Harrassment from Scottish Gas - where next?

smartandshrewd

I'm looking for a bit of advice please.

After several months of wrangling with Scottish Gas over the cost of a bill - they just flat refused to believe we were such low users, would not even come out to read the meter, then threatened court action! - we finally got a resolution, settled our account and switched suppliers. This was over a year ago. We got a letter saying account closed.

However, completely out of the blue with no previous bill having been sent, we received a letter from the Central Recoveries team, addressed to The Occupier, demanding we pay up £50. We've never received a bill and don't owe them anything :mad:

The letter is extremely threatening. It includes,

'This account may now be forwarded to a solicitor who will act on our behalf to recover payment or we may arrange for a debt collector to visit your property...Legal action will result in Court Fees, Solicitor Costs, Entry of your name on the Sherriffs court register, credit being very difficult for you to obtain in the future.'

My OH thinks that we can ignore this letter as it's not addressed to us specifically but The Occupier, and he also thinks it's a final attempt to try and recover the money and they won't bother. He also thinks that any debt recovery attempt has to be made against a named person?
I'm worried that if we don't do something a debt collector will come knocking or we'll be blacklisted.

So, what next, what should we do? It's incredibly upsetting to keep getting threatened like this.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Quentin

Although unpleasant from the extract you quote, it is not a "threatening" letter in the legal sense.

To shortcut any escalation, it would be better to reply to it saying you don't know why you have received it, and although were a customer some time ago, left and your account was confirmed closed. Send a copy of the letter you have confirming this. Ask them to reply confirming the error they have made.

smartandshrewd

We have now recieved yet another letter 'final notice, legal action may follow.' Obviously writing to them with details of our final bill has made no difference, where do we go next to sort this?
As far as we're concerned, we've paid up everything we owed from when we were with Scottish Gas and can produce evidence for this.

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Premier_2

Is this letter addressed to you? or still just "the occupier"

They can't take legal actiion against "the occupier"
They can't blacklist "the occupier"
As they are not your supplier, they cannot cut off your supply.

Chill out.

Joyful

If this is for a bill period when you were supplied it will be due by you. Your closing read and starting read from the new supplier should be the same.

The thing that concerns me is they would be chasing you if they had an account in your name. If it addressed to the Occupier there may be a problem with the address. Do you live in a flat? I would call or write to the company to discuss.

Cardew

Joyful wrote: »

If this is for a bill period when you were supplied it will be due by you. Your closing read and starting read from the new supplier should be the same.

The thing that concerns me is they would be chasing you if they had an account in your name. If it addressed to the Occupier there may be a problem with the address. Do you live in a flat? I would call or write to the company to discuss.

Joyful,

I hope you don't mean call the DCA - that is fatal.

Write to Scottish gas if you must(but I wouldn't), but don't give a DCA your name!

Joyful

Sorry I meant to deal with Scottish Gas. They will then be able to recall the debt if it is incorrect.