Two Questions Regarding Lowell.

FlickyFoot

Lowell has been contacting me regarding an energy company debt. At the time they began contacting me, there were 6 months left on the account until it became statute-barred. I wish I had ignored it now, but, I wrote back to them with a 'prove it' letter because I genuinely don't remember having a debt with them when switching to the new provider (It was a VERY stressful time in my life). They replied with the front page of a final bill from the energy company. I wrote back and told them I still don't recognise this amount and to provide evidence of my usage, not just the front page of the bill. They replied saying I would need to contact the energy company which I have yet to do. They gave me 30 days and then continued to send letters.

My questions are: 

1. Have I reset the 6-year statute barred thing by contacting them? (Sorry, my lingo on this stuff isn't very good  )
   
2. What does Lowell mean when they say that they may involve a third-party debt collection company contacting me on their behalf?

I'm unsure how to proceed with this and really don't need debt collectors arriving at my home.

BadDebtor

1. I don't think you are acknowledging anything by saying Prove-It, in fact you are denying any knowledge of it.
2. Lowell bought Hoist and Hoist would rent out debts to other debt collectors for a short time to see if they could succeed where Hoist failed.  This is more of the same.

HOWEVER, what you should be interested in is the full bill and previous bills from the Energy company (do a SAR) because of the back billing regulations that say they can't bill you for a mistake or failure further back than 12 months from the date billed (if the bill date was when you switched). 

For example, say you switched from EDF to Shell in January 2021 and provided your reads when you switched.  If EDF do not issue a bill with claims of extra usage until March 2022 then it is too late. I hear of such cases almost every week online and on the radio.   

If you fail to provide reads then it is a bit more tricky, the energy companies have an obligation to read a meter every 2 years, so even if you are with an energy company on estimated reads, if they do not take reads and the contract does not put any obligation on you to supply reads then they will be subject to the same back billing rules.  In that situation you would want them to assess the reads for 3 to 12 months to prove the mistake did not happen more than 12 months earlier IF the amount requested was more than a typical year.  Any old bill will list your estimated annual usage, you could also rely on the reads from energy company you moved to, if you stayed in the same property.

So the first thing to do is to request ALL the bills for 6 years from the energy company that claims you owe the money and you ask them to tell Lowell to hold off until the validity of the alleged debt has been established.  If they fail to provide the data report them to the ICO and the Energy Ombudsman.

At same time you make a SAR from the next energy company so you have evidence of the opening read (their opening read is the previous company's closing read).  You also stick the usage figures into a spreadsheet to show typical usage.

You can look at the template letters from this site for the wording that says this correspondence is not an acknowledgement of the debt, the alleged debt is denied and this request has only been made for what seems to be a false assertion of debt.  

Remember they have to prove you owe the debt, Lowell are just doing what was asked, using techniques that scare some people.

Don't be fooled by debt collectors, they have no right of entry and you can just decline to engage with them.  They do not have a CCJ and even High Court Enforcement Officers are not allowed to force entry, but they don't deal with consumer debt.  I did not engage with HCEO's and it did not take long for them to get bored of getting nowhere.

You will find that debt collector firms and debt collectors will use terms that are mentioned in the HCEO programmes on YouTube, things like writ of control, blah blah blah, also terms like attachment of earnings order, these are things only a Court can order.  I have a CCJ that is about to expire (or may have expired even), I have letters from debt collectors using these terms but they never asked the Court.  Don't be scared of these fools, get a video doorbell and they will either run a mile or be on their best behaviour.  Cool thing is you do not even need to open the door or be there, you can use your phone to tell them to get lost.  You don't even need to do that, I saw a brilliant video on YouTube where they waited until the debt collector was at the end of the drive after watching him look like Putin did when Recep Tayyip Erdogan kept him waiting 20 minutes, they then started laughing and the debt collector looked even dumber.

The key thing is to make your own efforts to prove you don't owe the money, avoid further engagement with Lowell if you think it is about to be barred and just do the SAR's making sure you are not acknowledging the debt.  Acknowledging is saying something like "Oh I forgot about this debt, I can't pay right now" rather than what the fluff are you talking about, I totally deny any monies are owed to your client.

The Energy companies must comply to SAR within 30 days but don't stress yourself if they take longer, it may take them past the six years.  Once they do follow my advice above to prove it wasn't owed just so you are prepared for any dodgy practice down the road.  Personally I do not engage unless I get a letter before action at which point I issue a denial of the sum owed and say I am referring to ombudsman.  If you provide evidence to ombudsman and they deem the energy company breached OFCOM rules on back billing then you can ask for compensation for the anxiety and stress they have put you through by setting rottweilers on you when they knew or should have known that the debt was not valid.

If they chase it after it has become Statute Barred you can use letters from this site to tell them it cannot be enforced.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/check-energy-back-billing-rules

sourcrates

The Provit letter is specifically worded so as not to acknowledge anything (which is why we suggest sending it in the first place) so the time clock is still running on this.

Lowell are a debt purchasing company, they engage other collection companies to collect debts on their behalf.

They mainly work out of call centres these days, only a few actually still knock on doors, your average debt collector today is a 19 year old, just out of school, who follows the script placed in front of them, those who still knock on doors are just self employed collection agents who have no more power than next doors cat, so unless you have a fear of teenagers or cats, I really wouldn`t worry any.

lostsquirrel99

sourcrates said:

The Provit letter is specifically worded so as not to acknowledge anything (which is why we suggest sending it in the first place) so the time clock is still running on this.

Socrates, would you mind if I sent you a message about this point? You were helping on my thread and I’ve already sent a provit letter but I have another question 

sourcrates

lostsquirrel99 said:

sourcrates said:

The Provit letter is specifically worded so as not to acknowledge anything (which is why we suggest sending it in the first place) so the time clock is still running on this.

Socrates, would you mind if I sent you a message about this point? You were helping on my thread and I’ve already sent a provit letter but I have another question 

Yes, no problem.