Debt I "dont owe" being chased by debt collectors

MrSilk

brianposter wrote: »

As long as you have reasonable evidence that you tried to get things fixed, you can argue that there was no contract as they can hardly start charging before you have a telephone that works.
Unless the contract specifies what you must do when something goes wrong, the other side cannot simply tell you what you should have done.
If you can show that they failed to reply to your emails that should be good enough.
So do not ask what you should have done - tell them everything that they have done wrong

Wrong, the contract is for the SIM, working or not, the Phone working or not, the contract would still be valid. The phone is loaned to you, and you pay it back including the line rental each month.

For a £20 contract, the phone wouldn't be worth more than £150 re-sellable value anyway.

mhmmhm

The phone is not strictly loaned - the phone is provided as part of the service. The contract is for the provision of the airtime service and the provision of the initial handset, but there is no ongoing connection between the handset and the contract.

brianposter

MrSilk wrote: »

Wrong, the contract is for the SIM, working or not, the Phone working or not, the contract would still be valid. The phone is loaned to you, and you pay it back including the line rental each month.

For a £20 contract, the phone wouldn't be worth more than £150 re-sellable value anyway.

You appear to be suggesting that the phone company frustrated its own contract. If the strength of the OPs argument is good enough that could be grounds for claiming some compensation.

Consider what might happen if a faulty phone were supplied but it was fixed by the phone company after 3 months. The phone company is unlikely to get very far in court if it claimed that it was entitled to charge rental for the unused line for those 3 months.

So if those 3 months get extended through the negligence of the phone company the logical solution is ?.

matttye

You might - I repeat, might - have had a leg to stand on if you'd dealt with this in the correct manner when you were having the problems.

The fact that you simply cancelled the direct debit and have failed to pay the contract, without actually resolving the issue, has completely screwed up any chance you had of emerging the winner here.

£1,200 seems excessive. Offer to pay the contract in full plus a reasonable amount of interest and be done with it.

brianposter

matttye wrote: »

You might - I repeat, might - have had a leg to stand on if you'd dealt with this in the correct manner when you were having the problems.

The fact that you simply cancelled the direct debit and have failed to pay the contract, without actually resolving the issue, has completely screwed up any chance you had of emerging the winner here.

£1,200 seems excessive. Offer to pay the contract in full plus a reasonable amount of interest and be done with it.

The OP has no responsibility for resolving the issue. He merely has to try to do so, and be able show that he has done so.

If the other party to the contract refuses to cooperate then that is effectively, end of contract.

matttye

brianposter wrote: »

The OP has no responsibility for resolving the issue. He merely has to try to do so, and be able show that he has done so.

If the other party to the contract refuses to cooperate then that is effectively, end of contract.

He does, actually, because the company can't possibly know that a fault has developed without the OP reporting it. So he does have some responsibility for resolving the issue - reporting the issue.

I appreciate that he did this, and the company appear not to have been very helpful. However, you need to persevere sometimes. I suspect if he had pursued the matter further at least one person working for them would have had the sense to send him a new SIM card!

Can't see any possible way he won't have to pay this. It's not as simple as "If the other party to the contract refuses to cooperate then that is effectively, end of contract" when you take into account that Virgin Mobile will have thousands of employees. Just because one or two of the phone monkeys were unable to help, doesn't mean that Virgin Mobile as a whole is refusing to cooperate. Sometimes you just need to speak to other people - even other departments, e.g. the complaints department.