Bang, bang, bang. Ding dong. Ding dong. Somebody was at our front door, knocking insistently and ringing the bell. Upstairs in bed, I turned blearily to check the time. It was 6am on a Saturday. This had better be good, I thought. But I knew it wouldn’t be.
I am not a morning person. My wife catapulted out of bed and answered the door as I hovered in semi-consciousness. In my haze, I became vaguely aware of a strange man’s voice remonstrating with her. That got me up. I arrived at the bottom of the stairs to find two men, both dressed in black. The smaller one was doing all the talking. Behind him was a much bigger man standing in silence.
Small Guy was jabbering away, but my attention was on Big Guy as he eyeballed me from across the threshold. He was a looming, menacing presence. You could have fitted three of me into his trouser leg. I soon began to regret not putting on pants of my own.
Eventually, two phrases from Small Guy’s relentless soliloquy registered in my reawakening brain: “court judgment” and “enforcement agents”. Who are you? I asked. “We’re bailiffs,” the reply came. Small Guy thrust a letter into my hand as if serving me with papers.
They were collecting a debt and hinted they might take property. We soon established the debtor was the previous tenant. Let’s call him Tom K. Nothing to do with us, I told Little and Large. He doesn’t live here. Don’t know him or where he is.
Prove you’re not Tom, Small Guy said. Meanwhile, Big Guy eyed up two bikes chained up outside the front door; they belonged to my wife and daughter. I rather impolitely told Small Guy that I shouldn’t need to prove anything to strangers who had woken my family at 6am on a Saturday.
Oh, but you do, he said, or we will come back. He asked for something with my name and address. Reluctantly, I grabbed the first thing to hand: a Spectator magazine delivery that had arrived in the post addressed to me. No, no, no, Small Guy said, that won’t do. He wanted something more official.
“That won’t do?” I repeated to myself in disbelief. Who does this goon think he is?
Small Guy waited expectantly as if I owed him something, which he believed I possibly did. My failing composure finally shattered and – probably not to my credit – I let forth a stream of invective. As I explained before, I am not a morning person. They chose to wake my family at 6am on a Saturday without first checking that the right guy lived there. As far as I was concerned in my grumpy early morning state, the only thing I owed these men was a b****cking.
Why didn’t you call at a decent hour? Why are you acting as if you have official power over me? Why should I prove anything to you? I bid them a coarse adieu and slammed the door.
Bailiffs and the debt agencies that employ them are regularly criticised by UK consumer groups for their increasingly aggressive tactics. I had been living in Britain for less than three weeks when a story truly stunned me. I don’t believe it would ever have happened in Ireland. The Times newspaper revealed a debt agency working for British Gas had been breaking into the homes of vulnerable customers behind on their bills and forcibly installing prepayment meters.
The bailiff business is booming in England and Wales and their biggest client is the UK state, through local authorities chasing unpaid council tax. Not including Scotland, roughly 2.7 million debts are referred by local authorities to bailiffs each year. The Money Advice Trust, a charity, runs a campaign called Stop The Knock, which aims to dissuade councils from a knee jerk use of bailiffs.
I couldn’t get back to sleep after our visitors. Later, I asked my youngest daughter if she had heard them. “I heard you shouting,” she said. “It made me feel sorry for them.”
As the crude online acronym goes, I asked myself AITA? I opened the bailiff’s letter. It was a threat to take property over Tom K’s debt of £1,000. It included a mobile number. I found a Thames Water bill in my name and texted him the image. Then I called his number. It was Small Guy.
I asked who owned the debt. Wandsworth Council, he replied. But, I complained, the council tax is now registered in my name. A simple phone call to the council before knocking on my door would have proven Tom K was no longer the tenant. Come to think of it, the council should have checked this essential detail itself before the 6am goons were sent.
“That’s right. But the left hand in the council doesn’t tell the right hand what each is doing these days,” Small Guy, now a philosopher, said. “That’s why this country is in the state it’s in.”
I felt my anger coming back, but also the disapproval of my daughter. I hung up. It would be a long day.
