Man hounded by finance company seeking debt repayment for unknown woman

He received numerous debt demand repayment letters for a woman who never lived at his address. Photo / 123RF

An Auckland man says he has been left angry and frustrated after repeated calls and letters to a finance company failed to stop debt repayment demand letters from being delivered to a woman who has never lived at his address.

The man, who doesn't wish to be named, said he began receiving mail for the woman prior to July last year - initially from a telecommunications company and a debt collection agency.

He called the companies and told them he did not know the woman and she didn't reside at his address and they stopped sending the letters.

But a third company, GEM Visa, owned by Australian firm Latitude Financial, then began to send debt repayment demand letters.

He put return to sender notes on the mail. But when that didn't stop the letters.

He called the company in September - only to receive another three demand letters in November, prompting him to send his own letter to the company demanding that they stop.

All was quiet until April when he received another two letters on the same day.

Again, he called the company's 0800 number and he says they agreed to delete his address from the woman's account.

But last month he received another two letters of demand.

"What do I do next, tear out my letter box or move house?" the man wrote in a letter sent to the Herald's personal finance columnist Mary Holm.

The man told the Herald he had lived at the property for 50 years.

"I am getting fed up. I'm very annoyed.

"I'm the innocent party, I've got nothing to do with it."

"It just won't stop. There will be another one next month. They are getting more threatening towards her."

He said he felt his only avenue left was to contact the media.

The Herald contacted the company and a spokesman for Latitude said the address had now been corrected and he apologised to the man for the inconvenience.

"We are reviewing what occurred in this instance so we can ensure it does not happen again."

Sacha Green, national advisor legal and strategic, for the Citizens Advice Bureau said, the first step when receiving mail for someone who did not live at the property and was not known to the resident was to return it to the sender.

"If you have mail delivered to you but is not meant for you, then you should write 'Return to Sender' on it and put it back in the post so that New Zealand Post will redirect it. This gives an opportunity for it to get to the correct place."

Green said the only other step was to contact the company directly to let them know, which the man had done, and then seek support from an advocate if you are not making progress.

"He has done everything right and it is just really frustrating it took that amount of effort to stop that."

She said it sounded like the man's address had been put on a number of contracts and agreements either mistakenly or on purpose.

"For those businesses, if they are owed money then they want to persist in trying to locate it. If they have to remove an address, they ideally want to swap it out with the correct one. But obviously it is not his responsibility to be able to provide that."

It was much easier to provide evidence of living at an address than to prove someone did not live there, she said.

"You obviously can provide evidence that you live at a particular place and that you are the householder from other mail or even the electoral roll, but it is more challenging to prove that someone doesn't live at your house, and ideally you shouldn't have to do that anyway."