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We have now notified the OFT as appropriate.
Good morning,
I have been passed your details as a good source of contact from Paul Tilley @ Watsons Solicitors, as we really need to make you aware of a few things regards Marlin Financial Services & Mortimer Clarke Legal, both part of the same company (we think) and both up to no good.
This email could, given the opportunity, run into thousands of pages and bore the reader so to alleviate this I will instead stick to using URL links, thus enabling you to simply click and view the content I refer to. The reason I am contacting you is because I am part of a consumer forum that tries to help debtors fight back against unscrupulous debt collection firms, banks and other financial institutions. Our forum is becoming rather successful hence we get a wide variety of complaints and problems posted on our forum yet we rarely see a duplicated problem, probably due to us only being 2 years old and thus rather new to have an archive of cases. You must then be able to relate when I say no sooner had one user posted their grievances about the way they were treated by Marlin Financial Services than along came another followed closely by a third person. Now, as a forum with 1500 members, to have 3 identical in form complaints suggests something isn’t right so we started to dig, and dig deeper and what we found not only astonished us, but also led to our creation of a dedicated consumer-portal to complain about these firms and the way they behave.
The website we recently created is here Welcome to Consumer Revenge | Sign one of our e-Petitions & Start to Fight Back! and our forum is here allaboutFORUMS
Now, what started as a little fishing exercise to establish foul play led us to a mine of information and regular theme when dealing with Marlin, they tend to serve court papers to people at their incorrect address thus resulting in judgment by default all the while the debtor never even knew that they had a CCJ let alone a pending charging order. If this was an isolated instance then granted, I appreciate there wouldn’t be much call for your involvement but what if I told you that from a simple Google search of both these firms I found over 320 cases in the last 5 years of systematic abuse of process by serving legal documents to an incorrect address. This isn’t an SRA issue as my main gripe and complaint comes about as a result of their CCL provisions which this behaviour clearly breaches. I won’t sit here and type out the breaches but suffice to say they cannot be let loose any longer, without further investigation.
I will post a few links here that will confirm that Marlin are not only extremely devious, absolutely shambolic with their treatment of debtors and bordering of illegality but they work in cahoots with Mortimer Clarke who carry out debt collection activities for Marlin whilst not being suitably regulatory licensed to do so. This is clear from some recent communications we’ve been sent copies of where Mortimer Clarke suggest they have been instructed to do X, Y or Z yet when a SAR was sent to Marlin there was no record of them having known about such follow-up action from Mortimer Clarke. A simple regulatory governance check against both firms will confirm our statement of facts regards this point.
Marlin have a habit of purchasing bad debt accounts for approximately 16 pence in the pound from a variety of banks, but for this investigation request we’ll stick to their relationship with Yorkshire/Clydesdale Bank. I am quite angry to report that between them they doctor dates, system notes, blatantly lie, falsify documents and worse, break the strict criteria set in place for such firms to behave when dealing with debtors. They rarely issue the required OFT statement with Default Notices (s.87 & s.88 CCA1974); they do not terminate agreements in accordance with legislation and they then most shockingly instruct their partner firm, Mortimer Clarke to start legal action against the debtor and seem to deliberately serve papers at their previous/incorrect address. The level of instances that this occurs per annum suggest this is a systematic abuse process designed to obtain illegal judgments against people - the fact that both these firms were highlighted on Undercover Debt Collector by Ch4 Dispatches back in 2009 says it all. I could quote some of their comments from this whistle-blowing episode but instead, we have uploaded it for all to see so please, if you’ve not seen the programme click here and watch it (you’ll need a strong coffee beforehand) Consumer Revenge | Dispatches - Undercover Debt Collector
Marlin will of course try and say that they have changed from 2009, so to cover that we have gained witness statements including one from a leading solicitor that has had the misfortune of dealing with this firm, that will confirm they lied to him and suggested a clients husband told them he was a member of staff from Trading Standards, yet when pushed for details and proof of this claim they sent a recording which said nothing of the sort, however by that point the damage was done as they had sneakily went in and sent a letter to the court stating that the debtor said these things, clearly a lie from our recording of that conversation. That is one instance of many that we have at our disposal and highlights the systematic abuse portrayed as acceptable and the norm by this firm.
In our case study example, here Mrs G vs Marlin/Mortimer Clarke/Yorkshire Bank - allaboutFORUMS, we can see this systematic abuse in close detail – the overriding factor in this case is that we have copies of most documents plus the defendant is commencing action against Marlin & Mortimer Clarke herself, as well as relying on us being able to damage their reputation enough to regret behaving the way they have. Briefly, Mrs G moved from address A to address B in July 2007 and at that time notified the bank, Yorkshire Bank, of her new address and also paid her credit card bill of £3000 in full. She then moved and never thought anything else about it, after all she’d settled her account and paid via BACS (her husbands business account) so had no reason to suspect something was awry. To clarify, at that point in 2007 Mrs G and her husband were very well off and had in excess of £30,000 per month in their account thus the £3,000 settlement and closure of her YB credit card was no big deal. Mrs G had never missed any of her credit commitments before in her life, never. The funds paid to settle and close the account were not missed. This is relevant, more on this later…
At the time, in 2007 Mrs G was registered on the electoral register at address A and upon moving in July 2007, she notified the new council of her details and got added to the ER at address B. Bear in mind she was the sole mortgage holder thus had anyone conducted a simple land registry search they’d have seen she was indeed registered at a new address, which lets not forget YB did know about (a copy of her change of address letter from 2007 to the bank does exist). Both these points, as well as the balance being paid are all relevant and I’ll come back to them later if you can spare a thought in the back of your mind. Anyway, move on a few months and Mrs G starts to get random letters from all sorts of companies saying she owes money left right and centre. She obviously responded to each company and had them remove the incorrect details, but this never lasted because the moment one DCA sells the debt to another, they do a simple search and find the incorrect link from before thus resulting in everything re-appearing again. It’s a catch 22 and something that Mrs G says was the bane of her life, she was by the looks of it a victim of ID fraud. As such, any letters that came that were not clearly identifiable were sent back with either ‘unknown at this address’ or with a cover letter from her husband clearly offering the firm the chance to do a land registry search which had they done, they’d have seen it was in fact Mrs G and they could have written again asking for payment. It appears though that although the Bank, Marlin and Mortimer Clarke all knew Mrs G’s address they decided to take action against her at the old address, the same one she’d moved from over 18 months earlier. The first she heard of anything was in November 2011 when she got a random letter saying they (Marlin) were going for a final charging order, obviously Mrs G was shocked and so set about trying to find out what the debt was for etc. This is where things get nasty and show Marlin for their true colours, Mrs G tried everything including making a very reasonable offer to settle before court – Marlin declined and instead pursued the final CO. At court the judge even told her that if she had applied for set-aside then he’d have granted it, however due to policy he couldn’t set-aside hence she never applied for set-aside. Anyway, as Marlin and Mortimer Clarke realised they were in trouble they put the brakes on and have since systematically refused to cooperate and in the meantime they are trying to enforce a sale of her property.
They claim that the payment was returned in 2007, yet Mrs G has asked for statements several times and keeps getting fobbed off. Mortimer Clarke are now acting off their own backs, Mrs G wrote a reply to them on 16th July 2012 that she has proof of delivery on, yet yesterday she received another threat from them as though they’d never heard from her yet Mrs G has proof that they signed for a letter a whole week earlier, this is what the consumer is up against and this is why we feel that Marlin and all their subsidiaries need fully investigating by the OFT. Mrs G or her husband are both willing to discuss this case in detail with you, they just want justice as they feel they’ve been ‘raped’, as a direct quote. The point here is that at no time did any of the three organisations conduct a credit search, an electoral register or land registry search yet had they done so they’d have seen her address and had they then wrote advising that her payment had been returned by the bank, she would have repaid. Similarly, they have issued a defective default notice in comparison with the statements and they know she is applying for set-aside based on this fact so to hinder and further abuse process they are not sending the necessary paperwork that she needs in order to prove they have fudged paperwork and cheated the system. She has a copy of a system note that confirms that Marlin and the bank knew her address, yet the same day a letter is dated at address A (old address). Similarly, of her three accounts (credit card, bank account & savings account) the credit card and bank account all show the address as being the correct address B yet the savings account statements still show address A (old address) hence confirming our claim that they are fudging paperwork. The fact that she provided her address was enough, they have systematically abused her in order to get this far and this is why action must be taken.
Below is a list of similar cases from a variety of sources, designed to show you that Marlin and their sister, Mortimer Clarke are as dodgy as they come and should be investigated with immediate effect. You’ll see from Consumer Revenge we are also seeking super-complaint status with them to hurry things through, we have over 2,000 signatures in our petition that is less than a month old. I have also requested a Freedom of Information request from the courts to establish exact numbers of judgment by defaults registered for Marlin/Mortimer Clarke.
Campaign against Marlin Financial Services (MFS) | Consumer Revenge UK
I apologise for the length of this email however you must appreciate it is very difficult to compile such a complaint when the target company is proving so difficult as it doesn’t afford us a level playing field. We simply ask that you investigate our claims and look into their official practices and conditions to retain their consumer credit licences, lets not forget that these same people are all linked to the now infamous Phoenix Recoveries SARL, which speaks volumes when taken alongside the Undercover Debt Collector and other evidence. See this simple Google search result, try for yourself, the web is riddled with such stories Google
I do hope you can spare some time to investigate these firms and in the meantime, should you require anything else or require Mrs G’s details then please let me know and I will endeavour to get back to you within a matter of hours.
Kind regards & thanks again for taking the time to read this complaint.
Site Administrator
Welcome to allaboutDEBT | Consumer Debt & Unenforceability Specialists
allaboutFORUMS
Welcome to Consumer Revenge | Sign one of our e-Petitions & Start to Fight Back!
Tel: 0844 6600571
I have been passed your details as a good source of contact from Paul Tilley @ Watsons Solicitors, as we really need to make you aware of a few things regards Marlin Financial Services & Mortimer Clarke Legal, both part of the same company (we think) and both up to no good.
This email could, given the opportunity, run into thousands of pages and bore the reader so to alleviate this I will instead stick to using URL links, thus enabling you to simply click and view the content I refer to. The reason I am contacting you is because I am part of a consumer forum that tries to help debtors fight back against unscrupulous debt collection firms, banks and other financial institutions. Our forum is becoming rather successful hence we get a wide variety of complaints and problems posted on our forum yet we rarely see a duplicated problem, probably due to us only being 2 years old and thus rather new to have an archive of cases. You must then be able to relate when I say no sooner had one user posted their grievances about the way they were treated by Marlin Financial Services than along came another followed closely by a third person. Now, as a forum with 1500 members, to have 3 identical in form complaints suggests something isn’t right so we started to dig, and dig deeper and what we found not only astonished us, but also led to our creation of a dedicated consumer-portal to complain about these firms and the way they behave.
The website we recently created is here Welcome to Consumer Revenge | Sign one of our e-Petitions & Start to Fight Back! and our forum is here allaboutFORUMS
Now, what started as a little fishing exercise to establish foul play led us to a mine of information and regular theme when dealing with Marlin, they tend to serve court papers to people at their incorrect address thus resulting in judgment by default all the while the debtor never even knew that they had a CCJ let alone a pending charging order. If this was an isolated instance then granted, I appreciate there wouldn’t be much call for your involvement but what if I told you that from a simple Google search of both these firms I found over 320 cases in the last 5 years of systematic abuse of process by serving legal documents to an incorrect address. This isn’t an SRA issue as my main gripe and complaint comes about as a result of their CCL provisions which this behaviour clearly breaches. I won’t sit here and type out the breaches but suffice to say they cannot be let loose any longer, without further investigation.
I will post a few links here that will confirm that Marlin are not only extremely devious, absolutely shambolic with their treatment of debtors and bordering of illegality but they work in cahoots with Mortimer Clarke who carry out debt collection activities for Marlin whilst not being suitably regulatory licensed to do so. This is clear from some recent communications we’ve been sent copies of where Mortimer Clarke suggest they have been instructed to do X, Y or Z yet when a SAR was sent to Marlin there was no record of them having known about such follow-up action from Mortimer Clarke. A simple regulatory governance check against both firms will confirm our statement of facts regards this point.
Marlin have a habit of purchasing bad debt accounts for approximately 16 pence in the pound from a variety of banks, but for this investigation request we’ll stick to their relationship with Yorkshire/Clydesdale Bank. I am quite angry to report that between them they doctor dates, system notes, blatantly lie, falsify documents and worse, break the strict criteria set in place for such firms to behave when dealing with debtors. They rarely issue the required OFT statement with Default Notices (s.87 & s.88 CCA1974); they do not terminate agreements in accordance with legislation and they then most shockingly instruct their partner firm, Mortimer Clarke to start legal action against the debtor and seem to deliberately serve papers at their previous/incorrect address. The level of instances that this occurs per annum suggest this is a systematic abuse process designed to obtain illegal judgments against people - the fact that both these firms were highlighted on Undercover Debt Collector by Ch4 Dispatches back in 2009 says it all. I could quote some of their comments from this whistle-blowing episode but instead, we have uploaded it for all to see so please, if you’ve not seen the programme click here and watch it (you’ll need a strong coffee beforehand) Consumer Revenge | Dispatches - Undercover Debt Collector
Marlin will of course try and say that they have changed from 2009, so to cover that we have gained witness statements including one from a leading solicitor that has had the misfortune of dealing with this firm, that will confirm they lied to him and suggested a clients husband told them he was a member of staff from Trading Standards, yet when pushed for details and proof of this claim they sent a recording which said nothing of the sort, however by that point the damage was done as they had sneakily went in and sent a letter to the court stating that the debtor said these things, clearly a lie from our recording of that conversation. That is one instance of many that we have at our disposal and highlights the systematic abuse portrayed as acceptable and the norm by this firm.
In our case study example, here Mrs G vs Marlin/Mortimer Clarke/Yorkshire Bank - allaboutFORUMS, we can see this systematic abuse in close detail – the overriding factor in this case is that we have copies of most documents plus the defendant is commencing action against Marlin & Mortimer Clarke herself, as well as relying on us being able to damage their reputation enough to regret behaving the way they have. Briefly, Mrs G moved from address A to address B in July 2007 and at that time notified the bank, Yorkshire Bank, of her new address and also paid her credit card bill of £3000 in full. She then moved and never thought anything else about it, after all she’d settled her account and paid via BACS (her husbands business account) so had no reason to suspect something was awry. To clarify, at that point in 2007 Mrs G and her husband were very well off and had in excess of £30,000 per month in their account thus the £3,000 settlement and closure of her YB credit card was no big deal. Mrs G had never missed any of her credit commitments before in her life, never. The funds paid to settle and close the account were not missed. This is relevant, more on this later…
At the time, in 2007 Mrs G was registered on the electoral register at address A and upon moving in July 2007, she notified the new council of her details and got added to the ER at address B. Bear in mind she was the sole mortgage holder thus had anyone conducted a simple land registry search they’d have seen she was indeed registered at a new address, which lets not forget YB did know about (a copy of her change of address letter from 2007 to the bank does exist). Both these points, as well as the balance being paid are all relevant and I’ll come back to them later if you can spare a thought in the back of your mind. Anyway, move on a few months and Mrs G starts to get random letters from all sorts of companies saying she owes money left right and centre. She obviously responded to each company and had them remove the incorrect details, but this never lasted because the moment one DCA sells the debt to another, they do a simple search and find the incorrect link from before thus resulting in everything re-appearing again. It’s a catch 22 and something that Mrs G says was the bane of her life, she was by the looks of it a victim of ID fraud. As such, any letters that came that were not clearly identifiable were sent back with either ‘unknown at this address’ or with a cover letter from her husband clearly offering the firm the chance to do a land registry search which had they done, they’d have seen it was in fact Mrs G and they could have written again asking for payment. It appears though that although the Bank, Marlin and Mortimer Clarke all knew Mrs G’s address they decided to take action against her at the old address, the same one she’d moved from over 18 months earlier. The first she heard of anything was in November 2011 when she got a random letter saying they (Marlin) were going for a final charging order, obviously Mrs G was shocked and so set about trying to find out what the debt was for etc. This is where things get nasty and show Marlin for their true colours, Mrs G tried everything including making a very reasonable offer to settle before court – Marlin declined and instead pursued the final CO. At court the judge even told her that if she had applied for set-aside then he’d have granted it, however due to policy he couldn’t set-aside hence she never applied for set-aside. Anyway, as Marlin and Mortimer Clarke realised they were in trouble they put the brakes on and have since systematically refused to cooperate and in the meantime they are trying to enforce a sale of her property.
They claim that the payment was returned in 2007, yet Mrs G has asked for statements several times and keeps getting fobbed off. Mortimer Clarke are now acting off their own backs, Mrs G wrote a reply to them on 16th July 2012 that she has proof of delivery on, yet yesterday she received another threat from them as though they’d never heard from her yet Mrs G has proof that they signed for a letter a whole week earlier, this is what the consumer is up against and this is why we feel that Marlin and all their subsidiaries need fully investigating by the OFT. Mrs G or her husband are both willing to discuss this case in detail with you, they just want justice as they feel they’ve been ‘raped’, as a direct quote. The point here is that at no time did any of the three organisations conduct a credit search, an electoral register or land registry search yet had they done so they’d have seen her address and had they then wrote advising that her payment had been returned by the bank, she would have repaid. Similarly, they have issued a defective default notice in comparison with the statements and they know she is applying for set-aside based on this fact so to hinder and further abuse process they are not sending the necessary paperwork that she needs in order to prove they have fudged paperwork and cheated the system. She has a copy of a system note that confirms that Marlin and the bank knew her address, yet the same day a letter is dated at address A (old address). Similarly, of her three accounts (credit card, bank account & savings account) the credit card and bank account all show the address as being the correct address B yet the savings account statements still show address A (old address) hence confirming our claim that they are fudging paperwork. The fact that she provided her address was enough, they have systematically abused her in order to get this far and this is why action must be taken.
Below is a list of similar cases from a variety of sources, designed to show you that Marlin and their sister, Mortimer Clarke are as dodgy as they come and should be investigated with immediate effect. You’ll see from Consumer Revenge we are also seeking super-complaint status with them to hurry things through, we have over 2,000 signatures in our petition that is less than a month old. I have also requested a Freedom of Information request from the courts to establish exact numbers of judgment by defaults registered for Marlin/Mortimer Clarke.
Campaign against Marlin Financial Services (MFS) | Consumer Revenge UK
I apologise for the length of this email however you must appreciate it is very difficult to compile such a complaint when the target company is proving so difficult as it doesn’t afford us a level playing field. We simply ask that you investigate our claims and look into their official practices and conditions to retain their consumer credit licences, lets not forget that these same people are all linked to the now infamous Phoenix Recoveries SARL, which speaks volumes when taken alongside the Undercover Debt Collector and other evidence. See this simple Google search result, try for yourself, the web is riddled with such stories Google
I do hope you can spare some time to investigate these firms and in the meantime, should you require anything else or require Mrs G’s details then please let me know and I will endeavour to get back to you within a matter of hours.
Kind regards & thanks again for taking the time to read this complaint.
Site Administrator
Welcome to allaboutDEBT | Consumer Debt & Unenforceability Specialists
allaboutFORUMS
Welcome to Consumer Revenge | Sign one of our e-Petitions & Start to Fight Back!
Tel: 0844 6600571
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