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Hi Folks,
I should be grateful for a little help / advice on this one.
In January of this year, Welsh Water chased my wife for a debt of some £700 relating to a property that she rents out. The tenants had not paid the bill. We responded and advised them that we had notified them last year when a new tenancy was established.. They replied and said that they had not received any notification, so we replied on 21/5/21 and sent them a copy of the letter of notification .
No reply was received and we were then sent what appeared to be standard final reminders over the next couple of months. We replied to them and sent copies of our letter of 21/5/21 plus enclosure. We requested a reply to our letter of 21/5/21 and advised them not to make any more threats or try to damage my wife's credit rating (which was one of their threats).
Another final reminder cane through om 21/7/21, but still not reply to our letter of 21/5/21, . so we then submitted an Official Complaint by first class signed for post. We demanded that they stop the harassment and to let us know if there was still an issue. They replied swiftly by email, acknowledged receipt of the our letter of 21/5/21, said that they could not find a copy of the notification of change of tenancy and that we should now pay the outstanding bill within 10 days (or come to arrangement to do so). Ok, not much we cam do about that as we had no proof of postage, so we may have to take it on the chin,
However, in their response, Welsh Water admitted that they had already registered adverse information with Experian! Up until then, my wife had a perfect credit record and was scratching her head when, in early July, she was declined for a facility with John Lewis! This also caused her some embarrassment with the John Lewis interior designers that she had been working with to refurbish our house! John Lewis advised her that there was a recent issue with her credit file, so we are 99% certain that the WWA default caused the issue.
We have not yet replied to them. My thoughts are that they could easily squirm out of taking any responsibility for Johm Lewis declining the credit facility for my wife. However, the long and short of it is that they registered the default when the alleged debt was still in dispute. Had they replied to our letter of 21/5/21 and advised that they could not locate the notification that we had sent them a copy of, then we would have reluctantly acknowledged that, taken it as salutary lesson to send registered next time, paid and the issue would have been over.
What they have done is clearly not fair and has damaged my wife's credit file. I will be asking them to retract the default, and to compensate us; we would also think about threatening them with legal action. Does anyone, with knowledge in this area, have a view on how this should be played? And do I have a case for suing them? Advice would be much appreciated.
I should be grateful for a little help / advice on this one.
In January of this year, Welsh Water chased my wife for a debt of some £700 relating to a property that she rents out. The tenants had not paid the bill. We responded and advised them that we had notified them last year when a new tenancy was established.. They replied and said that they had not received any notification, so we replied on 21/5/21 and sent them a copy of the letter of notification .
No reply was received and we were then sent what appeared to be standard final reminders over the next couple of months. We replied to them and sent copies of our letter of 21/5/21 plus enclosure. We requested a reply to our letter of 21/5/21 and advised them not to make any more threats or try to damage my wife's credit rating (which was one of their threats).
Another final reminder cane through om 21/7/21, but still not reply to our letter of 21/5/21, . so we then submitted an Official Complaint by first class signed for post. We demanded that they stop the harassment and to let us know if there was still an issue. They replied swiftly by email, acknowledged receipt of the our letter of 21/5/21, said that they could not find a copy of the notification of change of tenancy and that we should now pay the outstanding bill within 10 days (or come to arrangement to do so). Ok, not much we cam do about that as we had no proof of postage, so we may have to take it on the chin,
However, in their response, Welsh Water admitted that they had already registered adverse information with Experian! Up until then, my wife had a perfect credit record and was scratching her head when, in early July, she was declined for a facility with John Lewis! This also caused her some embarrassment with the John Lewis interior designers that she had been working with to refurbish our house! John Lewis advised her that there was a recent issue with her credit file, so we are 99% certain that the WWA default caused the issue.
We have not yet replied to them. My thoughts are that they could easily squirm out of taking any responsibility for Johm Lewis declining the credit facility for my wife. However, the long and short of it is that they registered the default when the alleged debt was still in dispute. Had they replied to our letter of 21/5/21 and advised that they could not locate the notification that we had sent them a copy of, then we would have reluctantly acknowledged that, taken it as salutary lesson to send registered next time, paid and the issue would have been over.
What they have done is clearly not fair and has damaged my wife's credit file. I will be asking them to retract the default, and to compensate us; we would also think about threatening them with legal action. Does anyone, with knowledge in this area, have a view on how this should be played? And do I have a case for suing them? Advice would be much appreciated.
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