Moorcroft recovery for disputed O2 debt

HeadWobble99

I am carer for my adult son and today we received a letter from Moorcroft Debt Recovery about an outstanding O2 bill and I don't know who to contact. 

I was paying monthly by DD, but my son was not tied in to a contract. 
I switched him to giffgaff payg in Febuary because he very rarely uses his mobile. Myself and my other son stayed on 02 until June when we switched to Smarty, because we get no O2 signal where we live.
I contacted 02 to cancel my sons account back in Febuary, and then our other 2 accounts in June, then I cancelled the direct debits.

The bill equals 3 months of missed payments for my sons O2 service, so it looks like they never cancelled his service. O2 have never sent any emails or letters about missed payments, the letter from Moorcroft is the only contact we've had from them and they have added an additional £10. 

Any help appreciated, thank you. 

fatbelly

Moorcroft are a fairly useless debt collection agency. They don't own the debt but will just run through their standard letters and return it.

You can either ask O2 for statements or ask Moorcroft to get them for you.

Your argument is going to be with O2

Brie

Do you have the details of when you called re your son's account in February?  The start date with giffgaff might narrow this down or your phone records from the time if they are available.  Tell them they have made an error and as the carer for your son you know that this would have been done.  Tell them to withdraw the account from Moorcroft as there is no need for it to be with a debt agency and that all additional fees need to be cancelled as well.  

If they argue with you regarding the cancellation or the non payment of the account for 3 months start acting like a broken record.  "why didn't you (O2) send a notice of the missed payments?"  "why did you never contact us to get this sorted?"  Basically be polite but be a pain.  And do remind them that your son must be considered a vulnerable customer and so they should have been taking extra care with his account.

Frozen_up_north

The safe way to ditch a mobile network is to obtain a PAC or STAC, the new provider cancels the old contract. The new provider can be a non contract SIM (top up monthly type) or plain PAYG.

The process is described by the regulator (OFCOM):
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/switching-provider/switching-mobile-phone-provider

PHK

I think you've made a mistake with the timing. If you cancelled the contract over the phone, you are giving thirty days notice. 

There may have been a bill waiting to be paid and would certainly be a bill generated during the 30 days notice. But because you cancelled the direct debit straightaway, it would have gone unpaid.

You can't cancel an account that is in debt, so it would continue until three payments have been missed after which the regulations say you should be defaulted. 

Your only hope really is if O2 didn't send notification of either the bills or the debt. I would double check your junk or spam folder to make sure you haven't overlooked them.

Edit: as mentioned above it's very much advised to use a PAC or STAC to end a contract as it happens straightaway. Then wait for the bill marked as Final before cancelling the direct debit. 

HeadWobble99

PHK said:

I think you've made a mistake with the timing. If you cancelled the contract over the phone, you are giving thirty days notice. 

There may have been a bill waiting to be paid and would certainly be a bill generated during the 30 days notice. But because you cancelled the direct debit straightaway, it would have gone unpaid.

You can't cancel an account that is in debt, so it would continue until three payments have been missed after which the regulations say you should be defaulted. 

Your only hope really is if O2 didn't send notification of either the bills or the debt. I would double check your junk or spam folder to make sure you haven't overlooked them.

Edit: as mentioned above it's very much advised to use a PAC or STAC to end a contract as it happens straightaway. Then wait for the bill marked as Final before cancelling the direct debit. 

I didn't cancel the DD straight away, I switched my son to gifgaf in Febuary, I didn't cancel the direct debits until June. 

HeadWobble99

PHK said:

I think you've made a mistake with the timing. If you cancelled the contract over the phone, you are giving thirty days notice. 

There may have been a bill waiting to be paid and would certainly be a bill generated during the 30 days notice. But because you cancelled the direct debit straightaway, it would have gone unpaid.

You can't cancel an account that is in debt, so it would continue until three payments have been missed after which the regulations say you should be defaulted. 

Your only hope really is if O2 didn't send notification of either the bills or the debt. I would double check your junk or spam folder to make sure you haven't overlooked them.

Edit: as mentioned above it's very much advised to use a PAC or STAC to end a contract as it happens straightaway. Then wait for the bill marked as Final before cancelling the direct debit. 

I used a pac when switching the other 2 accounts to smarty, but never recieved final bills for them either. 

HeadWobble99

I'm talking to O2 via facebook messenger, they say they have no record of me contacting them to cancel the account. 
We've realised that the email they had for the account was my late husbands which isn't checked, I still have access and can see they did send email messages but never anything through the post. 
They've asked me to contact Moorcroft and tell them I'm disputing the amount. 

Anyone know where I stand with this? 
The account was originally with Virgin Mobile, it's years old and was transferred to O2 when they merged.
I did contact them in Febuary to cancel. 
The sim was taken out and binned in Febuary, it was barely used before that because my son doesn't leave the house.
I cancelled the Direct Debit in June.
We've had no letters from them about missed payments. 
I've today found emails from them in my late husbands email account. 

Just to add that my other son and I were also with O2 since they took over our Virgin Media accounts, and we've never had emails or letters from them, so I didn't think it strange that my Son hadn't. 

PHK

It's worthwhile checking with O2 that correspondence is being sent to the correct address/email as there does seem to be quite a bit that you haven't received ( bills, confirmation of cancelation etc)

HeadWobble99

PHK said:

It's worthwhile checking with O2 that correspondence is being sent to the correct address/email as there does seem to be quite a bit that you haven't received ( bills, confirmation of cancelation etc)

They must have our correct address because Moorcroft sent their letter. Plus the accounts were connected to our Virgin Media account, where they have sent out engineers to. 

PHK

You'll note that I said to check that they'd  SENT the correspondence to the correct address/email, not that they didn't have your correct address. 

(Companies often have separate billing, location and correspondence addresses on file. They might have sent it to an old address. Or they might just have the wrong address for correspondence )

If they've sent it to the wrong address then you've got a good case. If they've sent it to the correct one then you'll need to investigate further.