debt collection problems

[scotsman]

The following is what has been happening to my mother-in law for over the last year. She had paid them the £122.69 they said they owed her from the second email but now they have called in a debt collection agency and are demanding £882.61. The complaints will not give us a name and will not help with this matter. Any advise appreciated, this is the story so far :-



Past correspondence -

RE: BDOL*******

Dear Mrs *****,

Thank you for contacting Customer Care and please accept our sincere apologies for
any inconvenience caused to you by the delay of our reply.

Further to your cancellation request please contact BT to request ?Return to Donor?
on *********, and if this process is not followed then you will lose your
telephone number and service.

After analysing all your bills we have came to a conclusion that your outstanding
amount is £122.69. You can settle this amount by contacting Customer Service Team or
send me an email with your card details.

If you have any further questions or queries please do not hesitate to contact us
and we will be more than happy to help.

Yours Sincerely,

************
Customer Care Team
*********bulldogbroadband.



Other correspondence -



Customer Care Department
Bulldog Communications Ltd



Dear Sirs,

Customer Ref : BDOL*******

I should have been connected to your service on Wednesday 29.03.06, however on arriving home from work and trying to use my phone, I was unable to make or receive any calls as the line was completely dead (although there appear to be calls during that day). On 30.03.06 I was able to dial out and phoned my sister on **** **** ****, however you will see from the records that I had to make several attempts to call her as the line was extremely bad – it sounded as if it was in a tunnel with someone else speaking and reminded me of the old type party lines where you shared a line and could hear each others calls. Over the next two days it was very difficult to make calls and still sounded like crossed line. I arrived home from work on Monday night 03.04.06 and attempted to make a call out only to discover a bar had been put on my line and I was unable to make any outgoing calls, this lasted for approximately 4 weeks. On contacting the number indicated on the message I was advised that a bill of £689.43 had been run up against my phone line.

After numerous unsuccessful phone calls to several of your staff such as Tesheen Akhter, Michael Mclure and a Sarah in your complaints department along with several calls to your billing department and various call centre staff, I am still no further forward and you have now left a message for me to dispute the bill. I consider this to be a difficult task as you would not provide me with an itemised bill even though you have attempted on to remove the full amount from my bank account on two occasions. Your staff have provide me with various pieces of information such as the engineer who advised there was a problem with the line and it had now been resolved and the member of staff who advised you were investigating an other company who had access to my line for the first 3 days and the staff member who advised that premium rate calls were barred as they had discovered a virus that continually re-dialed these numbers. Several of your staff sympathized and agreed the bill was ridiculous and on more than one occasion I was informed the matter was resolved only to discover this was not the case. I have put my faith in your company to investigate this in an appropriate manner within a reasonable timescale and to keep me updated throughout however you have provided me with no customer service at all.


Due to one of your more helpful members of staff I was advised I could print off my itemised bill from the internet which I have done through my son-in-law’s computer as I am too afraid to connect my brand new P C to your service. There is several numbers I do not recognise, I have highlighted these for your attention. The majority of these disputed calls were made during the day whilst I was at work and I can provide several witnesses to testify this. I leave for work at 7.40am and don’t arrive home until 17.15pm. Regarding the two serious calls in question, the first of the two premium rate calls started at 19.18 pm on the 30.03.06 and lasted 13hours 31 mins which take the call completion to approx 8.49 am and the second premium rate call started at 8.49 am on the 31.03.06. Throughout the first call I would have left for work and the 2nd I would already be in work so I couldn’t possibly have made these calls.

I want written confirmation in writing that this matter has now been resolved and I am not responsible for these ridiculous charges. I will pay for my calls used and will get the standing order set up at the bank again only when this matter is resolved.

You will note that this letter is copied to Mr ******** as I feel I have no alternative but to take my complaint (and plea for help) to the highest level of authority in you company.


Yours in anticipation of a more professional service,


***** *****

Encs

Cc , CEO Bulldog Comunications


26th March 2007

Your phone line: **********

Your account number: BDOL*******

Our reference: CW******

Miss. *******

*******

********

*****

Leeds

G733BY

Dear Miss. ***** *****

Outstanding Amount : 882.61

Plus Interest Pursuant to Section 69 of the County Courts Act 1984

FINAL NOTICE

Despite our client's attempts to contact you to collect monies outstanding from your account for Bulldog Services, they have been unable to do so.

We are therefore instructed by our client Cable & Wireless to issue legal proceedings to collect the outstanding balance on your account.

Failure to respond to this letter may result in the registration of your debt with a central credit bureau, and this will affect your ability to obtain credit in the future.

This may have been an oversight on your part and can be resolved by contacting this office on *********to make payment by debit or credit card. If you are unable to pay this account then contact us to discuss the matter with one of our advisors.

We sincerely hope that further action will not be necessary and look forward to an early response.

Yours sincerely


**********

 

[gcol]

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/

 

[majorwoody]

try this

hth

 

[Softus]

Going to court is a very expensive thing to do for a business, so they will want to avoid it if possible.

Keep talking to them, and be friendly, and you're more likely to get their cooperation in sorting it out.

 

[bernardgreen]

If you are on dial up connection then when you are not on line un-plug the modem from the telephone line to prevent rogue dialling.

One of the commands a rogue dialler will send to the modem is "speaker off" to prevent the user hearing the rogue dialling process.

If you have a cordless phone remember that a "foriegn" handset can use your base station and phone line to make calls. Always un-plug the base unit when away from the house. Security coding reduces but does not eliminate this fraudulent use.

 

[AndersonC]

After analysing all your bills we have came to a conclusion that your outstanding
amount is £122.69. You can settle this amount by contacting Customer Service Team or
send me an email with your card details.

I seem to remember being told to never send financial (card) details via general Email servers as it wasn't a secure communication. If this is still the case they should not be sending letters out asking for card details via Email.

 

[Softus]

I seem to remember being told to never send financial (card) details via general Email servers as it wasn't a secure communication. If this is still the case they should not be sending letters out asking for card details via Email.

Yeah but you can mitigate that risk by sending half the card number in one message and half in a second message.

 

[JohnD]

IIRC, one of the people who was hit with a rogue dialler (which causes your PC to dial a premium rate number, and your telecomms co charges you money, some of which they pass on to the scammer)

wrote to his telecomms co saying that fraudulent use had been made of his phone line, and BT must not pass on any of the money they charged him to the fraudster, otherwise they would be a party to the fraud and so participating in a conspiracy to defraud him.

This is actually a criminal not a civil problem.

Telecomms co.s like to start from the position of saying that all they do is provide the line, and whatever use is made of it is down to the subscriber. The idea that they might be in trouble for participating in a fraud frightens them.

Can't remember where I heard it though. Might have been in the telecomms trade press, might have been in "Which".

Does the person have Legal Expenses as part of their household insurance policy? might help.

 

[bernardgreen]

Look at

http://www.icstis.org.uk

who deal, often very effectively, with premium rate abuse.

 

[Softus]

wrote to his telecomms co saying that fraudulent use had been made of his phone line, and BT must not pass on any of the money they charged him to the fraudster, otherwise they would be a party to the fraud and so participating in a conspiracy to defraud him.

This is masterful. It be also extrapolated, viz:

Since passing on money to the fraudster would be tantamount to participation in the fraud, keeping the money would be profiting from a fraudulent activity, and therefore it's reasonable to decline to give that money to the telephone company. A premium rate call must cost more to implement than other calls, but not much more.

For example, if a premium rate line is charged to the subscriber at £0.50 per minute, and 5p of that is kept by the telco, then that is the amount that the subscriber should pay.

If the bill being claimed is £882, then an offer of £88 attached to an explanation might be reasonable, and it would be a cheap way of bringing the whole mess to an end.

I believe that telcos are obliged to disclose the component charges, so the correct amount can be calculated.