Elderly mothers Sky router charge passed to BPO Collections

aqueousdan92

My elderly mother had a sky broadband account and cancelled it around 2 years ago. She was told to send the router back so she did. She then moved house but has a Royal Mail redirect so she still gets any post to the old address.
She is now being charged £50 because sky say they didn’t receive the router. She kept the mail receipt for a while but obviously if you didn’t hear anything from them then you wouldn’t keep it, especially if you moved home.

A letter just came from BPO Collections with a rather threatening tone as you can expect saying she now owes £57.
since she is 80 she says she doesn’t care about any affect on her credit score and says they can go to hell if they think they are getting money from her since she genuinely sent the thing back.

Looking this kind of thing up it looks like a scam that goes on with all the broadband providers when you send a router back. Prove you sent it or pay for it. Rubbish behaviour honestly.

in reality what can be done here and what might be the outcome if she ignores it. 

user1977

It's just a mistake, not a "scam". If she ignores it I fully expect they wiill give up, they're hardly likely to go to court for such a small amount, especially with flimsy evidence that anything is actually due.

HillStreetBlues

If it was me I wouldn't be paying either.
They could take you your mother to court to try and get the money, the defence would be she returned the router.
If it's RM then any tracking info would have gone from 2 years ago. So it would be down to what the judge thinks is more likely.

Brie

HillStreetBlues said:

If it was me I wouldn't be paying either.
They could take you your mother to court to try and get the money, the defence would be she returned the router.
If it's RM then any tracking info would have gone from 2 years ago. So it would be down to what the judge thinks is more likely.

Hmmm....sweet little old lady vs big faceless conglomerate (with a very very loose association to corporate scandals)

badmemory

They will have put it straight in the skip & forgotten to log it as received.  BT tried similar with me only by phone and within days luckily so I could quote the delivery details at them.

Marvel1

aqueousdan92 said:

Looking this kind of thing up it looks like a scam that goes on with all the broadband providers when you send a router back. Prove you sent it or pay for it. Rubbish behaviour honestly.

Not sure where the scam is, as a receipt from the Post Office is proof it was sent.

I wouldn't pay it either.

aqueousdan92

Awesome stuff thanks a lot guys.

Ergates

HillStreetBlues said:

If it was me I wouldn't be paying either.
They could take you your mother to court to try and get the money, the defence would be she returned the router.
If it's RM then any tracking info would have gone from 2 years ago. So it would be down to what the judge thinks is more likely.

80 yr old attempting to steal a useless router vs item got lost in the post - not a hard decision.