Warning and advice about LCS Utility Investigation Civil Enforcement Debt Recoveries

Peppa66

I see. Thank you.

I think I will ask them to prove the debt before doing anything else. Do you have a template of a letter to use to request to prove the debt please? Just to make sure I say the right thing in the right way. I saw a link somewhere but when I click it just redirects me to the forum. Considering there is an ongoing dispute, it should have never even gone to debt collectors.

Willing2Learn

Peppa66 wrote: »

Do you have a template of a letter to use to request to prove the debt please?

https://www.nationaldebtline.org/EW/sampleletters/Pages/Complaining-to-debt-collection-agencies-that-you-do-not-owe-the-debt-%28sole-name%29.aspx

Peppa66

One more thing, please. I understand what you said about that link that apparently the three letters have been thrown out of court etc, but I would like to ask for your comments about this particular point, if possible:

"When a debt is passed on or sold, there are certain things that a company must do to legally move your account from one place to another. However, as we have found, this usually doesn't happen and debts can easily be written off because the companies that buy and sell debt rarely follow the rules correctly".
Is this correct? Can this really happen that DCA do not follow rules properly?

At first I was contacted by BPO, then LCS - only one text message - followed by a letter from 1st locate, it would seem (I have not even opened the letter but checked the address on line). It does seem that the debt has been sold on. Probably too small to bother too much by BPO.

Postmangoth1919

First time poster here, just had a bit of a situation that I thought folks might be able to offer advice on as unsure what to do.

Me and a friend (we are both students but decided to go for a non furnished rented property) recently moved house on June 28th. Since moving in we have had a rather complicated situation in regards to our utility bills.

When moving into the property we were told by our letting agent that the energy supplier was e.on though we could switch supplier when we moved in. When we moved in we gave meter readings to our landlord who took them so that they could pay off bills for e.on for the period between the previous tenant leaving and us moving in (period of a couple of months earlier this year).

Me and my flatmate planned to transfer energy suppliers from e.on to Bulb (smaller green energy company some friends of mine are with and who i have previously been supplied by.) we initially ran into complications because it turned out that our energy supplier had been changed from e.on to spark energy by one of the letting agencies letting the property, who did so without telling the other agency we went with, our landlord or us. In the end however we were able to transfer from spark energy to bulb, taking final meter readings with spark, paying off the 1 month bill we had with them and having our account closed.

However it turned out that we technically still owed e.on some money as for a one day period moving in (June 28th/June 29th) we had our energy supply supplied by e.on, and received a letter in August saying that they were calculating final bill based on meter readings from spark. From speaking to e.on staff on phone situation a few times the situation seemed ok as me and my flatmate waited for a bill. Eventually a bill did arrive but as number seemed very high I decided to try getting it revised (I was told final bill by phone and they suggested choosing revision option.) Another bill was sent in post though annoyingly got mixed up in our other post and paper work so only found it at end of last week a week or so after receiving it. in end the bill was revised from over £6 to just 35p. I paid this final bill on Saturday 15th May and had my account closed with e.on. Been paying bulb in the meanwhile which is going ok.

During the period of waiting for the final bill and waiting for it to be revised I received some emails from e.on addressed to my current address but not to me personally claiming that the account at this address owed over £18.58 for the energy bill. When I first received such an email I rang up e.on’s debt recovery team number and spoke to a staff member on the phone who said that the email was probably an automatically generated one and that as the actual bill for what we owed was still being calculated and my account was ok on their files there was no need to worry and I should just ignore emails of that nature. Once I had paid final bill of 35p and had e.on account closed on Saturday I assumed that I wouldn’t have to worry about these sorts of correspondence any more.

Yesterday (Tuesday, 18th September) I was looking through junk emails on my email account and found an email that had arrived into there on Monday (17th September) from debt collector LCS stating:

“Dear Sir / Madam,

We need to speak to you about a E.ON matter as soon as possible. Please contact us quoting your reference number xxxxx”

Panicking a bit I contacted e.on’s debt recovery phone line again and spoke with a staff member for over half an hour on the phone. He told me (having looked through my account files and having spoken to his superiors whilst I was on hold for a bit) that my account was definitely closed and all my payments had been made so I owed no more money and did not have to worry about my credit rating, but that what appeared to have happened was that a previous tenant at this property might have had outstanding debts being pursued by LCS. Previous emails about £18.58 being outstanding would appear to refer to this previous tenant he said. His advice was just to ignore communications from LCS and to mention situation to my landlord.

This morning just after waking up I received a text message from LCS asking me to ring them in relation to E.on account.

Having read through this thread am a bit unsure about what to do next in regards to situation. I am planning on mentioning this situation to my landlord as advised by e.on staff member but I am just a bit unsure what they can actually do to stop LCS contacting me? Worried that LCS might just ignore them.

I am thinking of waiting for a letter to arrive so I can see exactly how much they claim I owe and during which period so I can give more details to my landlord as current messages give no real details. Just a bit concerned as well in case LCS sent someone around and I do not have sufficient evidence to prove that I have nothing to do with outstanding debts they are chasing, especially as I have misplaced part of the letter featuring my final bill (Have one part of the letter with amount on that I paid but other part of letter with address and my account number on I think I’ve binned my accident after I paid it on Saturday).

Any advice about what I should do next in would be very much appreciated.

Postmangoth1919

Annoyingly I didn’t read this thread right till end earlier today so ended up posting this situation as a separate forum post because I thought this particular thread was from way back and cannot delete that post now

Shack1

Hi everyone,

We are so happy to come across this thread. If someone can advise us ASAP we will be so so gratefull.

Today we’ve received a letter from LCS for a Thames water bill close to £600 in my partner‘s name. We have three problems with this:

1. Dates specified are for 3 years period, from January 2014 to January 2017, whereas we moved out from that address in April 2014 and moved in with my parents (therefore no tenancy agreements until we rented another flat later in the year);

2. Whilst we were living at that address, the bills were in the lead tenant’s name (shared flat), not in ours; my partner never had an account with Thames to begin with;

3. We payed every single bill every 1st of each month to the lead tenant in who’s name all the account were set up, there is absolutely no way we can possibly owe them anything.

Now, the letter from LCS says that they are sure that it’s my partner who owes the money for a period way above and beyond our tenancy for bills in someone else’s name.

We don’t know what to do. Read somewhere how someone called Thames water and they gladly gave them LCS’s phone number to call. Please advise what actions do we take? Want to get someone’s advise before taking any irrational actions.

Thank you.

fatbelly

Postmangoth1919 wrote: »

I am thinking of waiting for a letter to arrive so I can see exactly how much they claim I owe and during which period so I can give more details to my landlord as current messages give no real details. Just a bit concerned as well in case LCS sent someone around and I do not have sufficient evidence to prove that I have nothing to do with outstanding debts they are chasing, especially as I have misplaced part of the letter featuring my final bill (Have one part of the letter with amount on that I paid but other part of letter with address and my account number on I think I’ve binned my accident after I paid it on Saturday).

You don't have to prove you don't owe this.

Wait until they send a letter asking for payment of X. Then send the prove-it. If they don't back off or give you evidence yo owe this, report them

fatbelly

Shack1 wrote: »

Hi everyone,

We are so happy to come across this thread. If someone can advise us ASAP we will be so so gratefull.

Today we’ve received a letter from LCS for a Thames water bill close to £600 in my partner‘s name. We have three problems with this:

1. Dates specified are for 3 years period, from January 2014 to January 2017, whereas we moved out from that address in April 2014 and moved in with my parents (therefore no tenancy agreements until we rented another flat later in the year);

2. Whilst we were living at that address, the bills were in the lead tenant’s name (shared flat), not in ours; my partner never had an account with Thames to begin with;

3. We payed every single bill every 1st of each month to the lead tenant in who’s name all the account were set up, there is absolutely no way we can possibly owe them anything.

Now, the letter from LCS says that they are sure that it’s my partner who owes the money for a period way above and beyond our tenancy for bills in someone else’s name.

We don’t know what to do. Read somewhere how someone called Thames water and they gladly gave them LCS’s phone number to call. Please advise what actions do we take? Want to get someone’s advise before taking any irrational actions.

Thank you.

Similar to the previous one, send them a prove-it. You can add that you were not resident at that property for the period in question.

They should really have their licence revoked.

fatbelly

fatbelly wrote: »

I would suggest you complain to LCS, their 'trade body' the Credit Services Association and then report the result to the FCA.

https://www.firstnow.co.uk/dispute

http://www.csa-uk.com/assets/documents/forms/csa_complaint_form.pdf

consumer.queries@fca.org.uk

See also my post #262 referring to OFT & FCA requirements

LCS have been causing these problems for so many years that it's important people complain effectively.

Hence I'm repeating a previous post and I have linked to requirements made of them NINE years ago by the regulating body, namely that where there is a dispute they 'shall not require an individual to supply information to prove that they are not the debtor '

This is happening because a variety of firms are asking them to trace debtors and they are latching on to people who have some connection (e.g. same address, different dates) to the legitimate target

andouk

Hi, could anyone provide some help on what to do for the below please.

Basically we moved into a property back in the beginning of June, renting from a local authority, at the time we were unaware of who the supplier of gas or electricity was and the local authority were of little help. So we eventually received bills a month or so later from BG (for gas) and Scottish Power (for electricity), as these bills were quarterly cash bills we rang up and explained we'd moved in at the beginning of June and these were not our bills, that some we were liable for.

So they both made new accounts for us, transferring parts of the debt for our usage, so with further readings taken in the next month or so they recalulated our bills, scottish power was overpriced but was to be expected, so I started the process in moving to Utilita back to prepayment as this is better for us and no standing charges.

All went through after a month or so, got final bills from Scottish power and British Gas, paid them on time and to me that was it done, we switch to Utilita.

A few weeks later we receive a letter from LCS saying a investigation would be carried out in regards to Scottish Power and that for us to provide details of us and previous owner/occupier, the letter is addressed to the legal owner/occupier, asking for information for a debt that is nothing to do with us, so we ignored it as instructed here.

Today another letter arrives, again stating a investigation is being carried out for dates that we did not occupy the property or have any tenancy agreement for that property, also again addressed to the legal owner, claiming that we are the persons responsible as current occupiers.

To me this is a load of horse crap, how can we be liable for something we didn't use/occupy, anyway they continue on to say to contact them urgently, claiming that they are led to believe we have moved from the supply address to the current address, even though the 2 addresses are the exact same :rotfl:

Basically, should I continue to ignore or contact them? reluctant to provide any info to them at all, we do not know the current address of the previous occupier, so we would of be no help at all, not that it's down to us to even provide this, we have no legal obligation to help recover a debt owed by a previous tenant.

Thanks