Credit Card Questions
I have a credit card from Egg which I first got when I still lived in England. It is still valid and has a $0 balance on it right now. The address they have for me is my old address in England. Now, I know this would not be honest but in theory what would happen if I maxed out the card and never paid it off? What would they be able to do to me? Especially as they don't know where I am now? Not sure if I could do that though. It might not be worth the guilty feeling I will have!
Post edited by Klepto on
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even I know you live in Montpelier Idaho US of A
They'd find you (there are international "arrangements" for handling runaway debtors).
Also bear in mind that most credit card backers are multinational corporations, so they'll probably have offices in the States to make the search for you even easier.
If required, extraditing you back to Blighty is a piece of piss once they've found you.
Nothing would happen of any consequence.
If you never intend to live back in England just do it....but you need to be 100% you wont be moving back. Even then you will just have bad credit and maybe a county court judgment against you which if it was a few years later would probably never be followed up on.
The credit card company would either sell the debt to a debt collection agency. Get a county court judgment to seize your stuff (which would be worthless as your not there anymore, or just write it off as a bad debt after 3yrs I think it is (don't quote me on that timescale though).
Dare I say...been there done that! :lol:
EDIT: Oh the upside if you ever do move back to Blighty fulltime is...use your American credit cards to then pay your old debt in blighty :lol:
This isn't true...credit history does not follow you from country to country. When I came here I had great credit in England and zero credit here....the credit bureaus only keep info on the country they are based in. American Express USA would/does have no record for American Express UK etc.
The DO NOT extradite for owing a few quid!.
I'm not talking about credit ratings or credit histories, purely recovery of debt.
If it's large enough, it will be chased after.
Nope..../wave.
They even have my US address.
I find that staggering, if true.
I got letters from them for about 2yrs and then they just dried up...written off as bad debt and forgotten. I believe after 10yrs it even comes off your record
....that was 11yrs ago now.
I have CCs here that give me about $100,000 credit. The US Credit is even more of a joke....if you default its not a criminal offense...you just get debt collectors calling you all the time. Thats why the average credit card debt in the US is something silly like $30,000. I have the highest rating credit right now here in the US.
I always figured if I do ever move back to England...highly unlikely I would use those for a first class ticket home...buy a car and pay off my old debt (if it still shows up).
Civil debt (credit cards and the like) recovery is restricted to the UK.
Criminal debt (tax avoidance), however, and you have a govt on your tail - if it's worth bothering about.
I personally can't see the difference between doing a runner after maxing out credit cards, and hacking into someone's bank account to drain it.
BTW,
When I first got here I couldn't work for 6months (that was the rules..had to wait 6 months to get employment authorization). I never wanted to run the debt up ..in fact I had left a couple of grand in my UK bank account to pay for stuff...but when that ran out and I didn't have 2 pennies to rub together over here..I did it.
I'm sure from their point of view my kind of situation happens so infrenquently that its really not a big deal in the grand scheme of things....bad debt is already worked into their forecasts etc.
Anyhoo, I've done it...and even if I did get collared somehow..it is all written off and I would just have no credit for a while..even then, get a job and a nice house..and they'd be champing at the bit to give me more.
It's the companies own fault, shouldn't ought to give credit to people on low incomes. Their greed is their downfall..but they aint bothered, they are insured and thats why they charge you all them big fees.
Guilt..nah..but it could come back to haunt you, you life can flip topside up all of a sudden...and you may need credit.
After 7 days They blocked it...I called them up (cheeky bast!) and told them to unblock it as I was on vacation in the US and needed it. They unblocked it and I was getting $300 a day for the next 20 days or so till they finally killed it.
They just send letters to your mums. Originally I had transfered my addy to her house and then when the letters came to her I just called them and gave them my US address (thats how they got it).
Only a big deal if your mum opens your mail and yells at you!
Why do that? (ATM) Why not just go to the bank and do a lump sum withdrawal? (oh, wait ... probably easier to track you down because you might have to give your info???)
Well, on this credit card I had it set to pay them the minimum every month from a Lloyds account that I still have in England. Eventually there was no more money in that account so I deleted the automatic payment to the card. I used the card about 2 years ago when we bought the house we now live in. We were really broke because of all of the fees associated with buying a house. So I used the card for a bit of extra cash every now and then.
Eventually they started mailing me letters about needing to make a payment etc (I already gave them my US address). I just ignored the letters. The last one I received Capital Credit Agencies saying that they had been appointed by the CC company to collect the debt (201.75). Letter says that they are running checks through the Land Registry Office and validation of employment details. Well, as I don't have any employment or property in the UK I doubt that will help them. They said if I don't reply it will be forwarded to solicitors for immediate action.
From reading this old thread again it kind of reassured me that they can't do anything to me over here. Although, if they send some debt collector to my door here I think I would be so impressed that I would pay them their money!
By the way, the chances of me ever moving back to England to live are almost zero. I have kids here, my career is here and my dad lives here...
Aye I got one of those letters..i even got an 'appear at county court' on this date letter.....ooookay.
A great example of wasted resources/court time....surely SOMEONE noticed they were sending it to a US address :lol:
FYI...I've been back several times to visit and even went into my bank with my old account number to see what I owed..(it was a TSB account and TSB credit card)..the dizzy woman behind the counter couldn't even find my account number...
I guess after 13yrs they clear out the old records or something
I'll also be moving soon and I won't give them that address. I figure that when I lived in England, because I used the card a lot that they probably got more out of me in interest that what I owe them now. So they can a long jump of a short pier :p
That's doesn't seem all that much - there are a lot of similar debts here (Council Tax, TV Licensing) that I reckon simply can't be worth the organisation trying to reclaim because of the net cost to them. Even if they take you to court, the overall cost effort of preparing the evidence, documents etc. would probably far outweigh what you owe. So they'll always be hoping that the threatening letters will have the desired effect in most cases.
As far as credit companies are concerned, it makes better business sense for them to scratch off the debt and put their resources into leeching money from some other poor sods...
Yeah, it would cost them way more to try and get the money out of me than what my debt is.
I had another one due to a miscalculation to a former employer which hit me at a very difficult financial time. Again, not wanting to burn bridges I made sure it got paid off as quickly as I could which wasn't all that fast, but they did send one or two threatening letters to which I felt like replying (a) I don't live in the UK and (b) I don't have any money so taking me to court won't actually achieve anything (the woman in charge of these issues seemed to not have heard of "logic" nor "politeness"). The woman in question is probably long gone from that firm, but I may one day want to do business with them, so again - I don't want to burn bridges.