British gas debt collectors

gladysrocker

Hi, I hope someone can give me some advice please.

In Dec 2005 I moved house and as I always paid my gas monthly with a payment card at the PO, I was £50 in credit when I left, which British gas sent me a cheque for. Then sometime last year we got a letter from Westcot debt collecters working on behalf of BG saying we still owed them money from the previous address. I cant remember the exact amount and against my better judgement my husband paid it to avoid any further hassle.

Now we have just recieved another letter from this company stating that we owe £172! We rang BG who said there was nothing outstanding on our account, so we rang Westcot who said it was from the previous address for the period 2005-2006!
We know we don't owe this money but how can we prove it?
Is the onus on them to prove that we do?
Also if we had have owed this money for so long, how come this is the first we've heard of it?
Any help much appreciated

randomnut

Wescot are a load of rip off merchants. I mean these people are awful. I was once sent a bill for a Vodafone contract i've never even had, I tried several times to call them and they were just plain rude and didn't even want to discuss it. In the end it went to the bailiffs where it was then dropped as they couldn't prove I ever had a Vodafone contract (always been with o2). Must have cost them a few quid, seems like they're doing similar to many many other people.

Plushchris

Yeah Wescot are a bunch of A-holes.

I had them chasing me for a debt with Telewest a couple of years ago, really rude stubborn, arrogant gits the lot of them, try speaking to them and all they keep repeating is "You need to make a payment today"

It was a dispute I was having with telewest where I refuse to pay the last bill they issued because thay had cut me off then continued charging me for a service. I asked them about a dozen times to send me a copy of the agreement I signed with telewest and I would pay them. (they couldnt because I never signed and returned the agreement) in the end I got a letter from them saying it had been returned to Telewest, still got one more call asking for a payment after that though!