Imagine what you would do if you received a notice about a relatively small debt. The sender is a debt-collection firm — what people commonly call a collection agency. The invoice states the amount of the debt and the fee for the collection service. You're puzzled. As far as you know, you owe nobody anything, but... The collectors keep calling and flooding you with letters demanding payment. Many people would rather just pay a small sum than spend time untangling the mess around such an invoice. Few people realise that such firms often engage in nothing more than fraud. For our client Martina, the matter of principle mattered more than the time it might take. Once she came to our attorneys, our specialists took over the whole matter.
A story that came by post
Important to know
If you receive a pecuniary claim, don't rush to pay: ask for documentary proof of the amount — the burden of proving that a claim is justified lies with the party making it.
The heroine of this story, Martina, has lived in Berlin for about twenty years. Life was going along quite well, but then illness struck — Martina is visually impaired — and her husband soon filed for divorce. After the separation, Martina moved in with relatives but remained officially registered at the address where her ex-husband lived. Relations were not smooth after the split. Resentment got in the way of ordinary contact, but the former spouses met occasionally to exchange mail. Martina never arranged to have her post redirected to her new address. At some point, after a long gap, Martina received a stack of letters, among which were several envelopes from an unfamiliar firm. The letters demanded urgent payment for a purchase supposedly made at an online shop, along with fees for the "debt enforcers'" services: 20 euros for the purchase of something unspecified — the price list did not name the item — and 54 euros for the collection firm's services.
Astonished, Martina dialled the number given in the letter and voiced her indignation, quite emotionally, at receiving these letters and at the collectors' harassing her husband, from whom she was already divorced. In doing so, she gave them her phone number and home address. After that call, letters demanding payment of the debt and phone calls with the same reminder began arriving at her own address and phone number instead. Martina had no intention of giving in and turned to our law firm.
"Letters of happiness"
Our attorneys sent a request to the collection firm asking it to specify the claims and provide an invoice for the supposedly purchased goods. The reply explained that a company engaged in online retail had asked the collection firm to recover the debt. Attached to the letter was a table, drawn up in Word, listing items of underwear and their prices. Apparently, this is what a specialist's idea of an itemised invoice looks like. Our attorneys, however, were not satisfied with this scrap of paper. What's more, it raised our suspicion that our client was dealing with fraud.
According to the statistics, the number of crimes connected with the internet is steadily rising, and the scale of the resulting losses is comparable to the budgets of major economies. Some fraudsters hack into banks; others redirect money flows to sham accounts. Others operate on a smaller scale, content with hacking social media or messenger accounts and convincing the account holder's friends or relatives to transfer money urgently. There are also scams where, say, a woman on Facebook is approached by an enviable suitor — invariably a "successful businessman" — who claims to want to marry her, sends her boxes of expensive gifts, and then asks her to cover a couple of hundred euros in "postage." In this case, there seemed to be a combination of new technology with tried-and-tested forms of psychological pressure. In any fraud scheme, criminals exploit only two human traits — the desire for easy gain, or fear. Martina, it appears, had run into the latter — although it could not be ruled out that her ex-husband had ordered something for his new girlfriend in his former wife's name.
Cross my palm with silver!
Our firm's attorney sent a reply to the collectors' letter requesting extracts from the online shop's records showing that our client had actually placed an order, along with copies of postal receipts proving that the item had been shipped. The response left even our most seasoned attorneys astonished.
The collectors did not send the requested documents. Instead, they claimed that, since the goods had not been returned to the online shop, they must have been received by our client. And, since our client supposedly held VIP customer status, she was meant to receive goods worth 20 euros every month — and, according to the collection firm's version, she had simply failed to pay for just one such purchase. Still, the collectors said, they were willing to settle for half the sum owed. After such a letter, it was worth looking into just what this online shop, of which Martina was allegedly such a prized customer, actually sold. The shop was registered under a .com domain, its website had three language versions, and it offered only underwear at a discount. The discounts were so dramatic — from a hundred euros down to five — that being a VIP in this almost-free kingdom hardly seemed like something to boast about. Martina denied both any such special status and any knowledge whatsoever that this shop even existed. And the collectors' willingness to halve the claimed amount only confirmed our attorneys' suspicion that Martina had fallen victim to fraudsters.
Unfortunately, this kind of dishonest business is gaining ground in Germany. People with criminal intent set up collection firms, conspire with similarly minded operators, and run their unsophisticated business of robbing supposed debtors of their peace of mind. Many people assume it is simpler to pay than to have to prove anything. In Martina's case, though, as the saying goes, they picked the wrong person to mess with — and the wrong firm too, given the not-insignificant fact that her interests were defended by an experienced attorney at our practice.
The next step in resolving the matter was a letter to the collection firm setting out our position: our client had made no purchases at the online shop; her bank statements showed no evidence that she had ever paid this shop anything; and the company demanding this supposed debt had provided neither an invoice nor postal receipts. On this basis, we rejected the collectors' claims. That put an end both to the calls to our client and to the stream of letters, to Martina's address and to our office alike. It is clear that, as crime in this area continues to grow, the demand for highly qualified legal assistance with such matters will only increase. Our attorneys are your reliable allies.
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THE LAW FIRM REPRESENTS CLIENTS' INTERESTS THROUGHOUT GERMANY
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