Very account still showing amount owed when I went in to DMP despite selling debt on

GeorgeCostanza

TL;DR is at the bottom if you want to skip the big long rant

Hi,

I've been going back and forth with the catalogue company Very over the past couple of weeks and have gotten absolutely nowhere, I was going to go to CAB but I thought I should get advice here first in case it can be resolved without involving them. I apologise in advance if the post ends up being a bit of a rant from here on out, I'll add a TL;DR but I can't help but vent.

So, starting from the beginning I entered a DMP with Stepchange in July 2014 due to a deadly combination of getting in to a short term debt spiral and then losing my job at the worst possible moment. One of the creditors was Very and they went on to sell my debt on to a debt collection companyt called Lowells and then on to another called NCO in August 2015, on both occasions I informed Stepchange and they changed the payment details to ensure that it was going to the new creditor. So far so easy, after this I don't give another thought to Very/Shop Direct as I no longer hold any financial obligation towards them.

Fast forward to March 2017 I finish my DMP with stepchange and am now debt free, I look through my credit report to see if I need to call up companies to manually close accounts now that my balance is settled and as expected Very is nowhere to be seen, the only debt accounts still showing as open are the two aqua cards I had on the plan so I go ahead and get those closed at which point as far as I'm concerned the only financial accounts I have still open are my bank account and my sim only contract.

Fast forward again to this month and I'm doing a spring clean of old online log ins trying to get rid of accounts I never use, I check Very expecting to get a message saying my account doesn't exist or has been blocked but instead it logs me in as normal which I find strange but think maybe they've left the account open hoping to reel me back in so I log in and just as I'm about to search for the best way to go about closing my account I go on to the my account page and my jaw drops. My account states that I owe almost £700, almost all of which is listed as arrears. Quite an accomplishment given that they had sold my balance on to another company and I had fully paid my debt to that other company so I shouldn't have an outstanding balance owed to either them or the company they passed my debt over to.

So, I storm to their contact us page and find that they have a messaging service called 'Secure Webmail' that is used for contacting them with any queries or issues so I fire out a message asking why on earth they were showing substantial arrears for an account that had been settled for 2 years now, my assumption being that it was a simple oversight on their part and that they would get back to me promptly and confirm they had corrected my outstanding balance to £0 and closed my account as requested in my initial message to them. My initial query:

George_Costanza wrote:

Hi, given that all money owed to yourselves was paid in full to the debt collection company you passed my account to and has been fully paid off for almost 6 months now, please could you explain why my account is showing a minimum payment required of £615 including arrears of £609 given that I no longer have any arrears?

And their first response:

Very wrote:

Thank you for your email.
As your account was sold to Lowell, any transactions will now be recorded on your credit file under Lowell not Shop Direct.
Please note-you will still be able to view your account via "My Account" to view any historic transactions, but this will not be updated as we have sold the debt to Lowell.

So no help at all, but it does provide the first mention of what will become their consistent stance throughout our correspondence: We sold your debt to another company but we're not going to adjust the balance and it will continue to increase. Now for my next reply I'm clearly getting annoyed at the position they're taking on the issue and when I get annoyed I have a tendency to get snarky, this is also the first point at which, among all the accusations of fraud, I advise them that if this issue isn't resolved I will escalate it to the CAB and on to the regulatory bodies if needed. Bear in mind that at this point their dialogue has made it seem that they still consider this a debt owed to them, for me after all the effort it took for me to become debt free it was a red rag to a bull.

GeorgeCostanza wrote:

The fact that you sold my account on to 'Lowell' is exactly why there should be no outstanding arrears displaying on my account, ESPECIALLY WHEN I'VE PAID ALL ARREARS OFF. It is highly illegal to falsely claim a customer is in arrears to you after you have sold on their account, Very doesn't get to skirt the law and double dip to its heart content. I want either the fraudulent arrears claim cleared from my balance or my account deleted from your system ASAP, if neither of those actions are completed promptly I will escalate this to CAB and if necessary FOS.

At this point after one attempted call to my landline in the middle of the day they decided that my issue was sorted and marked the query as settled so I made a new one, ranted some more and again requested they close my account and remove any claim of arrears owed, then came a few quickfire messages telling me they'd passed it on to various teams and then finally advising they'd asked their debt recovery team to look in to the issue, I messaged back the next day advising I had yet to hear from the debt recovery team and remarked that since I was debt free I didn't think they'd be much use at which point they instead decided it had been passed to the 'specialist team' who go on to advise me that as Very have nothing to do with the account they're unable to help me with arranging a payment arrangement for the arrears, you may notice a common theme here of them repeatedly telling me that they can't remove the arrears on my account because it is no longer their account. They are yet to grasp the fact that they are proving my point with every piece of contact we have. So I send an irritable reply back restating the same thing I've told them throughout this thread of lunacy regarding them not being able to claim arrears on a debt they have no entitlement to and which has since been paid off in full. At this point I get this reply and it is bizarre.

Very wrote:

Thank you for your recent email.
You will not be receiving any contact from Very.
If you are accessing your account online after sold, it will still appear to be active and the min pay will increase as time progresses. This is often misinterpreted as a demand for payment.
I can confirm that the account is not available for orders and is in no way detrimental to your Credit file.
Unfortunately, we are no longer dealing with your account as it was sold to a Debt collection agency on 19/08/15
They can be contacted on 0844 556 0076
Regards

My reply to them confirming that I no longer have any financial obligation to them and that my account is effectively closed is simply: "So close my account?"

Very wrote:

Thank you for contacting us about your account.
Upon checking you account we are unable to close, due to the account being sold to an external debt collector.
Please contact our debt management team on 0844 556 0076 (Mon - Fri 8am -4pm) for further assistance.
I am sorry for the inconvenience caused.

I scream in to my pillow in frustration and advise them that their position makes zero sense, after this there is communication from them for 3 days so I send a message advising that I was escalating to CAB

GeorgeCostanza wrote:

This is a courtesy message to let you know that as you have repeatedly refused to complete the simple task of closing my account down now that I no longer owe anything to you or the company you sold my debt to I am now going to contact the Citizens Advice Bureau to attempt to resolve this situation since you seem unwilling to help me on my own, in addition I am incredulous that you have repeatedly failed to recognise why I am angered by your website having my account listed as owing you a large sum of money when I do not owe you a penny, regardless of the fact you say I will not be pursued for any money it is astounding that you think it is acceptable to have my account page claiming I owe you money that you lost all entitlement to almost 2 years ago and which was repaid in full to the company that took on the debt burden from yourselves, the fact that my account is now dormant does not make this acceptable especially when Shop Direct claims to follow the principles of the AFD. I have repaid all my debts and have a right to not have this hanging over my head no matter how symbolic or toothless the arrears shown are.
I'm sure you will be hearing from the Citizen's Advice Bureau soon enough, I hope you treat them with less contempt than you have me over the past 2 weeks.

Very wrote:

Thank you for your email.
Please be advised that we cannot close the account due to the outstanding balance.
The last payment we received on this account was 15 August 2015.
Kindly contact the Debt Collector that the payments were made via as the payments were not made to this account.
Thank you for your time and patience.

I scream in to my pillow again.

GeorgeCostanza wrote:

I do not understand how you are still failing to grasp this. There is no outstanding balance. The payments were not made to you because the money was no longer owed to you. You sold on the outstanding balance in August 2015 and my correct outstanding balance with yourselves is now £0 as it is with Lowells now that I have finished my DMP. It is basic law and basic logic that when you sell a debt on to another company you can not then go on to claim ownership of it and claim there is an outstanding balance owed to you by your former customer. I owe Shop Direct £0, my outstanding balance is £0. The fact that you continue to fraudulently claim I owe you these arrears after selling my debt on to Lowells and therefore washing your hands of all outstanding balances owed is exactly why I am raising this issue with the Citizens Advice Bureau.

They've finally realised that NCO were the final creditor and advise me to contact them... shame that they gave me an invalid number. I google NCO Europe and find the correct number but that goes to answer phone and frankly I don't see why I should be bothering the company that actually did what they were supposed to do when it's Very that are being completely unreasonable.

Very wrote:

Thank you for your email.
All accounts with a Debt Management company are managed by:
NCO Europe Ltd
PO Box 175
Watery Lane
Preston
PR2 1GN
Telephone: 01772 765011
All Debt Management companies have been informed of this change.
If you have any questions that concern your plan or are no longer dealing with your Debt Management Company, please contact NCO Europe Ltd.
If you are seeking help from a Debt Management company and have not yet been issued with an official reference number, please inform them to contact NCO Europe Ltd.

I send back a snarky reply:

Yes thank you for reminding me that all financial obligations to yourselves have been severed and passed to other companies which confirms that there should be absolutely nothing outstanding on my balance with Very and there should be no obstacle in closing my account as I have requested several times. Also the number you provided for NCO Europe is invalid so yet another win for the competence of the Very support staff.

And that is where I'm up to so far. So....

TL;DR: I entered a DMP in 2014, Very sold my debt to a Debt collector, I paid off all debt and owe nothing to neither Very nor the company they sold my debt on to but Very are now point blank refusing to remove the outdated arrears recorded on my account and close my account down despite informing me on several occasions that they have severed all financial ties to my account and I do not owe them any money. I know they've said they will not be attempting to collect any of the debt that I don't owe them but surely I'm well within my rights to demand they close my account and remove any mention of these fictional arrears?

Apologies for the lengthy rant but I am rather frustrated and really at my wits end about how they've handled this.

sourcrates

Hi,

So there is mention of this debt on your credit file, is that correct ?

The only place it shows is on very`s website ?

My old shop direct account is still active on there site, although i cant order anything, the balance is still there, but it makes no odds, as its not on my file.

So what exactly is the problem here ?

Only you and they can see the account, its not detrimental in any way, so why the concern ?

All you need to know is in there first email to you :


"Originally Posted by Very
Thank you for your recent email.
You will not be receiving any contact from Very.
If you are accessing your account online after sold, it will still appear to be active and the min pay will increase as time progresses. This is often misinterpreted as a demand for payment.
I can confirm that the account is not available for orders and is in no way detrimental to your Credit file.
Unfortunately, we are no longer dealing with your account as it was sold to a Debt collection agency on 19/08/15
They can be contacted on 0844 556 0076
Regards"

GeorgeCostanza

I know it can seem like an irrelevance in comparison to some of the struggles of those still going through debt hell but I just don't see any justifiable reason for this policy and the way they have it ticking over on the account page. Quite simply they sold my debt on and ended any financial ties between us so I don't see why they can't then close my account. I also initially was not certain whether they actually considered me indebted to them or not and to say their handling of my complaint has irked me would be an understatement.

That wasn't the first I received from them it was one of the last, it took until then for them to confirm that I don't owe them anything, before then stating they can't close my account because I owe them money.

sourcrates

I think it was a mis-understanding of both your complaint, and the debt collection process on the advisers part, and i think they could of explained things in a clearer fashion to you.

The information contained on the shop direct website (shop direct own very) is owned by them, so its up to them to choose how they process it, as said, its not public information, no one else can see it, so will have no effect on you whatsoever.

Now if it appeared on your credit file like that, then you would have cause for complaint, but as things stand, i would just leave things as they are, to all intents and purposes your account is closed and cannot be used, as i said above, i can still access my old shop direct account from 2007, but it has no effect on me at all, says i still owe £3,180,00 despite been sold to Lowell and repaid via an IVA.

GeorgeCostanza

I understand that at present I am not at risk of them attempting to collect non-existent arrears from me but surely I can't be the only one that sees these policies of theirs as utterly ridiculous and completely unjustifiable? I knew I didn't owe them anything, you knew you didn't owe them anything but what if somebody else that's not as cautious were to find out they still had a balance on there and wasn't aware that they were under no obligation to pay anything? The account page gives absolutely no indication that it's anything other than genuine debt. If a company has deeply misleading policies that can lead to people paying money they're not obliged to pay or even if it just leads to them being distressed at the possibility of having to pay such a sum surely they need to be called out for engaging in such underhand tactics?

sourcrates

They are not the most helpful of companies to deal with i agree.

Just bear in mind for future reference, that any demand for payment from a company like very, or a debt collector, must be made in writing for legal purposes.

Information contained on some 3rd parties website is not publicly shared material, so has no relevance to you, you only need to worry about what is recorded on your credit file, as that is visible to other creditors.