and may not want more. The others may wish to appear customers friendly and getting bad press is undesirable. 2 different emphasis but same weapon. Bad press.


Look fof decision makers. Move up the management structure and give constant grief to each individual till he passes you upward. You have got to legally hassle him (counter attack) and make him feel that he isn't being paid enough to deal with you. He has 2 options: pass you upward or conceed. If the first, you repeat until some one thinks that it,s not worth putting up with you and conceed. I have won many a "civilian" fights this way. Play the man or play the ball, it doesn't matter. Just so you get the ball.


Don't just go to small claims. Stir the whole thing up and it will be to your advantage. Lawyers want you to settle. Police wants you to cause less trouble. They advise you on what's best for them. What do you want?


I am completely with you on not wanting to pay. It's not the money for me and I imagine you can afford to settle easily. It's that if you were to allow an unjust act go by without a fight, without a challenge, based on expediency, then rights and wrongs are just a numbers game. And the have's will always win over the have not's, coz they can literally afford justice. By definition, that's not justice anymore. Remember what I said about what you want out of it? There is always and should be a price to pay for justice. Not a fee. Today we are the "have's" but who knows when we need justice and can't afford it. Set an example today and tomorrow someone may be shouting from your corner when you most need it.

The raw truth is you lost your phone and you did not report it to the mobile company. Is it the responsibility of the mobile company to find out from you that your phone is not lost? There are so many people roaming their phones overseas. The mobile company must be very busy checking.


Let be practical. If your mobile company stops you from making a call overseas, will you shout? So, how?


I am not from any telephone company I think this case should be more or less the same as in a case of loss of credit card. One has report within a reasonable time.

I agree with douglaskoh on the point that we should all be responsible for our own actions. If there is one person on this planet who believes in that and live that like a religious conviction, that would be me. But let me tell you something about companies like mobile phone and credit card companies. The technologies and and policies existed for many years to stop many of the problems from abuse of the systems. It's all a matter of costs and profits. It is the same as the credit card companies. The losses they claim they incured are almost completely underwritten by insurance companies and the rest is passed on to consumers. The insurance companies charge us again by passing the costs to us in increase preniums in other policies. They do a cost benefit analysis and turns out that it's easier to claim insurance, recover losses from other sources, hound the consumers than improve the service or products.


It is no different to the Ford Pinto fiasco of the 60's. Ok that led to massive loss of lives and limbs and this may seem minor in comparison. They do a cost/benefit analysis, and it isn't worth putting in safety solution to the fuel tanks. As Lee Iacocca was fond of saying, "Safety doesn't sell."


The principle is the same, phone companies, banks, credit card companies don't put in adequate checking features and use procedures that demonstrate due diligence and claim deniable responsibility. First thing I learnt on my job when I worked for large institutions as a security consultant. 90% of the people there think they are doing an adequate job to produce a decent service or product. Little do they know what goes on closed doors. I could never even cover half the bases because costs control and yet we were having meetings at the directors favourite golf resorts. One PLC bought 17million pounds worth of equipment against everyone's advice coz the very pretty redhead sales girl was willing to sleep with every director to get her percentage. Another consultancy firm, which charged outrageous rates, was brought in that gave the green light and 17 mil of shareholders money was spent. A lot more money and effort was spent to smooth this deal. It's incredulous to think that a bunch of horny old men can do this. The system was scraped a year later and the system that we wanted was put in for another 10 mil.


The point I am trying to make is that many safety features have been proposed and ignored and buried by phone makers and service companies. Now if you find that a plane's safety features have been compromised because the directors are having weekend meetings at the Belfry and trying to improve their annual bonus by cutting costs, you wouldn't be too happy. Guess what, they are just as likely to have run a phone company before and got away with hell. Should we study avionics before decidind who to fly with? Do I need to have a degree in food science before eating anything? point is, we buy a service from a provider, we expect, in good faith, we are given a service that meets the claims. The claims that they are doing what they can to improve security is bogus and disingenious. They have worked out that maths. In this case, system and techs have existed for a long time for phones to call registered numbers only and a new number will ahve to be added via a pin. Think about the benefit to the consumer. It really is very easy to use. But it has no benefit to the service providers. They make money when calls are made, so do they care if you are not the one making them? If more consumers are awared of this and the market will respond.


Can't let them get away with it. I imagine many on this forum work for large organizations or in finance and will see things differently.


matey could have taken better care of his phone but phone makers and providers are more than able to make the phones not worth stealing coz of the security features they chose not to put in.


BTW did you know that during the 70's many car manufacturers made cars that COULD be stolen. This helped demands. They are more subtle nowadays to make us replace our cars.


For those of you dealing with expenses claims from your brokers and salesmen over the Xmas period, Holborn Bar & Grill, Ben's Sushi Bar and Tottenham Court Wine Bar are all strip clubs, not restaurants. I wonder how much better the service we would get from firms if they didn't blow hundreds of thousands of pounds on these entertainment, and spent it on doing their jobs.


MMX, don't get push around

DouglasKoh-


I don't think its the phone company's "responsibility" per se to find out if my phone was stolen, but they have a duty to exercise reasonable care to identify and relay potential fraud.


They did the more difficult part of this by identifying patterns in the call useage of my phone that were inconsistent with my call patterns.


Where they did not exercise reasonable care was:

(a) in leaving me voicemails in Chinese. Had these been in English, I would not be arguing. I know this is Hong Kong, but for important matters voicemails should be in English and Chinese. An email (which is their usual means of communication) should also have been sent.

(b) allowing the calls to continue for 2 and 1/2 days


I am trying to counter-argue and mitigate my damages by arguing negligence on behalf of the phone company in alerting me to the phone calls and the good faith principles that Foxtrotalpha refers to.

Good luck. My view is very simple. It is very easy to say good things to please others. It is always hard for those who speak on the hard truth.

What is the amount in dispute? Either change your telephone number and ignore them or just duck the calls they will tie of it unless substantial.