Thames Water Opened an Account in my name without my consent ... Can they do this? 1 July 2016 at 4:04PM in Water bills 6 replies 7.1K views

Tracyutt

I've just discovered from a letter from Thames Water sent to an old address (I still have an active redirection on my post) I moved out of in August 2014 (water balance paid and account closed) that they are threatening CCJ if i don't pay an outstanding bill... Following a call with them I find out that they opened the account in Dec 2015 as their investigative team suspected as I was the occupier which I wasn't ....They are now closing it and writing to Equifax. I'm quite upset about it as I never have issues with not paying bills and am quite proud of my credit record... I really would like to understand on what grounds they can do this?

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

There are 'no grounds' for that action; presumably it is an error by their investigation team(if indeed such a team was involved!!)

If the matter is not solved to your complete satisfaction, contact the Consumer Council for Water http://www.ccwater.org.uk/

GingerBob_3

Another good example showing why you should NEVER provide water companies with anything but the most basic of personal information, surname and initial only, if that. Absolutely never give them your previous address or next address when you move.

Cardew

GingerBob wrote: »

Another good example showing why you should NEVER provide water companies with anything but the most basic of personal information, surname and initial only, if that. Absolutely never give them your previous address or next address when you move.

I cannot see your logic here.

If a water company believes a customer owes money and gives the name of that customer to a Debt Collection Agency(DCA) it is easy in most cases to track that customer. In any case that customer will get a black mark on their credit record.

This would have happened to the OP, except they had a mail forwarding service in place nearly two years the left the property.

Had the water company had the OP's new address the problem would have got sorted sooner.

spiro

Why would you have an active mail redirection after 2 years? Depending on what goes to the old address may give them a reason to think you still live there.

Cardew

spiro wrote: »

Why would you have an active mail redirection after 2 years? Depending on what goes to the old address may give them a reason to think you still live there.

Agreed!

It is a fairly common tactic for some people to run up bills, pretend to move, and get someone else to say they have moved in and take over the accounts.

Tracyutt

because that's what my husband set up and I didn't think it a biggie... Does it make us suspicious? Was I asking for it? I think not and I've yet to see the grounds they have got opening an account in my name....We are pretty conscientious and changed everything important to our new address as soon as we moved in so it seems strange
The only thing I can think of is that we got married and changed name also on everything round that time.. They weirdly set the account up in my old name well after my name was changed