Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

He had to write to VM (Scotland I think he said). VM say it was from 20 years ago when he left Telewest, so it's definitely a debt related to Telewest but (he says) he's never been signed up to them. This all came about when he tried to sign up with VM.

---------- Post added at 15:08 ---------- Previous post was at 15:04 ----------



Fair point, but i'm surprised it wasn't written off years ago, for accounting purposes if nothing else.

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 ----------



Fair point Re: credit risk, but they did say that if he paid it, he could have a VM account, so I don't think there were any other factors involved.

---------- Post added at 15:13 ---------- Previous post was at 15:10 ----------



Unusually, your usual pig ignorant comment has served a purpose on this occasion as it could be an indication that this situation is not that common.

---------- Post added at 15:27 ---------- Previous post was at 15:13 ----------



He does deny any knowledge of this debt, but as you say this could be because he doesn't want to pay it. He might owe it, but have genuinely forgotten about it or VM might indeed have got him mixed up with someone else.

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.