Tracing, a case study

I thought that you would be interested in this case study of how a debt collection agency works when instructed to carry out a trace and collection

Our client in this case is a housing association the debtor being John Smith, according to the information John was born 8 May 1958 and left the property during June 2009 owing £1800. On first view John did not appear to be linked to the property or with the person shown on the electoral roll being Jane. When we carried out a name check we found that John was linked to an address in the area during 2007. When we drilled down further we found also present at this property was Jane. In addition, we found that they were married during 2005. This information confirmed John’s link to the property.

Using our data bases we identified Janes’ current address and we wrote to her. When she received the letter, Jane called in quite upset. It turned out that John had had a heart attack at our clients’ address and was pronounced dead at the scene during April 2009. What upset Jane most was not our letter, but that our client had sent her a condolence card and when she found it too distressing to continue to live there, our client offered to re-house her. She sent us a copy of John’s death certificate which we forwarded to our client on receipt. When our client investigated they agreed that John had died, more importantly there had been no arrears and the debt was written off.

We then suggested to our client that as Jane was quite distressed and while we would send Jane a letter of apology, they should also send one. I was delighted to learn from Jane that she also received a bunch of flowers.

If you would like to find out if we can find your missing debtor, please visit our website www.deanemcollections.co.uk