premium collections - demand for money from 2005!

leaston

Hi,

I recently received a letter from a company called Premium Collections (formerly something to do with Pipex). They sent the letter to an address I haven't lived at for almost 2yrs and fortunately, our mail redirection is still in place. The letter said I have 7 days (from date of postmark, which was unreadable!) to pay £46.99 for an outstanding invoice I owe Pipex from June 2005! Unbelievable. I rang them and told them to send me the invoice. They emailed it to me.

The bank say they cannot check individual transactions so old in any detail. However, they did say they could see three payments of this amount during 2005 to Firstnet (who iirc were bought by Pipex), but none in June. So, it's possible I paid in June but for a different amount. It's also possible I didn't pay in June. I just don't know! If I did pay, but the amount is different, even by a penny, the bank wouldn't be able to tell me because their records don't show all the info.

So, I'm stumped. The invoice I've been emailed is not one from Firstnet, it's Pipex. I have not seen the original invoice and cannot check whether this company is pulling a fast one or not.

How do I stand?

If they take action, my credit rating is probably/possibly screwed. But, I can't find out whether this debt is correct and am not prepared to take them at their word. If I owe the money, I'm happy to pay it, but I'm very dubious after such a long time has passed. Also, how long am I actually liable for debts like this? They are chasing payment (for the first time) for an amount from almost 4yrs ago.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Cheers,
Leaston

normanmark

You're still liable for debts if you still owe it. First of all you need to establish whether you owe the money, so you need to go through previous statements & identify that.

fatboy88

Well you can request upto 6 years of statements like they do for bank charges, even if you had to pay £10. Some banks wont charge

zebedee79

Hi, I've also very recently recieved a letter from Vitalus Solutions claiming to formerly be Pipex Business, but the email address is premiumcollections.co.uk, a debt collection agency.

They are claiming I owe them £269. I've had no relationship or correspondence with Pipex since 2005 partly because of their incompetence, and paid them any monies outstanding in 2005 in order for them to release my domain name to a new ISP.

I'm can see the payments on my money programme, so I'm not sure what's going on either?

Cheers - John