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British Gas - default applied after I'd moved house
Hello, this is my first post to this forum, so forgive me if I am not completely up to speed with forum etiquette and so on.
In mid-2009 I moved into a shared house with three other people (friends of friends, not random strangers). The utilities & council tax for the property were registered by the letting agent in our joint names - this was done without consulting any of us; in an ideal world, we would each have taken responsibility for one of the utilities (phone, gas, electricity, water) and had the council tax in joint names, so this was not how we would have liked to have done things. Nevertheless, we agreed that one person (as it happened, the person earning the most money) would take responsibility for paying the bills, and pay those bills by direct debit from his account, and we would pay him a one-quarter share of the bills each month by bank transfer.
This system worked very well, and the bills came each month by post, we all saw the bill, split the payment and transferred him the money.
After six months, I was offered a job in another area, and exercised my six month break on the lease (which the other occupants and the landlord were perfectly OK with), and said that I would find someone to replace me. The other three tenants said that, actually, they would find someone themselves (they had a couple of friends who might be looking for somewhere new 6 to 8 weeks or so after I moved) and just chipped in together to pay me my share of the deposit. I contacted the council to tell them I was moving out, but I was told by the other tenants that they would sort out removing my name from the utilities. Because I was going to be travelling a lot over the next year, I agreed with the other three that my mail would continue to go to the house, and they would forward things on to me when I was back in the country.
All was well.
Recently having been hopping around the country for work, I moved house again, to a more permanent place, and after setting up utilities etc, received a letter from a debt collection company working for British Gas (who also contacted me on my work number a day or so later - I have NO idea how they got this - the only people who would have had it would have been the landlord of the shared property), telling me that they had applied a default to my credit file for unpaid electricity and gas bills at the shared property. I assume that my registration for utilities (I went with EDF, but they were with British Gas when I moved in) sparked something in their systems.
I said that they must be incorrect as the account was in (a) in joint names and that (b) for the period in question, I was living elsewhere, and (c) that I had been told that my name was removed from the account when I moved out. After quite a lengthy phone call they told me that the account was IN MY NAME SOLELY and that I was therefore liable and the fact that I was living elsewhere is irrelevant because many people live at more than one address and have more than one utility contract, and that anyway as far as they can tell I was still at that address well after I'd said I had moved. I told them that I was not taking any liability for the debt, and that was the end of things. They were able to give a date for the account being put into my name, which is after I moved out. I certainly never signed anything, or in any other way agreed to this account being transferred into my name. This it the first and only contact I've ever had about this in four years.
I was unaware of this default because I don't use credit - I have my bank account and two credit cards which I've had for years, one for personal expenses, and one for work expenses, and have had the same mobile phone contract for nearly 7 years.
So: I'm now left with liability for a gas and electricity bill of considerable proportions (£1200) for a property I was not living in, and have a default on my credit file.
The other tenants of the house (I have only been able to get hold of two of them) are vague and say they are "pretty sure" that my name was removed and that they "definitely didn't" put it only into my name and that when they moved out they left some of the deposit with the landlord to sort out the last couple of months of bills, as they didn't have final account statements. I am pretty sure that they are being honest, and that it is the landlord who is to blame. The landlord has since sold the property, and I have no way of tracking her down - I've tried the letting agent and they either can't or won't help.
I've read through what I can find on these forums, but unlike Consumer Credit Regulated things, it's not clear what my next step is.
I know I should have made definitely sure that my name was taken off the account and so on, but I didn't, and trusted the other people involved to do this. Easy to say in retrospect. Also a good reason to have some sort of credit file monitoring service.
Can anyone give me some advice, please? I currently don't really see what I can do - and as far as I am aware, even if I fold in to their demands and pay them the money, the default will still be on my credit file. That's not a problem for me at the moment as I have no credit requirements, but I would like to start my own business in the next couple of years, and so can anticipate it being a problem further down the line.
Thanks in advance.
In mid-2009 I moved into a shared house with three other people (friends of friends, not random strangers). The utilities & council tax for the property were registered by the letting agent in our joint names - this was done without consulting any of us; in an ideal world, we would each have taken responsibility for one of the utilities (phone, gas, electricity, water) and had the council tax in joint names, so this was not how we would have liked to have done things. Nevertheless, we agreed that one person (as it happened, the person earning the most money) would take responsibility for paying the bills, and pay those bills by direct debit from his account, and we would pay him a one-quarter share of the bills each month by bank transfer.
This system worked very well, and the bills came each month by post, we all saw the bill, split the payment and transferred him the money.
After six months, I was offered a job in another area, and exercised my six month break on the lease (which the other occupants and the landlord were perfectly OK with), and said that I would find someone to replace me. The other three tenants said that, actually, they would find someone themselves (they had a couple of friends who might be looking for somewhere new 6 to 8 weeks or so after I moved) and just chipped in together to pay me my share of the deposit. I contacted the council to tell them I was moving out, but I was told by the other tenants that they would sort out removing my name from the utilities. Because I was going to be travelling a lot over the next year, I agreed with the other three that my mail would continue to go to the house, and they would forward things on to me when I was back in the country.
All was well.
Recently having been hopping around the country for work, I moved house again, to a more permanent place, and after setting up utilities etc, received a letter from a debt collection company working for British Gas (who also contacted me on my work number a day or so later - I have NO idea how they got this - the only people who would have had it would have been the landlord of the shared property), telling me that they had applied a default to my credit file for unpaid electricity and gas bills at the shared property. I assume that my registration for utilities (I went with EDF, but they were with British Gas when I moved in) sparked something in their systems.
I said that they must be incorrect as the account was in (a) in joint names and that (b) for the period in question, I was living elsewhere, and (c) that I had been told that my name was removed from the account when I moved out. After quite a lengthy phone call they told me that the account was IN MY NAME SOLELY and that I was therefore liable and the fact that I was living elsewhere is irrelevant because many people live at more than one address and have more than one utility contract, and that anyway as far as they can tell I was still at that address well after I'd said I had moved. I told them that I was not taking any liability for the debt, and that was the end of things. They were able to give a date for the account being put into my name, which is after I moved out. I certainly never signed anything, or in any other way agreed to this account being transferred into my name. This it the first and only contact I've ever had about this in four years.
I was unaware of this default because I don't use credit - I have my bank account and two credit cards which I've had for years, one for personal expenses, and one for work expenses, and have had the same mobile phone contract for nearly 7 years.
So: I'm now left with liability for a gas and electricity bill of considerable proportions (£1200) for a property I was not living in, and have a default on my credit file.
The other tenants of the house (I have only been able to get hold of two of them) are vague and say they are "pretty sure" that my name was removed and that they "definitely didn't" put it only into my name and that when they moved out they left some of the deposit with the landlord to sort out the last couple of months of bills, as they didn't have final account statements. I am pretty sure that they are being honest, and that it is the landlord who is to blame. The landlord has since sold the property, and I have no way of tracking her down - I've tried the letting agent and they either can't or won't help.
I've read through what I can find on these forums, but unlike Consumer Credit Regulated things, it's not clear what my next step is.
I know I should have made definitely sure that my name was taken off the account and so on, but I didn't, and trusted the other people involved to do this. Easy to say in retrospect. Also a good reason to have some sort of credit file monitoring service.
Can anyone give me some advice, please? I currently don't really see what I can do - and as far as I am aware, even if I fold in to their demands and pay them the money, the default will still be on my credit file. That's not a problem for me at the moment as I have no credit requirements, but I would like to start my own business in the next couple of years, and so can anticipate it being a problem further down the line.
Thanks in advance.
