Right, I’d like some advice if you will from people with experience of this kind of thing.
Last year I lived in a flat with four people which was supplied by British Gas. We’d receive bills every couple of months in the order of tens of pounds, I think the most we were ever billed in one go was about £28. This worked out reasonably well, I didn’t know how often the boiler was on but the only other gas appliance was the hob so I thought nothing of it and paid up to my flatmate who sorted the gas out when required.
We moved out to this new place last June, when the letting agents took meter readings and sent the details of our new addresses to the utility companies concerned so they could finalise the accounts. ScottishPower managed this without issue; we got a bill around July for the old property, I paid it and started a new account for the new flat. We didn’t even think about British Gas.
About 10 days ago, I get a letter from Central Recoveries demanding the sum of a little over £260 from British Gas for the account at the old flat. Odd, I thought, considering how this was the first correspondence I’d had from anyone related to BG. We phone up British Gas, and Central Recoveries, and their stories check out; they’d been underbilling us for the year. They had also been sending bills and reminders, and final reminders, and ‘seriously we’ll kneecap you’ reminders to the old address.
"
How strange," I thought, "
ScottishPower are morons and managed it just fine".
Turns out that over the course of the year, my old letting agents had tried no less than three times to get in touch with British Gas about our new address and the meter reading, which was kindly followed up by British Gas with a more threatening letter than last time on the off chance that we were hiding something.
I phoned the collection agency on Thursday and paid up with my credit card, treated I might add like I was a goddamn deadbeat by the up-herself £6/hr call-centre operative on the other end of the line. They said to “
check that we’ve actually taken the amount in a few days, because if it’s not paid by the 31st you’ll be considered to have defaulted”.
I phone Barclaycard today to check if any attempt at all had yet been made to take the amount, to which the reply was “
no, nothing’s even been rejected”. It’s a bank-holiday on Monday in England, so they probably aren’t going to get round to this until at least Tuesday, which means the transaction won’t be finished until some time later in the week.
So my questions are this:
- From a credit-rating point of view, what is likely to have been recorded so far?
- If this ends up going to court, will any of that be recorded (assuming I kick their ass in front of the magistrate)
- Does it seem strange to anyone that for a year British Gas couldn’t find me even though they’d been given my address now four times, but the recovery agency managed it in three days?
I guess what I want to know is
what is, and how strong is, my position. My old letting agents have said they’ll write to British Gas whenever I want confirming that they’d tried to get in touch with them no less than three times and we have the dates that the demands were sent (and I believe that the letting agent sent letters to British Gas) so it’s not like I’ve nothing backing me up here.
And here was me thinking ScottishPower was bad.