First response to a debt collection agency which won't mention "debt"

[Adrianwall]

We have today received a letter from a debt collection agency in pursuit of a specified though non-existent debt which doesn't actually use the word "debt" at all and doesn't mention "Court action" either.

The letter has arrived out of the blue in the wake of protracted correspondence with a major UK energy supplier which is seeking to extract from us monies to which it is not entitled and in respect of which to both its satisfaction and ours it has been demonstrated that no such entitlement exists.

The unmentionable "debt" stems from the aforesaid major UK energy supplier's erroneous billing -- or rather, absence of billing, seeing as we have yet to receive a detailed account rendering from either the supplier or, now, its agent, the debt collection agency.

Instead: the letter we received today is headed:
IMPORTANT MATTER THAT MAY AFFECT YOUR CREDIT RATING
weasel wording deliberately deployed for the purpose of contriving alarm and dismay.

The letter proceeds to identify the debt collector's client -- the aforementioned major UK energy supplier -- and then cites an "Account Balance" in a sum in excess of £200 in respect of supply to our address. It states:

"We have been appointed by (client) to recover the above outstanding amount. To avoid the possibility of further action, we strongly urge you to repay the amount (note the word: "repay") outstanding. You can pay by using any of the methods listed on the reverse of this letter."

After some markedly disingenuous tarradiddle about "if you are having difficulty in making payment", and then a list of external advisory services to whom we can turn, the letter concludes:

This may impact on your credit rating

Non-payment of the full outstanding balance may result in (client) registering a default with Credit Reference Agencies. Registration of a credit default will have an impact on your credit rating. You have the following options:
*Pay the £ (amount of "outstanding balance" in full immediately;
* Setup (sic) an instalment (sic) plan to pay the debt over a longer period."

The letter is unsigned. There is no attribution of authorship. A company unknown to us has therefore sent us a threatening letter without ever once resorting to the word debt nor mention of civil action. Rather, the correspondence is coy, disingenuous, manipulative, and oppressive. That it's also illiterate is, perhaps, to be expected: we doubt that fluency is a characteristic of any such enterprise.

Just to be clear: we do not, of course, owe the debt collector's client the "amount outstanding". If we did, we would've paid it. If we did, we wouldn't have expended so much of our own valuable time on (a) disputing it; (b) demonstrating beyond any and all misapprehension that the amount is wrong; and (c) coming on here to waste anyone else's time.

We have absolutely no intention of paying monies we do not owe to a giant energy company that has already been severely censured by OFGEM for both the mismanagement of its billing operation and the serial failures of its Customer Service Department.

As to today's hapless unsigned letter: it all too obviously seeks to create the impression of being correspondence about an established fact when no such establishment has occurred. The letter does not even include details of the "outstanding balance" nor how that "outstanding balance" has been calculated.

What is -- to us -- especially repugnant here is the debt collector's furtiveness: the reluctance to speak explicitly of debt or make any overt threat of civil action: extortion is less nauseating than gutlessness.

As we are content to proceed as far as may be necessary to assert as both individuals and as consumers our basic rights to fair play, decent treatment, and honest conduct, the long haul doesn't intimidate us -- and certainly not the size of the dysfunctional corporate monolith currently trying so contemptuously to crush us under its weight.

Bearing all that in mind, then, we wish to write back to the debt collector in a way that serves a purpose as suited to our own objective as it is for the record.

Advice appreciated.

Thanks, and apologies for any inconvenience inadvertently caused.

[wales01man]

Re: First response to a debt collection agency which won't mention "debt"

Do you use this energy company now or in the past there must be some reason they are chasing you for money.

[Adrianwall]

Re: First response to a debt collection agency which won't mention "debt"

Do you use this energy company now or in the past there must be some reason they are chasing you for money.

We switched from the supplier at the centre of this issue to another supplier in March. Too many stories abound of consumer mistreatment by energy companies for anyone to trust them, so we cancelled our Direct Debit and asked our then supplier to provide us with a final bill. The switch took the form of a routine procedure whereby the new supplier seeks a meter reading from the new customer on the eve of supply, that meter reading being then passed to the existing supplier so as to enable it to prepare an accurate bill.

On this occasion , the new supplier, for reasons which it has never properly explained, dreamt up a final meter reading of surreal inaccuracy. The existing supplier issued a bill on the basis of that.

On receipt of this bill, I had a telephone discussion with a helpful customer services representative who called up our consumption history on her computer screen and said the meter reading they'd received from the other supply company was obviously wrong as it bore no relation to our usage pattern. I gave her the meter reading which I'd provided to the new supplier. She noted it down and said the two suppliers would now talk to each other so as to establish the facts. Until that had been done, the final bill we had received would be "suspended" and no further action on our part was required:we should do nothing until we received a revised bill derived from accurate data.

We heard nothing for five months. This was of no concern to us. Whatever the outstanding amount happened to be, we would pay it immediately . . . but of course, only if that bill was based on the reading I had now provided: I am not in the habit of paying any contractor for goods it has not supplied or for work it has never undertaken.

When we did hear from the supplier, it took the form of an email headed FINAL DEMAND followed up by a letter of identical content. No "revised" bill nor indeed any other kind of bill was attached. The demand merely asserted that a sum even higher than that of the earlier bill was unpaid since March and must be paid immediately -- or else.

We immediately emailed the company to advise them of the content of that earlier telephone conversation with its representative. We said that of course, we had never blamed the company for issuing a bill based on information the accuracy of which it had at that time no reason to challenge, but we were now more than a little concerned to receive a Final Demand that not only used the original surreal meter reading, but was for an amount even higher than earlier requested.

Thus followed a series of emails in which the company used a standard script of cosmetic apology and seemingly did nothing to act on the information provided to it by ourselves. As before, we were assured that the matter was to be looked at by the company's billing department and a revised bill issued; as before, we never heard another word.

An email from Customer Services that turned out to be the concluding item of correspondence in this chain was especially notable for the sender advising us that he could "confirm" that the bill was £such-and-such and could also "confirm" that the bill was based on not one but two "agreed" estimates (the estimates being for a period beginning with a Customer Read and ending with an Estimated Read, the source of which neither the writer nor the company has ever bothered to identify to us.)

We had, of course, never asked anyone from Customer Services to "confirm" anything: we are perfectly capable of reading evidence of mis-billing without assistance from others. More to the point though: assertion of the existence of some kind of "agreement" was particularly troubling, the wording very evidently employed to make it appear that refusal to pay on our part was a breach of faith as well as of contract. An agreement existed in relation to the bill's computation. We had broken that agreement.

As we had by now had enough of a Customer Service department which not only ignored the substance of everything we told it but seemed, now, to be resorting to blatant mendacity, we asked that the matter be elevated to management level. We also declined to accept the scripted, cosmetic apologies that had prefaced the content of every answer so far received.

In response to that request, the company fell silent. We heard nothing more of our complaint about the manner in which our concerns had been addressed, heard nothing more about the "billing department investigation", heard nothing more about our request for the issue to be elevated to a level where rather than merely "confirming" the existence of an unsupportable demand for money, someone, somewhere, actually took a few minutes to review the facts of the matter.

Instead, we received the debt collection agency's letter. And the sum is now even higher than ever.

We intend to deal with that letter today. We aren't sure of the wording that might best be used in our reply because the letter has carefully avoided resorting to an explicit threat. Nevertheless, we believe we are entitled to sight of the documentation upon which the claim for monies is being made -- or . . ?

At this stage, we would also welcome clarification of the following:

The letter states that the debt collector's client may register "a default" with Credit Reference Agencies and that such registration will impact on our credit rating if we do not pay the amount which it is claimed we owe (but which the record demonstrates beyond any and all doubt that we most definitely do not.)

Legally, where an unsupportable (and unsupported) claim for monies is made, is the claimant then able to freely interfere with the other party's credit history by "registering a default" when such default has never been proved? Or is the debt collector's statement a threat without substance aimed at intimidating those unfamiliar with proper process?

[des8]

Re: First response to a debt collection agency which won't mention "debt"

From your welcome thread it appears you are discontinuing.
This will be a great pity, because your situation is far from unique.
I have a similar situation with British Gas, who sent a red final bill, but no computation.
After a little discussion I received a refund, at the same time a DCA letter.
After further chasing by a variety of DCAs all went quiet.
This was three years ago.
Later I happened to check my credit ratings and found a default registered.
As it doesn't particularly affect me I haven't bothered to chase it up.
I have actually moved to Scottish Power!!!!!!!!!!!!