Aol & debt collection

lauraocal

Hiya.. I recieved a letter from a company on behalf of AOL (avantis credit ltd) who say they are going to start debt collection action against me for £134.92 outstanding debt!!

All seems ok until I mention I don't owe AOL a penny.

I quit their service on the 19th july 2008 and even my bt line went the week after, and you have to have a bt line to recieve service from them.
I was bang up to date with monthly payments and my contract period was over too.

I'm 100% positive I owe them nothing but I want to email the company acting for aol with one email and thats it.. any suggestions how to word it and is it possible they could invent debt somewhere?
I know it sounds daft but you never know these days do you?

Any advise would be greatly appreciated.

DatabaseError

Did you actually cancel your AOL contract? Canceling your phone line is not enough.
Do you have copies of any e-mails or letters conforming that you'd canceled the contract with AOL? When you contacted AOL to cancel, were you 'out of contract' or did you still have time to run on it? Did AOL inform you that you'd need to pay out the rest of the contract?

lauraocal

Yes I fully cancelled my service with them, on the date my pre paid monthly subscription was due for the following month.

yes as I said my contract was up also.. it had been for nearly a month when my service ceased.

yes I have the emails confirming my service being cancelled and took a note of the person I spoke to on the phone including the name of a live help rep.
I'm not normally this careful but after 6 years of perfect service they messed up big time and I was without service for 3 weeks whilest they did a change of address that never actually happened so I was very cautious already.

macman

If you owe aol money (or aol think you do), then they would be in touch with you directly to recover it. Only when this fails would they pass it over to a debt collector. So unless you've moved house or changed your contact details, I think it more likely that the debt collectors have got the wrong info. It does happen.
I would speak to aol in the first instance, as the collectors will not have any info about why you are being chased, they are just interested in doing the recovery.

macman

lauraocal wrote: »

Yes I fully cancelled my service with them, on the date my pre paid monthly subscription was due for the following month.

You normally have to give 30 days notice though?

DatabaseError

even with an extra 30 days...it shouldn't be £130+.

Laura, as macman suggests, get in touch with AOL, with all the info and evidence that you have it should be very easy to clear up

lauraocal

They got more than 30 days notice as I had set up a new phone line and internet connection through virgin.
At the time of calling to cancel I made another payment to them.. which always worked out to be a month in advance.. after the cancellation was agreed so they had their notice.
I work with a company in broadband tech so I am well awear of how the system works.. I know i dont owe them anything.

I have had no contact from aol and still use the aol email as my main one so they havent contacted me through that either.

The letter off the debt collection company is a red letter with a 14 day notice warning on it. It states I have until 03/04/09 or either a collecter will come round personally or court action will be commenced?

slinky_jo

My OH has had similar nasty letters from Advantis even though he doesn't owe AOL anything - hasn't been a customer for YEARS and never had any contact rom AOL since he quit them WAY back. He called Advantis after first letter but got suspicious when they wouldn't confirm any detail with him, so he wrote instead, asking them to clarify the supposed debt. Their reply was a red threat letter, promising us a visit from the bailifs.

It seems Advantis have a reputation for aggressive debt collection tactics. If you do a google search for them you'll see threads on the consumer action group's forum.

OH plans to seek advice from the Citizens' Advice Bureau.