3 - Harassment of non-debtor.

tw61

Sorry about the length, but this isn't a short story.

Since week commencing 21/05/12 we have been called on our ex-directory landline on an almost (they've missed 2 days) daily basis by the customer finance section of 3. They ask for a person of whom we have no knowledge whatsoever, and who has never lived at this address. The only two people to ever reside at this address are myself and my wife, and neither of us has ever had an account of any kind with 3 and can not posibly owe them anything. In any case, they aren't asking for either of us but a person unknown to us. Our ex-dir phone number has never been made public except to parents and a very close family members.

During the initial calls (I assumed the first two or three were wrong numbers) 3 did not say who they were. I 1471'd and googled the number and discovered it belonged to 3. When the next call was received I asked the caller who they were. The caller laughed at me and put the phone down.

Since then they have admitted they are indeed 3's customer finance dept.

We have been consistently and repeatedly telling 3 on an almost daily basis for over two weeks now that we have no knowledge of this person, and asked them to cease calling us. 3 have in turn assured us at least four times that our number will be removed from their calling list within 24 hours. Every time they have broken that promise and continued to call.

On 10/06/12 I spoke to a person who told me he was the 3 customer finance department manager. He assured me that calls would cease after no more than 24 hours, and, in passing, said that the debtor does not live at our address (I've given them our postcode but nothing more than that). They called on 11/06/12 and we did not answer as we had agreed with their manager.

Today we received yet another call from 3 during which I told them that from now on no calls will be answered, but dates/times and originating numbers will be logged for evidence purposes.

I was then called by their "customer finance manager" who assured me that he personally has now overseen the removal of your number from their systems. I answered that we were told the same thing over a week ago by a person claiming to be a supervisor, so he must forgive us if we see no reason to believe him.

I have called 3's general call centre to see if they could help resolve the matter, but they told me that it is "up to us to prove we are not the debtor" (clearly legally rubbish), and they can not in any case help us without the account number of the person they are pursuing. Obviously we have no way of providing this.

It looks to me that 3 may be in breach of OFT guidelines here, and also possibly the Administration of Justice Act 1870. I was a debt counsellor myself a decade or so ago, and, though I'm well out of date now, back then this would certainly have looked to me like harassment.

There is also a question whether they are harassing us within the meaning of the Harrasment Act 1997.

I've already contacted Consumer Direct about this, and they said they'd pass it on to Trading Standards. I'm also drafting a letter to go to Hutchison 3G's registered address and 3's customer services in Glasgow.

What concerns us isn't just the ongoing harassment/nuisance calls, but that as and when they pass the case on to debt collectors we may well find them chasing us as well based on traces made from our phone number or any other spurious information 3 may hold. Which is hassle we can well do without.

Any thoughts/ideas on how to make them go away and stay away for good? Simply call barring them won't work as (a) they call from several different numbers and (b) there would still be the risk that this could come back to bite us in the future.

DVardysShadow

You are basically taking the right action by writing to their registered office. You need to tell them to cease and desist and remove your phone number from their records immediately otherwise you will be pursuing them for harassment by all available means. Instruct them to confirm in writing that the harassment will cease.

After you have done that, you have several avenues. Harassment itself, which can be civil or criminal. Office of Fair Trading. Information Commissioner. and possibly the most delicious, the nuisance calls section of your own telecom provider.

tw61

Thanks, we hadn't thought of adding the information commissioner into the process.