A real debt doozy - advice needed for British Gas and Southern Water

irelavv

First of all, thank you for reading through my post. I would welcome any help/advice on the problem I have, which is quite bad. I'll try my best to keep this short and simple:

I have two unpaid final utility bills: one for British Gas at £52 and one for Southern Water at £324. Last payment made to British Gas was on 16/9/2014 and to SW on 10/10/2014.

At the time, I was living with 3 other people I did not know and reluctantly opened joint accounts between all 4 of us in order to pay both BG and SW. We split every bill equally between the 4 of us. However, at the end of our tenancy agreement one person did not pay their share to BG and two did not pay their share to SW. This is the very short and concise version of the story.

After paying my 'shares', contacting both suppliers trying to resolve the issue, sending letters/emails to them and their debt collection agencies - nothing helped. Every single person I spoke to kept saying 'you are all jointly and severally responsible for paying the bills as per your contract'.

Timeline of key events:
British Gas
*12/8/2015 - DCA Wescot requesting payment on behalf of BG.
*18/12/2019 - Closure of account by BG. Selling/Transfer/Formal Notice of Assignment of debt to Lowell. 'Lowell is the Data Controller, under the Data Protection Act (2018), of your Personal Data for this account.
*10/01/2020 - First demand for payment of £52 to Lowell by Lowell portfolio

Southern Water
*14/10/2014 - Notice before Default by SW
*25/11/2014 - Recovery of Balance letter by BG and instruction for sending account to a DCA
*5/01/2015 - DCA Advantis demanding payment. Also quoting 'our client Southern Water may have already or may in the future share information about your defaulted account with CRAs.
*02/02/2015 - last letter from Advantis demanding payment and suggesting they will return the account to SW.

I realize that the suppliers only care about the money. I get that. But this is where my question comes in:
What is the worst that could possibly happen to me?
What happens after 6 years - is this debt statute barred if I or the other tenants haven't acknowledged the debts?
What would you do in my position and how would you go about it?
What effect can this have on my credit rating/score? Will I be getting a default soon and is this what should worry me the most?
I CANNOT see any defaulted accounts (by SW or BG) on my credit report/file. I thought SW defaulted the account so why can't I see it?

If anyone has any advice please share your thought/experiences because I'm really discouraged but don't want to cave in and just pay hundreds of pounds for someone else's share of the bill in the first place.

sourcrates

Hi,

Worst case scenario is they obtain a CCJ against you, the debts will become statute barred this year, unless they take legal action.

Looks like they are just at the threat stage at present, they may add a default to your credit file yes.

What would I do ?

Difficult one, if I wanted to keep a clean credit file, I may perhaps make them an offer to go away, the Lowell debt is unlikely to be chased for long, and Lowell won’t go to court for £52 quid, but southern water, according to what I’ve heard, are like a dog with a bone, it’s up to you really.

irelavv

sourcrates wrote: »

Hi,

Worst case scenario is they obtain a CCJ against you, the debts will become statute barred this year, unless they take legal action.

Looks like they are just at the threat stage at present, they may add a default to your credit file yes.

What would I do ?

Difficult one, if I wanted to keep a clean credit file, I may perhaps make them an offer to go away, the Lowell debt is unlikely to be chased for long, and Lowell won’t go to court for £52 quid, but southern water, according to what I’ve heard, are like a dog with a bone, it’s up to you really.

Hi sourcrates,

In your experience, what would the explenation be for me not finding any defaults on all 3 CRAs?

Isn't there a timeline to place a default (3-6 months after last payment) on someone's account? When I checked my reports yesterday BG and SW were not even listed on Experian and Equifax. TransUnion was the only CRA who had those accounts listed and they were all marked paid/satisfactory. Surely this wouldn't be correct if SW had indeed registered a default, right?

Also, the BG account was closed in 2014, as stated on TransUnion. So why is it that BG are telling me they've closed my account in 2019?

Sorry, lots of questions but would appreciate if anyone can shed some light.