Anglian Water chasing a 7 yr old debt

Got_No_Answers

Hi all

Can you advise? My wife and I lived together in a property 7 years ago but it was only for 6 months as the landlord sold it. We contacted AW and told them and gave them the new address where we moved too.

When we lived at property no 2, AW told us we were behind on our payments so we agreed a payment arangement with them to pay back this debt.

Now, we thought this debt was relating to property 1 and didnt think anything more of it. We then purchased our 1st home and again contacted AW to inform them we were moving to our current property. They informed us we had paid off our debt and the new property had a water meter so our bills will be dramatically reduced (were paying £90!! a month but this included our debt).

Anyways ... the wife receives a letter today from a debt agency saying she (not us) owes £410.55 from 2005 for AW for the 1st property! Obviously we are disputing this but the orrible sods at the collection agency have stated that if we dont pay this within 14 days, they will be sending someone round to value our goods.

Can they do this? We really dont believe we owe this money and it has now been 7 years. We have always informed AW where we were moving too but they have said they have tried to look for us for the last 7 years for this debt!

What is our next step? The collection agency said that AW wont deal with us as they "sold" the debt to them and they will collect any monies outstanding.

Cheers Got no answers

HappyMJ

Do they have a CCJ that they are collecting on? If not then you can tell them where to go...even if they do it should be a court bailiff that visits you so you can still tell them where to go. It's past 6 years so they cannot go to court to enforce the debt so you can opt to ignore them with no danger to your credit rating. If they do launch court action then tell the court it's out of time.

Got_No_Answers

Hi HappyMJ.

There is no CCJ for my wife. She has always paid her debts, never missed a payment and she checks her credit rating every year.

Can we really tell them we wont be paying it? Wont they come to the house and try and claim the goods as per their conversation?

HappyMJ

Got_No_Answers wrote: »

Hi HappyMJ.

There is no CCJ for my wife. She has always paid her debts, never missed a payment and she checks her credit rating every year.

Can we really tell them we wont be paying it? Wont they come to the house and try and claim the goods as per their conversation?

Yes you can tell them that.

They won't come to the house...well they may...but they have no right of entry. You can [STRIKE]politely[/STRIKE] tell them to leave and they must leave.

You feel and know there is no debt so don't pay it. It's not as if AW will get anything anyway as the debt has been sold on for probably pennies. They usually buy old debt such as this for as little as 1 pence an maybe up to 5 pence in the pound in the hope some people pay up. Any money collected goes to the debt collector and AW don't get any more.

Got_No_Answers

Well .... this was a short and sweet thread :-D

AW have contacted my wife (who after being told by them they could not deal with it) by their debt recovery team. She has been informed that they will be recalling the debt and wiping it off.

Apparently ... AW had a new system in 2006 and "supposedly" lost a lot of account information, which resulted in debts "supposedly" being owed.

mmmmm ..... anyway, wife is obviousy happy (happy wife = happy bloke) and Anglian water is going to investigate the bullyboy tactics of the agency and are sending a letter confirming the "debt" wiped off :-D

Thanks HappyMJ for your advice :-D