BBC: Credit card borrower tortured by lender, says judge

The MBNA bank has been accused by a High Court judge of "torturing" a customer with repeated phone calls demanding he repay his credit card. Keith Harrison had his debt of £20,270 written off by the judge, Nicholas Chambers QC, at Mold in North Wales.

It is reassuring that someone as eminent as Mr Justice Chambers QC, a High Court judge, has highlighted  something that I have been saying for years, namely the appalling way that some debt collectors and banking institutions go about collecting unpaid debts, whether they are legally enforceable or not.

The judge’s comments should ring out loud and clear to all debt collectors and lending financial institutions. He said  “There can be no excuse for conduct of which it must be supposed the sole purpose must have been to make the claimant's life so difficult that he would come to heel.”

"In my view, the claimant rightly complains that, mainly by MBNA but also by the defendant [debt collectors Link Financial], he was hounded by telephone calls seeking payment of what was said to be due."

"The calls were a form of torture oppressively frequent in amount and often without attribution to an identifiable number."

Last December MBNA was told by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) that it must improve the way it deals with its customers who were experiencing problems repaying their debts. You can read this article here - MBNA told to improve debt collection procedures

Also my blog - Is MBNA guilty of coercing and bullying non-payers?