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Serial abusers


Fumanzoku

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With reference to my original post on the Gite thread "They come in every form", and the follow-on thread "Dodgy Tenants"; I have since located the family I spoke of, who did the proverbial  'runner', and would you Adam and Eve it, they are doing it all over again in their new place. I am corresponding with their distraught new landlady who doesn't know what to do. As you will all know from the Dodgy Tenants thread there is/was at least one other family of five who have recently been 'on tour' of homes in Vendee/Deux Sevres.

So my question is, what is to be done? What about creating an online blacklist with all the legal caveats? Or must we form a secret-society of dodgy tenant monitors?  Once named these people will have a hard time abusing the next victim, but without naming them they'll be free to go on cheating people out of their hard-earned money.  Is there a legal way round naming them,  for example just the initials? This could then be backed up  by a link to  the offended owner(s). If everything the owner says is true what can there be to worry about by naming them?

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Much as I sympathise I think you will have to be extremely careful about this, as you know the Code of Conduct includes a no naming and shaming clause and that includes giving 'clues' about peoples identity. In addition I think the legal position is the same as if you actually name someone (but I'm happy to be corrected)

Where the forum can help is by discussing how to get the situation resolved. Other people may have been similarly effected and be able to advise how best to proceed.

 

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I'm not involved directly with this as we don't let property, but I'm sure I've read somewhere that if the property is furnished you only have to give 28 days notice for tenants to quit, whereas renting unfurnished property gives the tenant much greater occupying protection. Whether this excludes the 'winter period' I don't know.

As I said, I have limited knowledge of the subject so please don't shoot me down.

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Why not have a section on the forum where members can ask .... "Does anyone know of these people called XXXXX" and if so please PM me or email me privately.

That way nobody knows what was said.

Surely this forum shouild be as much about protecting each other as it is about sharing useful information.....or perhaps the great british trait of close your curtains and pretend you saw nothing is alive and well in france.... don't know really.

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Much as I sympathise I think you will have to be extremely careful

about this, as you know the Code of Conduct includes a no naming and

shaming clause and that includes giving 'clues' about peoples identity.

In addition I think the legal position is the same as if you actually

name someone (but I'm happy to be corrected)

Where the forum can help is by discussing how to get the situation

resolved. Other people may have been similarly effected and be able to

advise how best to proceed.

Russethouse, perhaps I didn't express myself well, but I'm not suggesting using a forum for this purpose. I think this would be best served by a dedicated website.

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[quote user="Chief"]Why not have a section on the forum where members can ask .... "Does anyone know of these people called XXXXX" and if so please PM me or email me privately.

That way nobody knows what was said.[/quote]

They could make a pretty good guess though...[:'(]

In one of the threads there was enough information given (but not a surname) to identify the culprits ten times over.

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I have already been named and shamed on here. I mean my name, full address and telephone number.It is not nice and I was angry and upset about it.  AND I HAD NOT done anything wrong apart from posting a post about France.

Saying that, I sympathise with you landlords as the law in France is not really in your favour. Maybe starting up a board/web site about this wouldn't be a bad idea, bearing in mind that you could be sued.

Have those concerned contacted www.anil.org I would imagine that they would be able to tell you the A-Z of the laws in France.

 

I am not prepared to say what I think I would do if this happened to me, I would make their lives hell though and would be on their case every waking minute.

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I have already been named and shamed on here. I mean my name, full

address and telephone number.It is not nice and I was angry and upset

about it.  AND I HAD NOT done anything wrong apart from posting a post

about France.

I'd suggest the offended owner(s) should be obliged to identify themselves, and perhaps provide some proof to support their accusations.

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One for the Mods - could you say if a family of 5 turn up at your gite etc complex driving a specific make of car, even a registration plate they should be turned away?

That way you don't identify them by name, just the car.

And those people with gites who have been stung by these scum bags, couldn't they speak to the local tourist office so that they could contact people on their books with a warning?

If it were me ........... well, I was once told by an ex-colleague that the guy I'd just slung out of my daughter's house for stiffing her for the rent for a few months could sue me ........... so I said, fine, that way everybody would know he was a scum bag because I'd make sure it was in all the papers and nobody would want to rent him a room.

Now there's a thought, local/regional paper would be an idea, that way they're clearly identifiable and the person renting doesn't have to do anything, just contact the journo ....... and a porte plaint to the gendarmes, if these people are doing it as a matter of course, sort of how they make their living, they are likely to be committing a criminal offence so my gendarme friends tell me.

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>>One for the Mods - could you say if a family of 5 turn up at your gite etc complex driving a specific make of car, even a registration plate they should be turned away?

That way you don't identify them by name, just the car.<<<

No you must not do that here.......its just identifying them 'by the backdoor'

I think speaking to the local tourist office may be the best way to go.

 

 

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[quote user="Gary aka Bugbear"]Why don't you simply create a thread asking for people involved in letting etc, to contact you by email, set up a database and communicate by email. This avoids involving this site completely.[/quote]

Correct.....................................

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People seem to be under the impression that as long as they do not identify anybody by name, or they publish what they perceive as 'facts', they can avoid problems with defamation. This is not so - case law shows that anything which can identify an individual, or group of individuals, or damage anybody's reputation, can be regarded as defamatory. The owners of this site cannot take that risk - six-figure sums have been awarded by courts for what publishers have regarded as justifiable comment but a judge regards as going that bit too far.

Yes, I know that certain papers, TV programmes etc make a big thing of exposing so-called 'rogues' - they can afford the damages, and it is a sad fact that people are less likely to sue a high-profile medium than they are a comparatively small specialist magazine or website. You would even have to be careful with private e-mails, as these could possibly fall into the wrong hands.

Libel law is complicated, and far from clear-cut, as any lawyer will tell you. It is better not to risk it.

Back to the original topic, the only way is to check very carefully any would-be tenants about whom you have suspicions. Even naming them may not work - how do you know they have been using real names, or won't use a false identity in the future? You need to check ID, insist on recent references that you can check, get bank references etc. It's the only way. But then the best con artists are those who appear respectable, well-bred and professional, and attract no suspicion.

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Hi Teamedup.

I understand what you are saying and I did say the same thing, we do need some  sortof  way of   knowing or at least asking if a person or persons   are known to have any bad form (for the use of a better word)

I do know that in the u.k. if you apply for a loan with at least one large building society (Halifax) you are checked out to see if your sound ref outstanding debt ect,

As Ive said many times in the past this is France and the Laws are not the same, but perhaps such a register could be worked from a U.K. site ?

But we really do need to have some sort of protection.

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The problem with that Pun is that many ordinary  people are thrilled to be able to sell their property and pay off all their debts before making a new life in France.

Their UK record may not give a true idea of the peoples current situation or even intentions especially as many financial institutions are pretty slow to update records. For instance one bank had to be asked 3 times to remove the record that we had a secured loan with them, even though we had the paperwork to show it was paid in full.

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I would have thought that in order to successfully sue, the litigant would have to prove defamation.  So, if they are stood in court saying i am respectable and law-abiding, and 5-6 gite owners are testifying to the fact that the litigant is in fact a serial con artist who carries out the trade of deception as described by the OP, are you suggesting that the litigant would still win.....surely the french are a bit more savvy than that...aren't they :-((..................
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It's worth mentioning the distinction between people with a poor history who deliberately provide false information in order to obtain tenancies, and those who merely fail to pay the rent or vacate the property unannounced, leaving arrears or damage.  Whilst the latter is a civil matter, the former is potential fraud and should be reported to the police.

Forming an unofficial organisation to share "black" information about these people (with all the data protection and libel implications that you would all be personally liable for) is unlikely to be very effective because not all former landlords will be aware of your "ring".  Furthermore, not all landlords may be prepared to expose themselves to the risks of joining.

As Will said earlier, you really need to re-examine the efficacy of the pre-rental checks that you carry out.  If references are an effective method of establishing a good recent history, then you should make sure that you are taking them.

 

 

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I totally agree with the points made above by Sunday Driver.

In urging caution, I am thinking of one well-known libel case, where a company boss sued a magazine which had published a report that said his company's products did not perform according to the claims in their advertisements. This report was backed up by the magazine's own test results (at which trials said company boss was present, and, according to somebody I know who was on the magazine staff, actually operating the equipment himself at one stage). The man was known to be 'dodgy' in many respects, and was under investigation by whatever the DTI was known as in those days.

However, the judge ruled that the man had indeed been defamed - the magazine article implied that he and his co-director were 'charlatans' who knowingly made false claims. It was not sufficient that the magazine's own tests showed the claims were somewhat optimistic, the publication of the report and the particular way in which it was worded had damaged the man's reputation among his peers.

The legal department of the publisher (incidentally one of the UK's largest consumer magazine publishers) advised against an appeal, despite the very substantial amount of damages awarded by the judge.

This is a case well-known in case law, so is often quoted as a precedent - legal brains are still of the opinion that a different judge may well have ruled differently. As I was working for a sister magazine at the time, I followed the case very closely. It shows how uncertain the law can be in this respect, and how careful one has to be not to damage somebody's reputation - even when you think that reputation does not count for very much.

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Why not when contemplating letting out your property for a"long term " let  you state to your client that you will require from them their authority in writing ....(. it may only be six lines ...) to do a credit check with " Experion " or some other organisation which holds everybodies credit rating ....Any past dodgy history the client has they will know will be revealed...if they  will not co operate with you in this request.....you have your answer ! This family of 5 I should think must be known .
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Regarding bad debt, I have just been speaking to my son (in England) who has been mistaken for another man of the same name (no identity theft involved) and has been credit blacklisted. The debt collection company agrees that he is not the man they are pursuing (now) but once his name has been put on the list it is proving very difficult to get him off again, largely due to the utter incompetence of the companies involved. He found out when he was refused for a loan and his bank started getting very unhelpful - until then he had no idea.

 I hope no-one else is in the same position...

BTW - any advice on how to proceed would be gratefully accepted before it starts costing me serious money with lawyers.

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Your son can send off for a copy of his credit records from  2 main companies   WWW.EXPERIAN.CO.UK

Quicker than writing a letter, but a little more expensive, is to do it on line. If anything is untoward he should write to the company that has sent the incorrect info to experian and to experian themselves. I am pretty sure that the webpage will explain everything better than I can here.

 

 

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