Just had a letter to start legal proccedings - BT help!

[tamba]

We moved house in August, we informed all of the relevent companys - gas, electric, phone etc.

We even arranged with BT to transfer every thing over to our new address, we have our phone and internet with them.

So why have they been sending bills to our old address????

Today i got a soliciters letter telling me they wanted 300 quid in 10 days or i will have to go to court.

WTF?? why has our old landlord only forwarded this letter to us? what about the bills that must have come before? Why are they sending stuff to our old address when that account is closed and they know we now live here?

I havent got 300 quid !

Well ring them and tell them and make a list of the points you have raised here.

am on th phone now but the woman is being an arse.

She says the line was never stopped and that i never changed addresses.

I am not very nice when i get annoyed though - poor woman!

Am being put through to a supervisor.

Maybe Ofcom can help you sort it out.

you can find how to complain here if you have no luck with BT.

I think the main point should be that you did inform them that the old service was to be disconnected and that given they connected you to the new house the must have had that instruction.
Their problem.
They will be grumpy and unhelpfull about it and try and blame you. stick to your guns.
Bottom line you had no prior warning of any problem with the old account & they did not carry out your instructions properly by failing to disconnet the old account on transfer.

Did you set up a mail forwarding thingy ? How many bills have gone awol, surely only one or two ? Our Letting Agent (who had put account and billing address to them !) were very bad at forwarding bills until we were being threatened with legal action/cut off. The last one was actually only revealed when I queried with British Gas why the meter had been read but we'd not received a bill 6 weeks on. Agent denied ever having received bills and couldn't tell me if they'd forwarded them to our address abroad instead. Isn't it an offence to interfere with post addressed to someone else ?

I managed to sort it out with British Gas eventually but not before various threats were made for outstanding amounts. If you spoke to BT previously they should have a record of the call on their computer system. Good luck.

Thanks all, I will definatly take it further.

Just got off the phone, they have knocked 50 quid off the bill already, but are refusing to accept that i gave them information about us moving, which I did (erm otheris how would i have managed to get phone and BB set up here??)

She has given me the number for credit control. I will have to pay some money as i think there was a bill due, but it should have been sent to this address. We have had bills for this address and paid them - they just kept sending the old one to the old house and obviously im not living there so havent got them.

The landlord of the old house hasnt been forwarding all our post but sent this letter luckily! otherwise i would stil have no idea of what is going on!

They want the monet within 10 days - they have no chance!

I am going to complain - thanks for the link.

(Hi Carl, I was Huggy btw )

grrrr better call credit control now!

oh iswym , intially thought you had taken the phone number with you too.

Just wondering, how have you managed to incur a bill of £300.00 if you wern't living there???????
You should not have to pay as it blaitently obvious that you had moved given the fact that you have new internet account and phone number!!!!!!
If i were you, i would tell them that you are not going to pay and that you would like to talk to the manager of the moving home department and tell them exactly what you have told us!!!!!

Good luck.

Butty.xxx

We didnt get a letter. They were aware that we had moved though as they managed to change the broadband over, they just didint bother with the phone line.

I know there will be some money to pay as we get out bills quartly and it was a middle of a quarter when we moved out. I am fine with paying that (and we had arranged for the bill to come to our new address)

Wow - the word Ofcom must scare them (even though i have no idea what it is! lol) as they have decided that i can pay 10 pound a month until the part of the bill that needs paying is paid.

I will pay at the end of January as i told them i cant afford to pay it in a lump some and that this was all there mistake anyway.

Am going to speak to ofcom now - i had to tell bt that i would sort it out so they cancelled the soliciters, but will be looking into it and complaining about it etc

Its amazing how one minute they can be saying "we want all this money right now" and then change to "yes mrs Tamba, whatever you want.."

Only just caught up with your thread Tamba... glad you got slighly further with BT resolving the £300 bill!!! NTL are just as bad and keep sending the bills for a guy who moved from here over 18 months ago even though we have our phone line and BB tinternet.

Hope it all works out for you. Keep threatening Ofcom and BBC Watchdog would be very intersted I'm sure!!

OOPS I meant threaten BT with Ofcom.

Yeh, good on yer for sticking to it. Top result

Get BT to confirm the payment arrangements in writing. That way they can't wriggle out of it later and say they have no record of you phoning them.