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Killed By My Debt

Help and discussions for strategies to get out of debt
Clitheroekid
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Killed By My Debt

#155450

Postby Clitheroekid » July 26th, 2018, 8:13 pm

If you missed this (and I must admit I never look at the BBC3 schedules) I'd very highly recommend it - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p067bmlh

It tells the true story of a young lad working for City Sprint as a `self-employed' courier. He picks up a couple of tickets for straying into a bus lane etc, can't pay them and of course our dear old chums the bailiffs get involved, racking up higher and higher charges as they try to bully him into getting the money.

It's quite heartbreaking. The contrast between the initial optimism of the vulnerable young lad, pretending to his family that everything's going well with his new `job', and the sheer cynicism and nastiness of both City Sprint (though I don't suppose they're any worse than the rest of their revolting ilk) and the vile bailiffs is a tribute to both the actors and the director.

I'm not unduly sentimental about debtors and bailiffs. I collect debts for clients on a regular basis, and have used bailiffs myself. But the way these minor traffic violations escalate from what to most people is a trivial sum into a sum of over £1,000 without any human input is truly horrible.

And in case you're thinking that it's his fault as he should simply have paid the fines his net income from CS was sometimes as low as £12 per week.

It's a very unpleasant reminder of the fact that while most of us live a life of ease and affluence there are a hell of a lot who don't, and some of them are destroyed by entirely legal means.

pochisoldi
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Re: Killed By My Debt

#155492

Postby pochisoldi » July 27th, 2018, 1:00 am

If the program ever drops off iplayer, the story can be read at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/id ... debt_kills

PochiSoldi

didds
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Re: Killed By My Debt

#155516

Postby didds » July 27th, 2018, 8:48 am

I can confirm iots not different with other courier companies.

My son had been unemployed for a long time and - looking for driving jobs - signed up as a "self employed" courier. The realities were woeful. He took on two routes as one alone wouldn't have paid enough to warrant doing it - he was paid something like 50p per delivered parcel. Of course - many people are out during the day, but others do not want evening deliveries - either because they themselves are shift workers and are out or they don;t want to be disturbed. He was told by his team lead/area lead that failing delivery instructions to leave it somewhere safe and sign for it himself with a squiggle... and often that was the only way to effect a delivery. Most people were happy with that. The problems however were when something couldn't be delivered for whatever reason... so that left the package to attempt delivery the next day ... but there is only payment when its delivered. So if nobody can ever collect, delivery doesn't get made, and there is no payment. The package can get returned to depot - but no payment is made. Or it sits at home for the next day (unsure TBH whether house contents insurance would have covered that of course etc) but the same scanriop occurs. Evening attempts cold be made - but now that's extra fuel and time to attempt it. Then eventually there was a claim that somebody's parcel hadn't been delivered/received ... one of those "leave in a safe place and squiggle a signature" ones. It had been delivered thus - so either had been found and stolen, or a fast one was being pulled by the recipient. So son was instructed he could now no longer squiiggle and leave. Which seriously impacted his ability to deliver effectively.

His income dropped to sometimes as little as £3 a day ... for a 6-7 hour round. It proved ineffective in the end - it was costing him money to do the job.

Eventually his car died and he had no transport so the job just ended - as his dad I was quite pleased all round for him but it left him back to square one.

I can see that such courier arrangements probably work in large towns and cities where routes are compact, especially with domestic arrangements wghere residents may have somebody in/safe to leave with a real person and signature. But in rural communities - including small towns - its just not realistic from the courier's perspective.

didds

patrickmacqueen
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Re: Killed By My Debt

#221280

Postby patrickmacqueen » May 13th, 2019, 12:28 pm

I see this won Best Single Drama at last night's BAFTA awards. http://www.bafta.org/television/awards/single-drama-0

Clitheroekid
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Re: Killed By My Debt

#221422

Postby Clitheroekid » May 13th, 2019, 10:05 pm

patrickmacqueen wrote:I see this won Best Single Drama at last night's BAFTA awards. http://www.bafta.org/television/awards/single-drama-0

Now there's a novelty - for once I agree with the judges!

theogJ
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Re: Killed By My Debt

#238407

Postby theogJ » July 22nd, 2019, 1:44 pm

Yeah isn't it "funny" we never hear about the strong and the rich being crushed by the irrational system like this...
The municipal system is surely strong against the weak!


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