All DCAs buy past-due amounts for pennies on the pound/dollar. By the time they get to a DCA the sums have been written off by the original lender. So if the DCA can persuade a creditor to pay up in full, they're making a lot of money.
As for the law - in the UK debts are a civil not a criminal matter. So unless there's been obvious flagrant fraud they end up in county court before a judge, not a criminal court before a magistrate.
Consumer orgs like the Consumer Action Group (https://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/) and Legal Beagles (https://legalbeagles.info) who make it their business to offer free legal information for anyone being chased for debts, whether "reasonable" or not, with a view to avoiding a court case, getting the best possible result, or - in some cases - winning compensation for unfair/unreasonable claims and DCA/bailiff actions.
It's not unusual for lenders to have poor record keeping. People who keep original paperwork have found that some DCA "proof of debt" is entirely fake, assembled as required, with a creditor's signature copied from recent correspondence.
It's hard to feel any sympathy for an industry that operates like this.
I found that consumer protection in the UK in general is pretty terrible or non-existent, and that organisations (both private and government) treat consumers/citizens rather harshly, to put it mildly. At least compared to my native country of the Netherlands. I don't know why there's such a culture of that :-/
As for the law - in the UK debts are a civil not a criminal matter. So unless there's been obvious flagrant fraud they end up in county court before a judge, not a criminal court before a magistrate.
Consumer orgs like the Consumer Action Group (https://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/) and Legal Beagles (https://legalbeagles.info) who make it their business to offer free legal information for anyone being chased for debts, whether "reasonable" or not, with a view to avoiding a court case, getting the best possible result, or - in some cases - winning compensation for unfair/unreasonable claims and DCA/bailiff actions.
It's not unusual for lenders to have poor record keeping. People who keep original paperwork have found that some DCA "proof of debt" is entirely fake, assembled as required, with a creditor's signature copied from recent correspondence.
It's hard to feel any sympathy for an industry that operates like this.