Being chased for arrears by an old ISP...

dunkreid

Hi all

From looking at the forums this seems like the most suitable place to post my query, although accept my apologies if it does seem a bit off-topic.

Long story short...I'm being billed for £300 of arrears by a subscription ISP that I haven't used since March 2005.

I say: sorry, I moved house last year and in the upheaval forgot to cancel the subscription

They say: we've emailed you frequently with reminders

I say: Since I moved house I haven't had internet access until recently, so didn't check email. Couldn't you have contacted me by post (which would have been forwarded to me) or phone? I'm reluctant to pay for a service I haven't used and how can you let customers run up arrears like that without cutting off their service?

They say: er, we've emailed you frequently with reminders. Okay, we'll half it, call it £150 or Small Claims Court beckons.

So I'm guilty of forgetting to cancel the subscription when I moved house and am being heftily charged for that oversight, even though I haven't used one byte of their bandwidth for eighteen months.

Am I on loser here?
Thanks for your help
Duncan

espresso

How were you originally paying for your ISP subscription?

Am I on loser here?

Most probably legally if you did not cancel.

dunkreid

Hi.

The ISP were making monthly deductions from my debit card, not a direct debit but probably manually inputting my card details through a PDQ machine or suchlike. By coincidence, my card expired at roughly the same time I moved house, so the card details they held were no longer valid and the charges ceased at that point.

Thanks for having a look
Cheers
Duncan

Ian_W

You would need to look at your contract or the standard contract for the ISP concerned. If you were on a 12 month contact when you stopped paying you might well be liable to the balance of the 12 months or whatever mid-contract penalty is in force and I don't think you could get out of that.

However, if you were out of the 12 month period [or when you came out of it post march 05] and wereon 30 days notice I don't think they could claim for more than 30 days arrears from when your service terminated but you failed to give them notice. One of the priciples in most contracts is that as soon as you fail to pay [or within a specified time of failing] the provider can/will withdraw their services as you've breached the contract - if they're not providing the service, they can't continue to charge you for it simply cos you didn't give notice.

Another legal principle is that claimants must mitigate their losses, so they can't just carry on supplying you so that they can bung you with a big bill if they ever catch up with you.

All in my humble opinion of course. Once you sort out whether or not the 12 month issue applies consider making them an offer somewhat under what you strictly owe.

dunkreid

Ian_W wrote:

You would need to look at your contract or the standard contract for the ISP concerned. If you were on a 12 month contact when you stopped paying you might well be liable to the balance of the 12 months or whatever mid-contract penalty is in force and I don't think you could get out of that.

I'd been using the ISP for a couple of years and, as far as I know, I wasn't bound to the contract for any specific period of time and was free to cancel at any time.

Ian_W wrote:

One of the priciples in most contracts is that as soon as you fail to pay [or within a specified time of failing] the provider can/will withdraw their services as you've breached the contract - if they're not providing the service, they can't continue to charge you for it simply cos you didn't give notice.

Another legal principle is that claimants must mitigate their losses, so they can't just carry on supplying you so that they can bung you with a big bill if they ever catch up with you.

Yeah, this is a sore point. If I'd failed to pay, for example, my phone bill, I'd get cut off pretty quick, and I said as much to the a representative from the ISP, but to no real avail.

I'm a bit in the dark as far as the contract with them is concerned. It was all so bloody long ago, and I can't find anything except standard T&C's on their website.

I'll definitely consider making them an offer, but I feel like a bit apologetic towards them because they provided such a good service, and even in this affair have been quite pleasant to deal with.

Many thanks for your advice
Cheers
Duncan

Ian_W

What I ommitted to say was they can also charge you reasonable costs for collecting the debt. By the sound of it you were passed your 12 month tie-in, so really I wouldn't have thought more than 2 months subscription and collection costs would be reasonable.
The analogy with the phone is quite a good one. If you did a moonlight flit from your house BT would cut you off after a certain time cos you weren't paying and that's what your ISP would do. If the house was empty for a year BT couldn't for 12 months line rental, only for the time before they cut you off.
Which ISP is it by the way? I've recently had one chasing me for a full month when the balance of the notice period I owed was 10 days, I'll let you guess what they got!!

dunkreid

Ian_W wrote:

Which ISP is it by the way? I've recently had one chasing me for a full month when the balance of the notice period I owed was 10 days, I'll let you guess what they got!!

Hehe!

I'd rather not name the ISP at this point because I may direct their credit controller to this thread to try and persuade her that Small Claims Court may not necessarily find in their favour should I refuse to pay the full amount they're demanding and they refuse my offer (as you say, collection costs and two months subscription seems reasonable).

It's not one of the "big" providers however, and most folk haven't heard of them because they're more of a business, rather than residential, ISP.

Thanks again
Cheers
Duncan