Tiscali and C.A.R.S.

standard_bearer

Can anyone offer some sensible advice please. My wife had an account with Tiscali which we closed in November last year. We have been in dispute with them since February over money they allege we owe them. It started off at £44 and then went up to £55. We have not received a bill outlining what these charges are for, although Tiscali say its for use of the telephone after we cancelled the broadband account.

I won't go into it too much, other than we have tried writting to them and have at last got a point of contact who, as of the begining of May has been looking into our case. They are extremely difficult to communicate with.
Anyway we recently had a letter from the debt collection agency C.A.R.S. which states we now owe £99. I phoned them and they said that as we were in dispute with Tiscali they wouldn't get involved. They have since phoned my wife at work, where she is unable to take personal calls, and basically said they don't care about the dispute they are instructed to collect and thats what they are going to do.
We have today received a Notice of Legal Proceedings which has upset my wife.
We are still waiting to hear back from Tiscali (now TalkTalk) after I sent them a copy of the CARS letter about 10 days ago.

Can anyone guide me through what I should/can do and what I can't?

My wife just wants to pay it but to me it's a matter of principal as we have not received a bill and have no idea of how these charges have accumulated.

Many thanks

mr.ton

Fear not - i am more than qualified to advise on this as i had these clowns on my back a couple of years ago
Firstly - refuse to answer any security questions if they ring you, everything must be in writing only.
They will say anything in order to get a payment & if that means breaking numerous OFT guidelines then thats what they'll do.
They have no legal power to any money off you whatsoever - only a county court does.
In a nutshell - report them to the OFT & trading standards if they dont leave you alone and if the harrassment (both at home & at work) continues then report them to the police as well (not 999)
I did that & the police warned them off for me.
Find out what county CARS are based in & contact that police force on their none emergency number.
The police are publicly funded public servants afterall & are there to do as we want them to do - if that means getting them to warn off DCA's then so be it.
Refuse to be fobbed off by them if you do.

standard_bearer

Thanks for the really quick reply, but wont they then just take us to County Court for this money?

mr.ton

All DCA's threaten court but very few of them actually go anywhere near the place as it costs them money to do so.
Thats why they simply rely on threats & intimidation in the hope that they can bully a payment out of you.
A county court would actually be on your side if it ever went there - they would have to take into account all your outgoings (bills etc..) - so CARS may well end up getting a £1 per month back or something like that.
Its hardly worth their time & effort and they know this full well.
Thats not to say they deffo wont (before anyone picks me up on that) - but you simply have so many basic legal/human rights & protections in this country that its not worth their while to do so.
If they obtain a CCJ against you by default..then their is a proceedure called "set aside" that you can go through.
The stark truth is..if you cannot repay, then you cannot repay & no amounts of DCA harrassment/CCJ's or whatever else is gonna change that.
I would also suggest contacting Tiscali themselves & requesting a copy of their official complaints proceedure if you are disputing the amounts involved.

standard_bearer

Once again thank you.
We can afford to pay it, but dont think its reasonable, it having been increased twice already with no proof that we actually owe it. I have been in correspondence with their customer relations since trying to make a complaint back in February. They say they are still looking into it. I have sent two copies of my BT bill, the first one they say they did not receive and I am still waiting a reply.

I just want them to prove to me that I owe them the money.

mr.ton

In that case you will simply have to exhaust all their complaints proceedures & send them a "prove it" letter.
Send them by recorded delivery as well - that way they cant fob you off that they havent received anything.
As for CARS - they will chance their arm no matter what like i said, but can easily be gotten rid of using all of the above ways etc..

standard_bearer

Thanks Mr.ton I'll have a go.

DVardysShadow

standard_bearer wrote: »

Thanks for the really quick reply, but wont they then just take us to County Court for this money?

If you have a dispute in progress and you have correspondence which shows this, then they can still take it to the county court and make themselves look very silly.

All you have to do is say something along the lines of "Tiscali's bill of <£> is disputed [letter 1 refers]. This is still being resolved and there has been no response since <date>. We ask for judgement in our favour because <reasons> or in the alternative for <DCA>'s application to be rejected as Tiscali are still resolving the matter". Obviously, you need proper advice on presenting your argument.

But it is unfair for a DCA to pursue court action or any recovery action while there is an unaddressed dispute with the creditor.

The_Big_Goose

Hi, we're in dispute with TalkTalk (Tiscali as was) ourselves since the end of March this year. We've lost count the number of emails and phone calls we've made them. They also referred our debt to a DCA even though we were in dispute with them - this is something that is not allowed. My other-half has worked in credit control for years now, so he knows the guidelines about this. He called TalkTalk and went ape at them and got this DCA removed while we try and resolve this issue. You can report them to OFCOM for doing this.

If you've tried to resolve this problem for more than 8 weeks - which you have - then you can refer this matter to their ADR scheme (alternative dispute resolution). You should write to them and request a letter of deadlock (check out Which's website as they have a standard letter you can copy for this). We've asked them for this letter ourselves 3 times now, and each time they reply with their script that we owe them money etc etc, but ignore our request for the letter of deadlock. We are also reporting them to OFCOM and Otelo for this.

Since 8 weeks have passed you can actually refer this matter yourself to Otelo - google them for their website - they are the ombudsman for this area of business, and have heaps of advice on their site. You can call them and report this problem to them also.

Make sure you send anything to them by recorded delivery so they can't make out its not been received. They are total (insert expletive of choice) at TalkTalk and don't want to listen to their customer (or ex-ones) and we've found them to be very unhelpful and at times downright rude. Good luck and hope this info helps.

pocketshell

Hi SB
can offer liitle advice but just to say we have recently (march) moved from tiscali and thought we had paid the last bill, then we recieved another bill. When I phoned them, foreign call centre, they said it was for calls, couldnt elaborate, so I've asked for a detailed bill of these calls, be very interested what they come up with as we havent used our landline since last November!!!!