Intrum UK Complaints: Right Entity, Right Route, Free Referee

What makes Intrum different is the housekeeping before you start, because more than one Intrum company operates in the UK and the complaint needs to name the right one.

Name the correct Intrum entity

Take the exact company name from your letter before writing anything. Intrum UK Limited, company number 03752940, FCA firm reference 718918, is the collection and debt purchase business most people are dealing with. A separate company, Intrum Mortgages UK Finance Limited, appears on the Financial Services Register under firm reference 459016 and relates to mortgage lending rather than unsecured collection. Both belong to Intrum AB, a Swedish listed group, but a complaint sent to the wrong entity can lose you weeks while it is redirected.

If your paperwork is older and says 1st Credit, that was Intrum UK Limited's name until March 2018, so the complaint history and the account belong to the same firm under its current name.

Sending the complaint

Intrum's published complaints contacts are the email address complaintsin@intrum.co.uk, the online form on its UK website, and post to the Complaints Department, Intrum UK Limited, PO Box 226, Huddersfield, HD8 1FU. At the time of writing their contact page does not publish its own timetable, but the FCA's complaint-handling rules apply regardless: a final response is due within eight weeks, and most regulated firms acknowledge sooner.

Set out the events in date order, include the account reference and every name the account has carried, and finish with the outcome you are asking for.

Owner or agent decides who else should hear it

Intrum both buys debts and collects them on behalf of original creditors, and the answer changes your complaint's audience.

Where Intrum owns the account, Intrum is the only respondent, and the Financial Ombudsman case, if it comes to that, is against Intrum. Where Intrum is collecting as agent, the original creditor generally remains responsible for those acting on its behalf, so a parallel complaint to that creditor can be worthwhile, and it may resolve matters faster by recalling the account. You are entitled to ask Intrum which arrangement applies, and the answer is worth having in writing before you escalate.

The ombudsman stage

Six months from the date of Intrum's final response, or any time after eight weeks of silence, you can put the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service at no cost. Strong Intrum complaints tend to involve contact continuing after a written dispute, collection activity on an account whose documentation was requested and never produced, an ignored vulnerability disclosure, or letters implying consequences a collector cannot bring about.

When the fear is bailiffs at the door

Nothing in Intrum's letters gives it enforcement powers. Enforcement agents can only follow a court judgment and a warrant, and judgments do not happen quietly: a claim form comes first, and an entered judgment normally sits on the public register for six years unless paid in full within a month, so it can be checked rather than guessed at. If agents genuinely have attended under a court order, the conduct of those agents follows the enforcement ladder in our guide to how to complain about a bailiff, separately from any complaint about Intrum itself.

Where this page fits

Whether an Intrum debt is enforceable at all, the 1st Credit history, and how to respond to their letters are covered in the full Intrum UK profile. If you are unsure which entity you face or a claim form has arrived, get help before responding.