Leeds Consultancy Services / E.on

le_bateau

Hi Everyone.

I'm new here. Looks like a super useful place to come and get advice though, so i thought i'd try it out.

Right, i've had a massive problem with the electricity supplier for a flat i used to rent.

Here's the story.

From summer 2005 to summer 2007, I and my girlfriend lived in some new-build flats in the town centre which were not connected to the mains electricity when we moved in (the whole building was on a generator), so obviously we didn't have an electricity account with any supplier. This was the case for about 3-4 months.
Soon, we recieved a letter from our Landlords saying that the building had now been connected to the mains and that we should contact E.on (who were to be the suppliers) to set up our electricity account with them. So we contacted them. They said they'd send somebody out to read the meter then set up an account for us.

However, the electricity meters were down in the basement of the flats in a locked room which we did not have access to, and were told by E.on that we'd need to arrange with the landlord to unlock the room so that an E.on rep could get to the meter. We got in touch with the landlord and told them about the problem, and they said it would "get sorted". We waited a couple of weeks and after hearing nothing, contacted the landlord again who said that we needed E.on to get in touch with them in order to arrange a time to get access to the meter room(confused yet??).
So we did.
E.on told us they would be in touch. We left it at that for a while. A month or so passes, so we get in touch with both parties again to see where we're up to, and neither has any record or memory of our correspondence. Basically, we were still at square one and have to go through the whole palaver again.

After another attempt, still nothing gets done. So we chase them up again... and again... and again.
This went on for about 2 years, when we moved out and into another flat across town. We left without ever officially setting up an account with E.on, despite our best and numerous efforts to do so. The entire time, we were ready, willing and able to pay our electricity bill.

Now, after almost a year of not living at that address, we've recieved a letter from Leeds Consultancy Services (Civil Enforcement) claiming they have been instructed by E.on to collect just under £1000 for the electricity used whilst we lived at the property, to be payed in the next 7 days or Court action with be sought

This is the first correspondence we've had from ANYBODY regarding the matter. We had no idea E.on had eventually set up an account with us. We never received anything confirming an account/account number, we never recieved anything confirming they'd been out to read the meter, we never recieved a bill of any sort, we'd never recieved any letters informing us that we owed any money, we never recieved any demands for payment, we recieved NOTHING from E.on.

So we're a bit worried now that they've finally recognised the fact that we owe them money for electricity (which, as i've said, we've been willing to pay all along) but they've sold the debt to a Civil Enforcement agency demanding
the money in 7 days or else we get a CCJ (bad news!).

Also, we think that a £1000 bill for a 1-bedroom flat over 18 months is a bit excessive. We're assuming that LCS have added on their own cost to the debt we incurred with E.on.

What we think may have happened is that after we left the flat, somebody from E.on finally got round to reading the meter and setting up an account, by which point we were long gone, having moved to a new address. Any correspondence has probably gone to the old address, so we've recieved nothing.
In consequence, E.on have sold the debt to LCS (a subsiduary of 1st Locate, a company who specialise in tracing people), and they've found us and sent this rather nasty letter demanding the money. We just wish E.on had had the decency to find us at this address and we would have set up a payment plan to pay off the debt in a reasonable manner, rather than them just selling the debt to a company who want the money, all of it, pretty much instantly. There's absolutely no way we can do this. We just don't have the means to pay all of it right now.

So, basically, we're up to our neck in it.

What course of action do you think we should take? After reading on numerous sites (including this one) i don't think LCS are going to be particularly bothered by our plight and will pursue regardless.

Also, as mentioned above, we've recieved nothing confirming any amount owed from E.on, so the LCS figure is totally random and unverified as far as we're concerned. They could be asking for ANY amount and there's no way we'd know they're telling the truth about how much we owe. We're unwilling to pay anything until we see proof of the actual amount we owed to E.on.

Is there any way out of this? We want to pay the money we owe, but we'd rather deal with the supplier, not some dodgy debt-collection agency who will no doubt be rude and unhelpful when we explain our plight.
Do you think it's worth contacting E.on and sorting out payment with them directly?
Any help at all would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Le_bateau