BT & Advantis Credit

andysams1

I am at my wits end please help.
Its quite a long story but i shall try and shorten it as much as i can.

Back in March 2010 i recieved a letter from Advantis Credit with the client listed as BT Group . The client reference number is 0206332214.
when i telephoned these people i was told that i owed an outstanding balance of £106.74 plus a recovery charge for £26.68 making a total of £133.42.

I have not been a BT customer for landline since 2007.
When i inquired about this bill i was told that it was for my old address ( moved out of on 13th Jan 2007)
this bill was run up over the period of 20/03/2009 - 24/04/2009.

I explained to the Advantis Credit Operator that i had not been at the address or lived in the address in question since jan 2007, and could prove this.

I was asked to forward council tax bills to prove this, which i duly did.
I also spend a considerable amount of time on the telephone to BT only to be pushed from pillar to post, with no one being able to give me any information about this. At one point i was told that this had all been sorted out and the request to the debt collection agency had been cancelled.
Approx 12 days later i recieved another letter from Advantis Credit telling me that the bill was still outstanding.
I again e mailed copies of council tax bills as requested to Advantis. I also spoke to someone at BT whom told me that as it was a fraudulent bill i should obtain a crime reference number.
I reported this to the Avon & Somerset Police and obtained a crime reference number of 39776/10 on April 6th 2010.

Advantis Credit replied to my e mail proof of non residence , and told me that i did not have any monies outstanding to pay, and that the case would be returned to BT.

To my relief i thought this nasty episode had come to an end.

Today, 15th May 2010 upon returning from a holiday to Mallorca, i received a letter from another Debt Collection Agency, a S.R.J Debt Services, of Woking.
Again upon contacting them, and i must say their operator was extermly rude, and i found this very upsetting, i was told that BT were chasing a Debt for my old address
I attempted to explain the situation to the gentleman, and he more or less told me that i owed the money and i needed to pay!.
I asked him for the BT telephone number, or Reference number, and i was told in no uncertain terms to get this from the internet.
I was then told that if i had reported it to the Police as a fraud, they would not do anything about this until i could inform them of the PC's collar number and name.
I was then told that i had until monday to contact them with this.

I then , very worried telephoned BT, and spent the best part of 45 minutes on the phone only to be cut off.
I re contacted the call centre, and the very nice lady told me that it would all be sorted and that the Debt Collection Agency would be told that this outstanding amount would be cancelled. I was given a reference number of 33216460000, and told this is all sorted and i would not be bothered again.

HELP

Eric1

andysams1 wrote: »

Today, 15th May 2010 upon returning from a holiday to Mallorca, i received a letter from another Debt Collection Agency, a S.R.J Debt Services, of Woking.
Again upon contacting them, and i must say their operator was extermly rude, and i found this very upsetting

Calm down, have a look at this https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2428639 and other similar threads

andysams1 wrote: »

I re contacted the call centre, and the very nice lady told me that it would all be sorted and that the Debt Collection Agency would be told that this outstanding amount would be cancelled. I was given a reference number of 33216460000, and told this is all sorted and i would not be bothered again.

Good.

BT_company_representative

Hi Andysams1,

I can see that you posted on another thread. I did drop you a reply. I will be able to help you with this. Please could you drop me an email with that BT account number, please also include a link to this thread. My email address can be found by clicking on my profile.

Thanks

Paddy

andysams1

thankyou to the BT rep whom sorted this out for me in double quick time :beer:

soupgal

OK I'll try and keep this short and sweet. About a month ago I got a letter from a company called past due cedit solutions. It included all the correct information that dept collector letters usually have, saying I owed x amount to BT. So I called them up, spoke to a pleasant lad on the phone who explained that when I'd moved out of my old house and cancelled my BT account I'd aqquired a cancellation fee, but I'd moved out so fast obviously I hadn't recieved any of the letters telling me so. I explained to him that this was the first letter I'd recieved in 2 years sinse moving even mentioning this dept so he looked into it and said x amount of the dept was what was owed and the rest was fee's for letters and late payment by the dept collection company. He agree'd to remove these as I'd recieved no corrispondance from them before. As it was only the price of a cancellation fee (which is around £100 I paid it, got my auth number and confirmed that the debt was settled).

Was this the end of it? Nope

Today I arrive home from work to find I have mail. I open it to find that I have a letter from a company called Atvantis Credit. In short it says that they've been asked to locate me for BT.. over a month after I paid off this dept. At first I was just confused, then I was mad, ranted a bit to my family about it being a !!!! take, and finally I searched out the old letter and looked at the 2 again.

Now this atvantis letter, it seems suspicious to me. First my name is spelled wrong 3 times in this letter, BT had my name spelled correctly on all their origional corrispondance when I was still with them, second when they state my old address they typed my postcode twice and put a whole bunch of extra commas between, third they either don't know or can't be bothered to tell me how much I owe (I've never ever had a debt collection bill which doesn't state an amount on it), and last the paper is perferated, what I mean is it isn't even printed on proper a4 letter paper. In short it looks fake and this coupled with the fact that the dept is paid already with another company makes me really suspicious.

I've read up on this advantis and I've found a lot of posts saying these people are very good at demanding money which is not actually owed. I don't want to phone them because I've read once they have you're number they basically wear it out.

I'm going to phone the other company and ask them to confirm that it's paid again.

Has anyone else had problems with this company? I've read there's no telling them you don't owe and to go away..

Sigh.. like I have time for this!

EDIT: Sorry I said I'd keep it short but I just looked at the length of it lol

I really don't know what to do, surely IF there was still something on the account the last dept collection company would have contacted me again as I did not ignore them and I spoke with them and sorted it as soon as I got the letter. However they said it was closed and seemed quite happy in the fact that it was over and done with.

Now I'm thinking OMG what if I had got this letter first and it does turn out to be fake! It doesn't bear thinking about.

But that said I cannot afford to just be giving my money away to anyone who feels like asking for it! I'm starting to feel like whenever anyone looks up my name it just comes up with a big LOL next to it!

Buzby

You have proof the money owed to BT was paid to them or their agent, yes? Relax!

You can safely ignore anyone else to go and take a hike. You may want to check your credit file as a precaution in case an agency is playing fast and loose, but it is not unusual for BT to sell the same data to a few companies in the hope the one or other will be successful.

soupgal

I have the auth number from the other company I paid it to and a bank statement that says I paid them. I don't know how to get anymore proof though, I thought it was over and done with.

I haven't heard from this second company again sinse but if they contact me again I will happily be telling them to take a hike.

yvonne13_2

I would have contacted BT and discussed any monies owing with them. I just find it strange that a debt recovery agency would cancel all there fees so easy.

soupgal

well they had been mailing the address for over a year. I looked them up they seem a legit company. This new one on the other hand all I see is complaints about them sending letters out to people and calling them when they either have never dealt with the 'clients' or even not telling them who they owe money to just that they owe it.

I thought the letter looked dodgy before I looked up the name, now I think it's even more dodgy. =/

soupgal

OK, an update. Another letter from advantis this time they've decided to mail me telling me that sinse I never paid (the secret amount from the last letter) there has been a 25% admin charge. Surely if you want someone to pay something you should first tell them how much you want? Or is that just my faulty logic?

I called the other company, went through my account with them and they confirmed to me that the account is completely settled and are more than happy to send me out a letter to confirm this in writing.

yellowfi

Hi,

Can I jump on this thread to see how I can contact BT Company Representative for some assistance on a similar query....?

Thanks,

Fiona.