So I received this letter.I contacted the ACI company with the phone number on their actual website as I initially thought it’s a scam.
The debt mentioned is supposedly from a place i lived at 4 years ago and I had the electricity on a top up meter with a key.
How did I manage to end up in debt when my electricity would get cut off every time I ran out of money on the key.
I asked them for proof and they said they can only provide it if they go through their legal team first.
I have contacted ScottishPower twice and they have no information about this and I never made a contract with them.
The debt company is asking me for proof of address which I don’t have due to personal circumstances at that time.
Anyone else dealt with this and can shed some light on it?
Am I responsible for the debt even though I know it couldn’t have been possible to end up in debt.
The person i spoke on the phone with wasn’t really helpful at all, said he will stop contact for a week and then try again.
[https://imgur.com/a/aHzqXAx](https://imgur.com/a/aHzqXAx)
7 comments
Seems to be a few of these Scottish Power prepayment fuck ups around recently.
I’d phone them back, tell them to provide their proof of the debt and until they do so any further contact will be considered harassment and forwarded to the police. It’s not up to you to prove it, it’s their job.
>How did I manage to end up in debt when my electricity would get cut off every time I ran out of money on the key.
You continue to accrue the standing charge even when service has been suspended owing to insufficient credit on the meter.
Also, when you are using emergency credit you still accrue the standing charge but it isn’t deducted from the emergency credit.
When you top up the meter after having had service suspended due to lack of credit on your prepayment meter, it only puts a part of the amount by which the meter has been topped up toward clearing any debt on the meter.
If your service was frequently being cut-off due to having no money on the key (as your post implies) then some combination of the above may possibly explain why you might have ended up owing a debt to Scottish Power. Of course, Scottish Power could just have been their usual incompetent and/or shitty selves and you’re being chased for a non-existent debt…
It’s just a threat, these companies buy debt for pennies on the pound and it gets passed between all of them, they’ll harass so many people with the hope some of them will pay out of fear.
I wouldn’t even respond. Get the original provider to send you confirmation via email or letter then if they try to mark your credit score go scorched earth.
These businesses are scum and owned by greedy immoral bastards.
Its a civil case. Let them “take you to court”. Give them one letter in writing saying if they push forward with an incorrect CCJ you will go for harassment compensation and leave it at that.
or as Homer said – Which debt firm you gonna use? OmniThreat, InstaThug? I’ve beaten them all!
I had this happen a few years ago.
Pre-payment meter in credit when i moved in, in credit when i moved out, never went into emergency funds.
Maybe a year or so after i moved got a letter from a collection agency demanding payment for an overdue debt “on behalf of” Scottish Power.
Contacted them via email so i would have a record of every response and asked for the bill.
And it being an SP bill, it was a mess.
The bill covered periods i wasn’t at the property, and had a second meter in the property being billed for standing charges only, no record of usage of any type on it.
Told them i was disputing the bill, would have disputed it if it had been sent direct to me by SP, that i wasn’t paying anything and they’d have to go back to their ‘client’ and request clarification on the problems noted on the bill.
They tried to wriggle out of it by claiming in a later letter that i had failed to respond within their noted timeframe, with some vague threats of court action attached.
But i had all the emails. And made them aware i had all the emails. Then made a complaint to the ombudsman about their failure to comply with regs.
Havn’t heard anything since about it.
Collection agencies are bottom feeders, they’ll lie and connive, browbeat and gaslight if it means they’ll get something, even when they’re not due anything.
Make all contacts in writing.
If you genuinely owe them something, offer them half.
This sounds like a scam dude, phone scottish power directly on their own number from their own website.
This happened to us for a property sold ~9 years before.
Firstly, we denied the debt while we worked out what had happened.
Turned out the power company didn’t deregister the key meter from our names, although they were instructed to close the account on the first house when creating the second account at the new house.
This meant the customers at the old house paid for hydro using a meter in our name for 9 years. Eventually, they sold the house to someone who switched to direct debit. They refuted the £200 of negative balance built up via standing charge kicking the whole process of attempting to reclaim the money from us.
It took about a year to sort. Numerous phonecalls to the collections agency and power company. Ended up going to the ombudsman, who eventually sorted the mess.