'I was perfectly willing to pay a 37p debt: the next thing I knew, I was being summoned to court'

For six weeks my wife and I were bombarded with telephone calls from around the world after our debt was sold on a winner-takes-all commission basis

The bailiffs were called in over a handful of coppers (iStock)

There have been three times in my life I have owed money: the mortgage; a County Council car loan; and £16 to my big sister for college bedding. So a fourth debt of 37 pennies did not initially trouble me.

It all stemmed from an arrangement I had with an online retailer whereby I paid monthly for the listing of some books I had written – balanced against any sales revenue. One day, when I got back from holiday, I made a mental note that my account had not paid out 37p outstanding from the previous month, due to a routine change of debit card. All I had to do would be update my details with the internet firm – let’s call them XYZ.com. Simple.

Except that in their wisdom XYZ.com inflated the debt to £10.37 due to a slight delay in paying caused by my flying back from Geneva. Unwilling to pay the extra charge, I searched out XYZ.com’s possible e-mail address and made a firm offer of 37 pence. I presumed it would be the end of saga. If only.

A month later, the debt had mysteriously grown to £20.37. I attempted a few more clicks of the mouse and again offered to pay the original debt of 37p. After all, that’s what I owed for services rendered.

Most people might imagine that XYZ.com would either accept the 37 pennies or write the whole thing off as an anomaly. If only. In a “no-reply” e-mail, I was told the debt had now grown to £30.37. No problem, I thought: someone, somewhere, would concede the real sum was 37 pennies wouldn’t they?

Godfrey Holmes’s 37p debt turned into a nightmare (PA)

Matters then turned ugly. For six weeks my wife and I were bombarded with unattributable telephone calls: first from London, then Washington, then Barcelona, then Bermuda, then India. We didn’t possess call-filtering, so we eagerly ran to the phone each time thinking it was one of our friends or colleagues ringing.

It soon emerged XYZ.com had seemingly “sold” our debt to retrieval agencies all round the world on a winner-takes-all commission basis. And these ciphers were no respecters of inter-continental time zones. One caller did sound vaguely sympathetic, acknowledging how 37 pennies had grown like Topsy. But he and his unrelated jobsworths were all agreed there was no negotiating the £30.37 due. That was set in stone. Why not simply pay up?

Instead, I rang Trading Standards and spoke for about 20 minutes non-stop before coming down to earth with a thud upon being informed that that particular service was no longer council-run but outsourced.

So I rang Citizen’s Advice: a marvellous organisation well set up to handle complex gas or electricity, water or Council Tax, store card or moneylender debt; but not so clued up about my internet shopping issue. After another 20 exasperating minutes, my advisor suggested sending off £10.37 as a belated act of goodwill. No way, I thought. 37 is still the number of pennies I owe, and no more!

A parchment envelope arrived. It had to be woven paper and it certainly looked suspicious. I neither wished to open it nor inform my anxious wife that it had come. Inside was a promise – or a threat. Bailiffs would arrive unannounced, enter our happy home and strip it of whatever goods might sell for, wit for it, £430.37! This would be enough for those same bailiffs to cover their call-out and settlement costs.

But the envelope also provided another promise: of light at the end of a tunnel, for the bailiffs actually had a telephone number. Praise be.

I waited only an hour before going into the most distant room in our home and ringing them to let them know all that had gone wrong. What a relief.

Except that another envelope was soon on its way requiring my attendance at Leeds Debtors’ Court. A summons! Handily, I knew from advising different tradesmen concerning unpaid invoices that the innocuous sounding “County Court” doubles up as the Debtors’. The latter just sounds better.

Yet even I was unaware at that stage that County Courts could be convened, engaged, co-opted and traduced by all sorts of unscrupulous bodies, in order to recover monies to which those cunning interlocutors were not really entitled. Had I not heard a BBC radio programme on the very subject I would have dismissed it as preposterous that a court of the land would not be in the business of what most of us would regard as justice.

Does the British court system always stand for justice? (Getty Images)

Still, for a second time, I now had a crucial, and reachable, phone number. So I rang the Clerk to the Court, explained it was all a horrible misunderstanding, a regrettable escalation of hostilities, and succeeded in obtaining a stay of execution. I promised to trace XYZ.com, by hook or by crook, and give them my 37 pennies. Precisely.

And that’s what I did. I scrolled to my heart’s content until, by a back door feat of cross-referencing a stray tab, I found XYZ’s UK & United States addresses. With no hesitation, I hand-wrote a covering letter explaining the innocent renewal of my debit card and my earnest wish to pay that contentious, seedling, 37 pennies. Then grabbing my cheque book, I gleefully reimbursed XYZ their miserable pittance. All now required of me was to obtain Recorded Delivery from the Post Office.

With the saga nearing its inauspicious anticlimax, how would I advise future clients of XYZ.com or similar outfits? First, read the small print. Second, be absolutely certain they, not you, will always be in the driving seat. Third, at the very start of the trading relationship, insist you are furnished with real people’s names at a real address, with a real 03- or 01- telephone number. Fourth, alert your bank if you’ll be away upon the expiry of your payment card. Fifth, hold your ground.

Never, ever, yield to bullies. Because they are bullies. Faceless, desiccated and robotic internet autocrats rely on their anonymity, inaccessibility and implacability; on their harsh intransigence. They know many punters will eventually cough up, if only for peace and quiet. Anything to escape the aggro. Any chance to crawl out of the quagmire.

37 pennies. To think, we suffered. To think, we hung on to a crumbling cliff edge: all for the sake of 37 pennies we did not even want.