Once upon a time in the land of his irresponsible student youth, the author admits that upon receiving his first ever shiny credit card, he did incur debts that he couldn’t pay back with speed. And so began the relentless chase by the ‘friendly’ credit recovery business. Day and night for weeks on end the phone calls and angry letters (this was pre email folks) flooded in threatening ‘immediate’ legal action if he did not find the money and pronto. After several weeks of intimidation the misery merchants upped the ante and started to appear on the young fella’s doorstep even warning his flatmate of the fate that would await him.
Damn that holiday in Cairns and those brand new sneakers… that shiny plastic just made it feel so easy at the time.
Looking back on this terrifying experience, with all its warnings and terse language it left very little room for flexibility and negotiation. Is it still an acceptable approach in the eyes of the law?

For those who have been put in a similar situation, you will be relieved to know that there is now much more civil approach required by debt collectors which is enforced by the ACCC.
The ACCC notes that: “The need for collection activity and harassment will be greatly reduced when debtors act promptly and responsibly, and collectors are flexible, fair and realistic.”

And it’s true that (aside from wayward youth), many people default on their debts because of circumstances beyond their control, such as unemployment, illness or family breakdown. Most people are honest and want to meet their commitments if given a reasonable opportunity to do so. The ACCC, and indeed ASIC, now actively encourage flexibility on the part of creditors and collectors.

Some of this flexibility includes recognising debtors who are vulnerable and experiencing financial hardship, and recognising that debtors may have a number of debts owing to different creditors. A flexible approach involves making meaningful and sustainable payment arrangements that reasonably take into account a debtor’s ongoing living expenses to enable them to live in basic comfort and prevent impoverishment or humiliation. If your in this situation make sure any negotiation with a debt collection service, bank or utility company doesn’t leave you in a precarious situation where you’re struggling to survive.

Your Right To Privacy

Under our privacy laws, debt collectors have obligations to protect the privacy of anyone who owes them money. These days the situation I faced of having people turn up on my doorstep warning others about my impending gloom is just not on. The same applies to phone calls to third parties letting them know about your debt.
A debt collection service’s first task when contacting is to to ensure that the person they are dealing with is the actual debtor. This must be done every time they make contact before you divulge any information about the debt, the process for its recovery or before providing any other confidential information. So if your flatmate, work colleague, or mum are being told about your debt you can make a complaint to the ACCC

Contact with a debtor must also be made at a reasonable hour, taking into account your circumstances and reasonable wishes. The current guidelines for reasonable contact times are:

Contact by telephone:  Monday to Friday 7.30am -9pm
Weekends 9 am to 8 pm
National public holidays – no contact
The same time frames apply to face to face contact.

And if you feel they are engaging in unnecessary or unduly frequent contacts then it is undue harassment and can also be flagged with the ACCC. Current guidelines are that debt collectors not contact a debtor more than three times per week, or 10 times per month at most. This also includes when they ring and don’t leave a message.

Under consumer protection law, any frequent contact designed to wear down or exhaust a debtor, or likely to have this effect, is ‘undue harassment’ and must be avoided. For example, this is particularly likely if a debt collector makes a number of phone calls or other contacts in rapid succession.

There are also legal obligations under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) which are designed to protect your personal information. For example, obtaining a debtor’s contact details from your employer is collecting their personal information and is not allowed. Telling your neighbour the reason for trying to find you (a debt) will also disclose personal information about you and is also not allowed.

When It Isn’t Your Debt

If you have have already confirmed your identity and liability they can continue to pursue you. However, if you disputed that the debt is yours or that it never occurred or has already been paid any collection activity (including credit report listing) must be suspended.

If any collection activity is continued without properly investigating claims that a debt is not owed, the collector is potentially breaching the law.

Reasonable steps must also be taken by a debt collector to ensure that you are the alleged debtor. If your identity as the debtor cannot be established with sufficient certainty (because they deny their identity and you do not have any other supporting evidence to the contrary) all contact with that person should cease. Failure by a collector to do so may risk breaching the Privacy Act. You should also ask for a letter from them confirming the collecting has ceased

It is also misleading for debt collectors to state or imply that you must prove you are not liable for the debt. In legal proceedings, proof of the debt ALWAYS lies with the person alleging the debt (the collection agency).

How To Resolve A Dispute

Many industries (including telecommunications companies, utility suppliers and financial services businesses) belong to independent external dispute resolution schemes.

The ACCC and ASIC have always supported the role played by these schemes in resolving consumer complaints and disputes when these are unable to be resolved through the creditor or debt collector’s internal dispute resolution processes.

So if it’s become a nightmare dealing with tell them you want to have the matter resolved by an independent dispute resolution service

Still getting nowhere with a collector or feel their behaviour is out of hand? Then make a complaint or at least contact the ACCC to discuss further options HERE.

And never put up with threatening calls (or letters) which run off a script like this which have been shown by the court to constitute misleading and deceptive behaviour and undue harassment under the Australian Consumer Law :

‘Mr/Mrs/Ms. (Surname), the reason for my call to you today is a courtesy call due to the fact that I have received your physical file this morning from our solicitors. I have unfortunately been requested by our solicitors to put forward a final recommendation in reference to the outstanding amount of $(Balance) and will need to finalise my recommendation by no later than (x)

This debt collection agency manual then encouraged collections officers to make the strong suggestion that lawyers had already been involved in the account with phrases such as:
• I have received strict instructions from my solicitor, to proceed with litigation…
• I don’t even know where your matter is up to as our solicitors have you…
• I have just come out of a meeting with the solicitor with respect to three matters unfortunately one was yours…
• By tomorrow 3 pm this account will accumulate $350.00 worth of legal fees…
• Your account has been brought from the solicitor’s office and they are expecting a response from me as to proceed with litigation at 2.30 pm this afternoon…
• Just a reminder that our solicitors have given you one last chance to settle this account…

The court found that there was no lawyer involved at all and the sole intention of this “script” was to scare the willies out of any alleged debtor. What a bloody cheek and the collection agency was suitably punished by the court!

Don’t forget to check out more of your basic consumer rights HERE.

It’s a  jungle out there.
And for those of you hunting down your cars final resting place in those suburban supermarket car parks, you better watch out. For lurking behind every concrete pole and tree are those charming patrol people, ready to pounce the minute you break their car park company’s rules. But let’s cut to the chase. Do they have a right to ‘fine’ you if you don’t pay a fee; don’t put a ticket on your dash; or overstay their limited period of grace?

Well, the first thing to put straight is they don’t have any right to ‘fine’ you.  A few years ago a private car park operator, ACE Parking Pty Ltd, was hauled over the coals by the Victorian Supreme Court for using terms on their parking tickets that misled consumers about their rights.  The Court also found that requests for payments issued by ACE mimicked fines issued by the local council, using terminology like ‘offence’, ‘breach’ and ‘fines.’ What scallywags indeed! It is important to know that private car park operators do not  have a right to ‘fine’ consumers. Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped these private car park companies from continuing on their merry way.  These days, when you get back to your car and find a ticket  on your windshield, it will still have the look of a ‘fine’ but it’s really just a claim for ‘damages’ because you broke the contract.

And what contract was that I hear you say?  Well these companies have signs placed here and there around the car parks which have longwinded terms that you must agree to in order to park your car. I tried once to read one  that was placed very conveniently at the car park entrance, but was advised by the driver directly behind me to “get a bloody move on”. The terms are normally written in print so small that even the meanest optometrist would not use them to check your distance vision. For example, if you stay too long in the car park, or don’t have your ticket displayed, this supposedly  breaches the contract. The amount for payment on the ticket stuck on your window is supposed to represent the loss (or liquidated damages)  suffered by the company.
However, many unhappy consumers receiving these demands have wondered exactly what sort of grand loss was really suffered by these companies. One angry parker, Mr John Vico, took the matter concerning his ‘fine’ to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (Vico v Care Park Pty Ltd).      Mr Vico  wanted some clarity about whether his $88 ticket for ‘damages’  for not having a ticket was indeed fair.  In this case, the maximum cost he would have paid to park there was only $15.  The hearing was presided over by Mrs Silvana Wilson who stated that: “The sum of $88, when compared to the sum of $15 was “out of all proportion”, it was “extravagant and unconscionable”, it was “in the nature of a punishment” and it was not “a genuine pre-estimate of loss”. The end result was that the car park company was told to reverse out of the Court and never try sneaky exaggeration about ‘damages’  again.  Perhaps if they’d only asked for the $15 the Court might have said, “that’s fair enough”! Now this doesn’t mean that if you get one of these tickets you can just throw it in the bin.

But here’s some pointers that may help you:
Forgot to put the ticket for free parking on your dash and got ‘fined’?
You could ignore this ticket as you haven’t really created a situation where damages are owed.
Overstayed your welcome by an hour or so and got ‘fined’?
Once again, there really isn’t any loss or damage the car park operator has suffered so you really don’t need to pay the ticket.  It’s up to you.
Constantly using the car park every day for your parking and never paying?
For example, your windshield might look like this…

I’m afraid you’ve been rather naughty and have caused ‘damage’ to the car park operator by hogging the property it uses as its business… so you won’t have a strong case for not paying the damages demanded. Finally, do keep in mind that it is quiet a chore for these private car park companies to find out your address details to send follow up notices when you don’t pay.  Often with first time offenders, they just don’t bother chasing you. To make things even worse for them, in Victoria, as of 26 August 2015, there are restrictions on private car park operators accessing your name and address from the VicRoads registration database. Without your name and address they will not be able to issue demands for payment. And definitely don’t write to them and give away the details of your address.
That’s exactly what they want you to do.  Let them do the chasing!
And remember, if you are getting hassled for amounts that don’t seem fair you can always talk to Consumer Affairs.  You may be even entitled to take your complaint to your local small claims tribunal or Court. Oh and one final thing, that parking ticket with the red writing I have pictured here…It’s been 20 months since I got (and ignored) it and I never heard another thing from them.
I guess in some jungles, the bark is a lot worse than the bite!

For Sue, life has not been a bed of roses.
The never ending ‘relationship rollercoaster’ with her ex was now a year behind her, and the separation and breakup blues were no longer churning through her mind. Sue decided it was time to contemplate a new life and future and navigating a solo and lonely passage on planet Sue was not on her radar.

Recalling her fateful internet casanova, Sue simply shrugged her shoulders and started to talk about how gullible and lonely she was at the time. “After a pretty rough divorce I started to get more into the Facebook world and truly thought it was safe.” She friended “Frank”, without verifying his bogus claim that they had a mutual friend. “He would read my wall, I would read his wall. We would post things, he would like things. Then it got to where we would share e-mails”.

“He really knew how to make me feel good, to feel wanted” she recalled. “He took an interest in my life and after just a few online chats and Skype calls he talked about ‘our’ future together”. “It was all so convincing at the time” she recalled.

Frank explained to Sue that he too was a lonely Aussie stuck overseas dealing with a troubled business in a foreign country. They communicated regularly by email, online chats and the occasional Skype call. He would send her small gifts and would even write the odd bit of poetry. “It really was very charming and touching at the time, I had no idea I was been groomed by a scammer”.

But not surprisingly, Frank started to mention, intermingled with his ‘undying love’ for her, the problems his business was facing borrowing the “crucial finance to keep it alive”.
Sue, being a kind soul, asked whether she could help. “It started with a small request for $700 to pay a shortfall in his rent, but then the requests were getting bigger as he explained the peril his business was in”. “I got sucked in… but I also was falling in love”.

After depleting her savings the scammer then asked for funds to travel to Australia and visit Sue. “Despite my growing skepticism I still wired the money because I thought meeting Frank would resolve my concerns”.
Frank never did make it ‘home’ to Melbourne, and after the money was sent, never contacted Sue again.
The final cost for her – $220,000.

But it wasn’t just about the money for Sue, it was more the untold amount of heartache in being lied to by a man she never met or had the chance to confront who left her self esteem in tatters and a lingering distrust which she holds to this day about potential relationships.

Cyber criminals aren’t looking for love

And with romance scammers, no matter how good they sound, things aren’t what they appear to be. In reality, you’re probably talking to a criminal sitting in a cybercafe with a well-rehearsed script he (or she) has used many times before. These scammers hunt through chat rooms, dating sites and social networking sites searching for victims, looking to cash in on romance. And your odds of meeting one of these creatures from the swamp is even higher if you are over 40, recently divorced, a widow, elderly or disabled. The more vulnerable you are, the more you become potential prey for the romance scammers.

The psychological tricks used to lure their victims like in Sue’s case poetry and inexpensive gifts get you under their spell, and once you’re smitten, they will look at ways to extract every penny from you while all the time declaring their undying love.

Romance scams = big bucks

Romance scams are big business in Australia. Scamwatch, Australia’s leading authority on scammers, noted that in 2015 over 4100 reports were filed about romance scams. In 24% of cases this resulted in the victim losing money with the financial damage that year being a mind blowing at $24.4 million dollars. 

In general, most people using the internet to hook up are genuine but the sad reality that for every real profile you see, there are numerous false ones pretending to be your perfect mate and using the enormous cache of photographs of people available to be downloaded on the net. The people in the photographs are as much victims as those like Sue who get scammed for hundreds or thousands dollars. Internet romance scams and other related crimes are affecting and ruining lives throughout the world. So what measures can you take to prevent this happening in the first place?

Resources to stop love scammers in their tracks

So if you’re feeling a little (or a lot) suspicious about your new love… Check the person’s profile pic. Do an image search of your admirer to help determine if they really are who they say they are. You can use image search services such as Tineye or Google Images There is no charge for this service, you give it an image and it will tell you where the image appears on the web.

So if “John” says he’s in “Brisbane” and the search reveals it’s a guy called “Fredrick” in Berlin you might like to give that person a miss.

Trace their emails
Readnotify tracks an email and will let you know where it was sent, whether it was diverted from another location, and when it was opened. Readnotify offers a free trial and has a good review on Lifewire.

Spokeo does reverse search emails, has a background check service that researches people by email. It also does checks for the email address or details you provide for the suspected scammer across more than 30 different social network sites. You have to pay for this one. For example, you can sign up and pay casual 1 month user fee for $13.95 [US]

Here’s how you can avoid being scammed

Run a Google Image or other search (as previously mentioned) to check the authenticity of any photos provided as scammers often use fake photos they’ve found online.
Be very wary if you are moved off a dating website as scammers prefer to correspond through private emails or the phone to avoid detection.
Beware if the individual promises to meet in person but then always comes up with an excuse why he or she can’t. If you haven’t met the person after a few months, for whatever reason, you have good reason to be suspicious.
Don’t share intimate or nude photos, or use webcams in an intimate setting. The ACCC has received reports of scammers using such photos or webcam recordings to blackmail victims.

The biggest warning sign is when a scammer asks you for money.
Never provide your financial details or send funds to someone you’ve met online. Scammers particularly seek money orders, wire transfers or international funds transfer as it’s rare to recover money sent this way.

Washing cupid’s dirty laundry?

Sometimes the scammer will send you valuable items such as laptop computers and mobile phones, and ask you to resend them somewhere. They will invent some reason why they need you to send the goods but this is just a way for them to cover up their criminal activity.
Alternatively, they may ask you to buy the goods yourself and send them somewhere. You might even be asked to accept money into your bank account and then transfer it to someone else. So be Warned, the above scenario is very likely to be a form of money laundering which is a criminal offence. Never agree to transfer money for someone else.

Used a credit card to pay a scammer?

If you think you have fallen victim to a scammer, contact your bank or financial institution immediately. You may be able to seek a chargeback from your bank or credit card provider. A chargeback is a reversal of a charge on your credit card and is similar to a refund. For more information, find out how to Chargeback.

But don’t delay if you are going to try this.

What can the police do to help?
These sort of scams that use email, web sites, chat rooms or message boards to present fraudulent solicitations to prospective victims are ‘online fraud’. Online fraud is the responsibility of your local state or territory police. So you can get assistance from police in the state or territory where the scammer has committed the crime or in the state or territory where the you were scammed- this includes situations where the offender is located overseas.

However, remember that when some anonymous trickster is using a computer to hide behind, the hardest thing to find out is who they are. You might be able to locate where in the world their computer is being used. But it’s identifying who they actually are that’s the hard part. That is why so often in Australia these scammers remain at large.

Reporting to Police
In many cases where a person loses money, it will not be a criminal, but a civil matter. Particularly when a matter involves breaches of contract or non-payment of debts. Police cannot investigate civil matters. Police only investigate criminal matters in order to charge offenders and place evidence before a court. Civil action is the most appropriate method of recovering money and it is recommended a person consults with a solicitor if this is the case. If the complaint and supporting information supports a finding that a criminal offence may have been committed, then the matter will be referred for investigation.

To report a matter with police about fraud and theft call your local police – call 131 444

Here’s some examples of a police fraud report form you would need to fill in:
VIC , NSW , and QLD.

And of course you can also chose to not go the police but instead file a report with our National Scamwatch.

Your evidence checklist
It is useful to gather the following information if you go to the police:

• Your details – including name, date of birth, age, address, phone number, email and employment details.
• Summary of allegations – prepare a summary of events in chronological order that forms the basis of your complaint. Include times, dates, places and any conversations or interaction with suspect regarding the complaint.
• Evidence – include a brief description of the evidence which support the events described.
• Suspect/offender – if you suspect a particular individual, provide details such as date of birth, age, address, phone number, email…  and employment details if you know them.
• Witnesses – provide details of any witnesses, including name, address, phone number and a brief summary why this person is a witness.
• Document/exhibits – provide copies (copies only) of documents or exhibits which support the complaint. This may include, but not limited to, banking records, business records, receipts, contracts, invoices, internet content, phone records, and audit reports.

If you are suffering financial stress due to money lost in a scam, you can call the toll-free National Debt Helpline on 1800 007 007.
Beyondblue provides support for people suffering from depression or anxiety. Call the hotline 24/7 on 1300 22 46 36.
Lifeline runs a 24-hour suicide prevention and crisis support hotline – 13 11 14.

♥♥♥♥

“In the old days, a con man would be good looking, suave, well dressed, well spoken and presented themselves real well. Those days are gone because it’s not necessary. The people committing these crimes are doing them from hundreds of miles away.”

Frank Abagnale
(The con artist Leonardo DiCaprio played in ‘Catch Me If You Can’)