Help Please

robbo1975_2

Hi, I think I posted this in the wrong forum earlier, but can anybody please help me with some advice-:

5 years ago (almost to the day) we subscribed to Tiscali Dial up as we had no Broadband in our area. We were with Tiscali for about 6 months, when we then switched to a new Broadband service with another provider.

At this point we phoned Tiscali and cancelled the Dial up service.

Today we received a letter from a debt collection agency asking us for over £500 for arrears on a Tiscali account. When we told them that we would not pay that, the DCA immediately offered a lower price of £300 instead.

We spoke to Tiscali and they told us that the account was never cancelled and that arrears was built up and the account cancelled due to lack of response to letters that they sent us (but did not receive).

Can anybody advise us on what we should do here and what our legal rights are, since we do not have paperwork or emails dating back 5 years to either confirm or deny their accusations. I do, however know, that we are not the kind of people to ignore letters like that or not pay for a service that we use.

Any advice would be greatfully received!

Robbo

Anihilator

Your defence would likely be why have Tiscali not been collecting payment (assuming you paid by DD)

If not and you cant prove you cancelled it ( assuming they prove the debt) then you may be best settling with them at a lower amount.

Given the age of the debt they probably would take anything to settle it.

robbo1975_2

Thanks for your advice.

We paid by Post Office order at that time. Naturally we have no proof of anything anymore, since we do not keep paperwork for more than two years generally!! And even if we did keep five years worth, we would not have much since it was all electronic billing and fed to the account which was deactivated!!

Robbo