My Boss owes money but I am named on letter from debt collection agency (UK)
I would not be overly concerned unless they started contacting you directly on your personal time or it showed up on your credit report.  It is very likely that you are listed simply for their own records. This is correct for them to do, since you spoke to them in the past as an agent of your company. There should not be any legal connection to your personal finances.  If it continues to be a concern, I would question whether I wanted to work for such an employer. I do not know your entire situation, but this kind of misbehavior is a red flag if not addressed. You havent signed a contract, so you are only an authorised contact so you have nothing to worry about at all.  Your credit reference can only be affected if you are a signed party on the contract.  I would imagine that they wont remove your details as you may assist them by contacting your emplorer, and effectively chase the debt for them especially if you seem to be family member or a friend of the business owner. How did you find out about the debt, did they phone you?  If you really want peace of mind, you could write to them and confirm that you are not authorised to be contacted by phone or in writing regarding the debt, and that you are not in anyway liable for the debt and that your contact details must be put beyond use, and as you are concerned, say that if they take any further action against you such as affect your credit ref etc then you will take them to 'your' local magistrates court to seek compensation.  Use strong terms and insist they must do what you ask rather than just say that you would like something done etc.  Say that you 'Will' take further action which is generic, and that you 'May' do specific things so that it sounds strong but you haven't have committed to any thing in particular.  This would most likely be more than enough to stop further contact.
Better suited to /r/personalfinance, but you definitely owe the money. Unless you had something in writing that they were going to send a bill to a certain address, it's your responsibility to pay. Hell, even if you did have something in writing that said they'd send the bill somewhere else it's still your responsibility to pay even if the bill doesn't show up. You know you owed them money.  When your parents didn't get the bill, you should have called the company to ask about it. It's your responsibility to follow up since you're the one that owes the money.  What did you think would happen when you went 5 months without paying $312 that you knew you owed? "I disagree with the previous answer based upon your particular situation.   If the column states something like ""Amount Due to you"", and is a negative number, then you owe that amount. Much like the previous poster states that a Balance would be money you owe, and if it was negative then the school owes you the same can be said for the column in question. If the number was positive, the school would owe you that amount, if negative then you owe them.   Keep in mind you could always post a pic of the document blacking out personal information." I can only speak for germany/europe. Inkasso companies/lawyer would write a letter with a bill, those letters have register numbers. If in doubt, one would call the company, ask who is the debtor/what is the origin of the bill. I certainly would not react on a phone call. However, if an official entity or lawyer is contacting you, you have to take action asap, at least calling them. One issue is whether it is a scam or the collector has a right to collect. Another issue is the statute of limitations period on the debt.  If it has expired, the creditor cannot get a court judgement against the borrower (if the borrower contests it).  However, if the borrower makes a payment, or promises to pay, the time resets to zero, starting a new period subject to valid court action.  In the U.S. the length of this period varies by state.  (This period is different from the amount of time a debt can be listed on a credit report.) "This is somewhat unbelievable.  I mean if you had a business of collecting debts, wouldn't you want to collect said debts?  Rather than attempting to browbeat people with these delinquent debts into paying, you have someone volunteering to pay.  Would you want to service that client?  This would not happen in just about any other industry, but such is the lunacy of debt collecting. The big question is why do you need this cleared off your credit?  If it is just for a credit score, it probably is not as important as your more recent entries.  I would just wait it out, until 7 years has passed, and you can then write the reporting agencies to remove it from your credit. If you are attempting to buy a home or similarly large purpose and the mortgage company is insisting that you deal with this, then I would do the following: Write the company to address the issue.  This has to be certified/return receipt requested.  If they respond, pay it and insist that it be marked as paid in full on your credit.  I would do this with a money order or cashiers check.  Done. Dispute the charge with the credit reporting agencies, providing the documentation of no response.  This should remove the item from your credit. Provide this documentation to the mortgage broker.  This should remove any hangup they might have. Optional:  Sue the company in small claims court.  This will take a bit of time and money, but it should yield a profit.  There was a post on here a few days ago about how to do this.  Make part of any settlement to have your name cleared of the debt. It is counterproductive to fall into the trap of the pursuit of a perfect credit score.  A person with a 750 often receives the same rate options as a person with 850.  Also your relationship with a particular lender could trump your credit score. Currently I am ""enjoying"" the highest credit score of my life, over 820.  Do you know how I did it?  I got out of debt (including paying off the mortgage) and I have no intentions of ever going into debt for anything.  So why does it matter?  It is a bit ridiculous." Request verification in writing of the debt. They are required to provide this by law. Keep this for your records.  Send them a notice by certified mail stating that this is not your debt and not to contact you again. Indicate that you will take legal action if they continue to try and collect. Keep a log of if/when they continue to call or harass you. Contact counsel about your rights under the fair debt collection laws, but if they keep harassing you after being provided proof of your identity, they are liable. You could win a judgement in court if you have proof of bad behavior.  If your identity is stolen, you are not legally responsible for the charges. However it is a mess to clean up, so pull your credit reports and review your accounts to be sure. There are two different liabilities here. You signed, so the bank can rightfully demand the money from you. Even though it is not your debt. You signed, so you have to pay.  However, it's really the business that is responsible for the account, so you can ask the business to refund the money. You might ask them to pay the bank instead if you haven't paid yet. Do not provide any personal information. If the debt is not yours, ask the caller to provide all the identifying information they have over the phone to verify whether they have your information, or are just following up on similar names. Even if they have information that is yours, do not provide more information. Always make them tell you what they know. If they provide information that is not yours, simply state that it is not your information and politely end the call. If they persist in calling you, there are local agencies you can report them to.  If they have your information, then ask for all of the details of the debt -- who is it owed to, when was the debt incurred, what was the original amount of the debt, what is the current balance, when was the last activity on the account, what is their relation to creditor.  Once you know the creditor, you can contact them directly for more information. It is possible they may have written off the account and closed it, selling it to a debt collector in order to get some sort of return on debt. If they truly have a debt that is yours, and you did not incur it, then you will need to file a police report for a case of identity theft. Be prepared for some scrutiny. "I don't know the details of whether or not you should pay this money, or who is at fault. But clearly, you believe that you do not owe the money, and the bank investigation seems to agree with you, since they gave you your money back.  Since you have your money, and they haven't sued you, the only issue yet remaining is your credit report. Here is what I would suggest.  First, make sure you check all three credit reports, to see which reports the collection appears on. Then dispute the report with each credit bureau reporting the problem. There is an article on CreditKarma that explains the process. When you file your dispute with the credit bureau(s), they will investigate. This usually involves asking the creditor for proof of the debt, and if you didn't sign anything, they probably won't have any proof. Hopefully, the credit bureaus will come to the same conclusion as the bank did, and remove the collection from your credit reports.  In my opinion, it doesn't make sense to pay them now, if you don't believe you owe it. Paying them won't remove all the bad stuff from your credit report (but it will improve it), and you don't want to pay them and then immediately sue them.  If, however, the credit bureaus side with the landlord and leave this on your report, paying the $300 is better on your report than leaving the ""unpaid debt"" on there." This seems very suspicious, as if it were fraud, and not a legitimate collector.  Garnishing wages takes a court order. A court would require a bit more proof than a name. Names can easily be common, I know sets of first cousins named after the common grandparent, 4 pairs in my extended family, along with 2 triples. The court would certainly look for a social security number match. Your own credit history will show no activity in that state.  A legitimate debt collector would handle this very differently. "OK, reading between the lines here it looks like the services offered by your company are of an ""adult"" (possibly illegal?) nature and that this individual has actually paid you in full for the services rendered up to this point. The wrinkle here is that you say that you've been offered large cash ""gifts"" in return for unspecified future favours, but that your client hasn't provided a real Paypal account to do so. When you pressed him on it, he sent a fake email and invented a ""financial adviser"" to fob you off, then hasn't contacted you  since. It's pretty clear that he hasn't got any intention of making these payments to you. What you're now proposing to do is to use his known banking details to collect money to cover those verbal promises. In pretty much every part of the world, that's a crime. Without a written agreement to use that payment method for those promises, he could easily call the police and have you arrested for theft of funds. The further wrinkle is that his actions (claiming to have made payment via paypal, forged email headers, etc) strongly suggest that this individual is involved in cyber-crime and may well have used a fake bank account to pay for your initial services.  The bottom line here is that you need real legal advice, from an actual lawyer." Note: I am not a lawyer. This is my personal opinion and interpretation. First, your source is European Law, which obviously doesn't apply outside of the EU. The EU cannot make laws that bind entities in other countries; so you cannot claim that the VAT was needed to be mentioned. Second, if you owe something, you owe it; it doesn't matter if it was forgotten to be mentioned. At best, you can say that under those circumstances you don't want the software anymore, and i would assume you can send it back and get your money back (minus a fee for having it used for a while...) - this gets quite difficult to calculate clearly, so it's probably not a good avenue to follow for you. As the company has to send the VAT to your country (they will not be allowed to keep a dime of it, and have to bear the complete cost for the handling), it is a debt you have to your government; they are just the entity responsible for collecting it. Still, if you just ignore them, they will probably suck it up, and your government will also not do a thing to you. If they only have your email address, they have no way of knowing if you even still have/use this address; for all they know, it could be you never got it. They also cannot simply charge your card, as they probably don't have the card data any more (they are not supposed to keep it after the transaction is complete, and they thought it was complete at the time). All in all, you should be safe to ignore it. It's between you and your god/consciousness, if you feel obliged to pay it, as technically you owe it. "The debt collection agency needs to see a copy of the notice from the bank that the $300 charge is a disputed and fraudulent charge. Also require them to provide proof. To reduce your stress, you should contact a lawyer to handle the debt collection agency.  Disputing the information on your credit report is exactly the way to ""fix"" that issue. All they need to see is the bank letter stating that the charges were fraudulent. The credit reports should show that item as disputed for at least a month if not remove it entirely. The bank should be able to provide with copies although you may have to pay a research charge if the information is old enough. I recommend talking to your local branch manager to get what you need." Are you being paid through a limited company or an umbrella company ? Are you self employed If not what they are doing is illegal. If you are being paid a salary, then the employer has to contribute their part of National Insurance. I believe they are treating you as self employed, hence asking you to generate invoices. Check your contract wordings properly. Or get help from Citizens Advice. Call them or visit their local office. Or else do call up HMRC.  But if you are invoicing them, I would assume you are self employed and you have to do your self assessment. Get in contact with HMRC and ask them to generate your Unique Taxpayer Reference (UTR). THey will send you the UTR and using this you can fill your tax returns.  It looks like cumbersome now, but it isn't so. You can do it yourself, I do mine. Or at the end of the financial year, get an accountant to do the returns for you, probably should charge you £100-£150. Keep all your invoices, bills, bank statements safely. This is some help from HMRC website "The wording of this question is very confusing because ""primary signer"" would, in ordinary parlance, mean the person borrowing the money and the co-signer (not consigner) would mean the one who is guaranteeing the repayment of the loan: if the borrower does not pay, the co-signer is liable for making the payments. Whose name is on the title of the car? Who borrowed the money to buy the car? Is the loan in your name and your son co-signed the loan to induce the bank to loan you money to purchase the car, or is it the other way around, that your son borrowed the money and you co-signed the loan in order to induce the bank to loan your son the money? If the car title and the loan are in your name, are you defaulting on the loan and so your son is making the loan payments that should have come from you? Or is it that your son borrowed the money to buy the car, his name is on the title, he is making the payments, and you are no longer interested in backing him up in case he defaults and the bank comes after you for the money?"