Incasso - letter recieved stating we owe £684!

gemstar_2

Any advice appreciated!

Just got home and hubby has received a letter from Incasso stating that he owes £684 for water charged from the water company relating to our old address that we moved from 5 years ago.

I have no idea how to deal with this as I have no paperwork relating to our old address. I'm not even sure how to ascertain if this is a real debt to us or not and how to prove otherwise....

It demands paymenin 7 days!!

:think:

DarkConvict

Send a prove it letter and wait for a response- http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=11570893&postcount=2

With regards to utility bills, i believe they should have contacted you within 12 months if they had a forwarding address.

gemstar_2

I don't know if they had a forwarding address - I really can't remember what we did when we left that flat. We only moved a mile up the road - I cant imagine we would have been hard to trace! I'm concerned at the hugeamount we supposedly owe - that would have taken yeas to accumulate surely?

tango

Did you rent or own the flat ?

gemstar_2

We rented the flat

tango

Were you paying monthly or quarerly for your water, and was it a meter ?

This bill is either carried on from when you left ,when either the house wasn't relet for a while, or the utilitys have not been told about the new tentant after you.

Or of course it wasn't paid by your boyfriend in the first place

This happened to me ,and I got a copy of the bill,contacted my estate agent who I rented the house from,he sent me a letter to forward to the debt company explaining the dates I was rented the house

Good Luck

gemstar_2

I think perhaps the best thing I can do is write to them asking for more details.

No-one is just going to send off £684 without asking for a further break down for what it is are they?

I know we had a payment card and I am not sure how often we paid. I can't even remember if it was on a metre or not - but I don't think it was as it was an old property. It was a council flat.

So I think I'll ask for a further break down of what these charges are for. Does that sound reasonable?

hullight

You can tell them to dispute this debt until you see proof that you owe this amount for water. They will not be able to contact you or chase the money while it is disputed.

When they send you something like a bill/etc. you should be able to come to an arrangement to pay it off in chunks.

You might also be able to see if the water company has a trust which would help if you strruggle to pay of bills, not sure if they would help in this situation though.

gemstar_2

I'm not getting too stressed about it - I think it's ridiculous. How would anyone be able to say what they did over 5 years ago. To just send a letter saying you owe us £684 and pay up in 7 days without giving any further information, dates, details etc is silly. No one would just hand over that amount of money without more info would they?
I have written a letter for hubby and said that we want more details including dates. We left the property in May 2005 but I haven't mentioned that. I want to see what dates they reckon this amount covers.
Obviously if it comes back that it was some kind or error on our behalves then we'll make an arrangement to pay. But after 5 years they can get it in very small installments!
I think I would know if we had left a property with a £684 bill outstanding anyway!! So I'm not sure about all of this.
Perhaps they have been billing us since we left but it will be easy to prove the dates we left.

WASHER

Sounds to me like they are trying it on. Do send the prove it letter and send by recorded delivery, that way they can't say they didn't receive it.

How long did you live at the property for?

gemstar_2

My husband was there 1996 - 2005 and I was there from 2000 - 2005