VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
Someone has tried to sign up to VM & been told that they cannot do so until a debt to Telewest of £64 is paid. He denies he's ever been with Telewest and VM say that the debt is so old that they no longer have any further details. It's not really a problem as the debt will now be statute barred & he simply got his partner to sign up instead.
Is this practice of trying to recover old debts new as i've not heard of this before? As a private company VM are free to refuse service to anybody they choose (except in limited circumstances), but if it were me i'd be questioning the legality of this given that they only have very flimsy evidence, yet were accusing me of owing money. In the past debt collection agencies have come a cropper when trying to do this. It does seem an odd business decision to jeopardise at least 18 monthly payments for the sake of £64 though. If he genuinely didn't owe it (or did & simply didn't want to pay it) they still wouldn't get their money & have lost 18 months worth of revenue! I have come across cases where Sky have written off trivial amounts so that returning customers can start afresh and enable Sky to raise far more than the original debt too. |
Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
They're not chasing after an old debt in general, but if somebody has arrears with a company, it's not unreasonable for them to ask for that debt to be cleared before signing up with them, again.
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Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
What a load of typical B/S from you again.
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Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
So somebody should continually be able to run up a debt with business X, and keep expecting to sign up with them again, and ignore any previous debt? It's a pre-condition for signing up with them, again. Otherwise they won't chase it.
Not many businesses would do any different. |
Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
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It also depends what else is on their credit score - if they have other missed/late payments for other utilities/credit cards/loans, this will lower the overall credit rating - it's very rarely decided on one "negative" action. Do you have a link to this story, please? |
Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
I think it's fair enough to refuse a service to someone who historically owes you money.
I used to work part-time for a company that collected debts for various companies and from my experience the majority of the people we visited denied owing anything and insisted the company was in the wrong. Strange how very often they 'wrongly' owed money to lots of different companies who all must have got their records messed up. I suppose it's just like the majority of people in prison are innocent too! |
Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
Oh dear, Richard.
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Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
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Something dating back to Telewest most certainly will have been removed from the Credit Scores years ago My main issue with this story is how something dating back so far is still on record GDPR states "any personal data must not be kept any longer than it is necessary for the purpose for which the personal data is processed" I would quest the number of years passed since Telewest existed that this term has been breached 14 years have passed since Telewest ceased trading |
Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
Of course, this is all hearsay, anyway, from a source that usually provides less than full information.
How long ago? No information. Was it really Telewest? Maybe but perhaps just a vague recollection. I still sometimes refer to Telewest but have no idea when it changed to NTL then Virgin Media. |
Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
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Thanks for the clarification. Some good info here. https://www.creditangel.co.uk/help/h...-credit-report |
Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
It's not about a credit file. It's about a debt with a company they're trying to do business with again. No suggestion of debt collectors appearing on the doorstep, just a pre-condition for signing up again.
Eg A hotel is not going to let you stay again, until you've settled a previous bill. You could try another hotel, just not the same one again. |
Re: VM trying to collect old Telewest debt.
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When I worked in housing, if rent arrears hadn't been paid and the former tenant hadn't been traced after so long, the debt would have been written off. Otherwise the councils total rent arrears would look bad as it was inflated with debt that was unlikely to ever be repaid. ---------- Post added at 15:10 ---------- Previous post was at 15:08 ---------- Quote:
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He did ask about a subject assess request, but the VM staff said that they had no other information other than what he had given him eg the original invoice. My main concern isn't about this particular individual though, but the fact that any of us can, on the face of it, be accused of owing money based upon very flimsy & very old information with no way of challenging it! There used to be a PPV service on Sky that went bust called U>Direct. Years later a debt collection company bought their outstanding customer debts, again with very little information about how these debts arose. From what I remember they either had to be written off or were unenforceable because of this. |
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