Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

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.