Editing the conversation is exactly what they do! As a good friend of mine found out to his cost quite recently.these muffins buy the debt online, Ebay advertise them and they try to get money of you and earn a percentage
however if you are honest, and in the right, they soon realise the costs are mounting up
never ever enter into telephone conversation with them
they tell you the calls are recorded, however they have a canny habit of leading the conversation, and using a standard dialogue to make you look guilty, and I have heard from more than one source that they have a habit of editing the conversations in their favour
However, I sold a gash video camera to some fella from Melton Mowbray about three years ago and some time later, a rough-sounding geezer got in touch with me because the buyer wanted a refund. I'd already talked to the buyer about it and told him to return the camera and he'd get his refund. That never happened and he also gave no reason for wanting a refund in the first place.
Anyway, your man the rough-sounding geezer phoned me up and went into his spiel. Apparently, the trick is to carefully edit in the words "yes" and "no" in the right places afterwards to make you sound as if you're in the wrong and want to make amends. What he obviously didn't know is that there are no definite affirmatives or negatives in the Irish language and native Irish speakers rarely, if ever, directly say "yes" or "no" in English because their native language habits carry over when they switch to English ("I'll be after going then" is a typical example of that).
So the conversation went something like this:
Geezer: "Are you Mr XXX of XXX?"
Bugsy: "I am".
Geezer: "You sold a video camera to Mr XXX on XXX date. Is that correct?"
Bugsy: "It is".
Geezer: "Are you aware that Mr XXX is demanding a refund?"
Bugsy: "I am".
Geezer: Is there any reason why you are refusing to submit the refund?"
Bugsy: "There is".
And so on and so forth, with your man there getting increasingly frustrated. He eventually just hung up on me and I never heard from him (or anyone else) again.
It was only after I'd read about all the sly editing malarky at a much later date that I realised I'd dodged a bullet, albeit totally unwittingly.
MsG