Difficult LCS Utility Bill Situation

Postmangoth1919

First time poster here, just had a bit of a situation that I thought folks might be able to offer advice on as unsure what to do.

Me and a friend (we are both students but decided to go for a non furnished rented property) recently moved house on June 28th. Since moving in we have had a rather complicated situation in regards to our utility bills.

When moving into the property we were told by our letting agent that the energy supplier was e.on though we could switch supplier when we moved in. When we moved in we gave meter readings to our landlord who took them so that they could pay off bills for e.on for the period between the previous tenant leaving and us moving in (period of a couple of months earlier this year).

Me and my flatmate planned to transfer energy suppliers from e.on to Bulb (smaller green energy company some friends of mine are with and who i have previously been supplied by.) we initially ran into complications because it turned out that our energy supplier had been changed from e.on to spark energy by one of the letting agencies letting the property, who did so without telling the other agency we went with, our landlord or us. In the end however we were able to transfer from spark energy to bulb, taking final meter readings with spark, paying off the 1 month bill we had with them and having our account closed.

However it turned out that we technically still owed e.on some money as for a one day period moving in (June 28th/June 29th) we had our energy supply supplied by e.on, and received a letter in August saying that they were calculating final bill based on meter readings from spark. From speaking to e.on staff on phone situation a few times the situation seemed ok as me and my flatmate waited for a bill. Eventually a bill did arrive but as number seemed very high I decided to try getting it revised (I was told final bill by phone and they suggested choosing revision option.) Another bill was sent in post though annoyingly got mixed up in our other post and paper work so only found it at end of last week a week or so after receiving it. in end the bill was revised from over £6 to just 35p. I paid this final bill on Saturday 15th May and had my account closed with e.on. Been paying bulb in the meanwhile which is going ok.

During the period of waiting for the final bill and waiting for it to be revised I received some emails from e.on addressed to my current address but not to me personally claiming that the account at this address owed over £18.58 for the energy bill. When I first received such an email I rang up e.on’s debt recovery team number and spoke to a staff member on the phone who said that the email was probably an automatically generated one and that as the actual bill for what we owed was still being calculated and my account was ok on their files there was no need to worry and I should just ignore emails of that nature. Once I had paid final bill of 35p and had e.on account closed on Saturday I assumed that I wouldn’t have to worry about these sorts of correspondence any more.

Yesterday (Tuesday, 18th September) I was looking through junk emails on my email account and found an email that had arrived into there on Monday (17th September) from debt collector LCS stating:

“Dear Sir / Madam,

We need to speak to you about a E.ON matter as soon as possible. Please contact us quoting your reference number xxxxx”

Panicking a bit I contacted e.on’s debt recovery phone line again and spoke with a staff member for over half an hour on the phone. He told me (having looked through my account files and having spoken to his superiors whilst I was on hold for a bit) that my account was definitely closed and all my payments had been made so I owed no more money and did not have to worry about my credit rating, but that what appeared to have happened was that a previous tenant at this property might have had outstanding debts being pursued by LCS. Previous emails about £18.58 being outstanding would appear to refer to this previous tenant he said. His advice was just to ignore communications from LCS and to mention situation to my landlord.

This morning just after waking up I received a text message from LCS asking me to ring them in relation to E.on account.

Having read through some of the previous discussions about LCS on this forum am a bit unsure about what to do next in regards to situation. I am planning on mentioning this situation to my landlord as advised by e.on staff member but I am just a bit unsure what they can actually do to stop LCS contacting me? Worried that LCS might just ignore them.

I am thinking of waiting for a letter to arrive so I can see exactly how much they claim I owe and during which period so I can give more details to my landlord as current messages give no real details. Just a bit concerned as well in case LCS sent someone around and I do not have sufficient evidence to prove that I have nothing to do with outstanding debts they are chasing, especially as I have misplaced part of the letter featuring my final bill (Have one part of the letter with amount on that I paid but other part of letter with address and my account number on I think I’ve binned my accident after I paid it on Saturday).

Any advice about what I should do next in would be very much appreciated.

D_M_E

You can ignore LCS until they send you an actual letter through the letterbox addressed to you personally.

Until then, just ignore their bleatings by text or email or phone.

Also, get back on to E.on and ask that they send you a letter confirming your account has been closed with a zero balance and nothing further to pay.

Edit - I would not bother keeping the LL up to date and would also get on to Sp0ark and ask them for the same account closure information.