Giving false details to electricity supplier

squashynose

I have absolutely no idea which forum I should be posting this in, so if a mod thinks there would be a more suitable one, please could you move it? Thanks...

A very strange thing happened this morning. We received a letter from the electricity supplier from our last tenancy, which ended at the beginning of January last year. The letter stated that the tenants had just moved out a few days ago, and as the landlord, we were now liable for any bills between periods rented out.

Two phone calls later, it turns out that the actual landlord has contacted the company and given my partner's details as the landlord. :eek: They would only tell us after we gave his name and address.

They have moved it to their fraud department (I didn't even think they'd have one), but I'm wondering if there is anything we could/should be doing. This man was an atrocious landlord, which I wont go in to, but he has got away with so much during our tenancy, as well as with the tenants previous to us, and the ones who have just moved out. He should not be allowed to get away with treating people the way he does, especially trying to make them liable for his bills! As far as I'm concerned, it is fraud, but I don't know whether it's criminal etc.

If he wants to say we're the landlords, I'm quite happy for him to sign over the deeds and give us the keys to a £200,000 house!

Any ideas or advice is appreciated, thanks.

fluffnutter

In terms of the electricity supplier I think you can just leave them to their internal processes safe in the knowledge that they know your OH's not the landlord. In that sense then, you need do no further.

However, it might worry me a little as to whether your landlord's done something similar with other suppliers.. could he have? If you were using other utilities, e.g. gas, it might be worth just checking that your liability for that account is indeed over.

Other than that, be vigilant for a few months and hope for the best. How on earth did your landlord think this would ever not be found out??

dacouch

Send them a photocopy of your tenancy agreement and recommend they look at the land registry entry for that house