Several years ago I lost my job and therefore couldn't make the minimum payment on my credit card. I rang BC to explain and they were reasonably helpful at first. They told me they could lower the payment, which I still couldn't afford, but told me that was the least they could take. I later found out this was rubbish and rang back to make token payments to show I wasn't trying to ignore/avoid it but just couldn't pay at this time. they quickly added charges to my account and continued to add interest despite me pleading to them to freeze the account as I had long since cut up the card... they wouldn't. After dealing with 3 separate recovery companies, explaining exactly what had happened, the third company then sent an "agent" round to my house, illegally. Luckily for him, my mum answered the door and sent him on his way. I rang the company to let them know what they had done was illegal and that I was going to sue them. A few days later I received a letter saying that the case was closed and I wouldn't hear anything about it, which I didn't, for 2 years. A few weeks ago I got a letter from MKRR saying they were acting on behalf of Barclycard and I owed them £4,518.63. I had spent less than £2000 on the card so the rest is interest and charges which is what I argued about for so long. The thing that is puzzling me is that Barclycard have had my address and contact details for the past 2 years so why has this company only contacted me now? And how does it work if the last company "owned" the debt? Have they sent it back to Bacrlycard or sold it on to another company? I'm currently unemployed (just finished uni) and don't claim any benefits. They are threatening legal action and saying the amount will continue to go up if I don't contact them. Do I still have a case suing the other company for coming to my house illegally? Thank you in advance to anyone that offers help, support or advice.

Hi Tezza, Sorry yes that is a typo... stress doesn't make for good maths lol. Her meter is in the middle actually, I thought it might be an earth but was just checking in case! This is ELECTRIC ONLY I should have pointed that out at first. Her gas is on a card that needs topping up so only the electric is paid for monthly.

Hi everyone. I’m hoping I can get some advice, last time I used this forum, the help I got was great! Anyway, this is regarding a situation that has arisen at my partner’s bedsit with Eon’s electricity supply. I will give a little back ground to this as I feel it necessary. She has not had a reading for 18months (since May2011 till November 2013), so has had estimates ever since up until 4th November when Eon came to take a reading. They have now sent her a back bill of £330. Her normal monthly bill has been £30 at the most, per month, for a period of last year. However since she moved in, almost 2 and a half years ago, the normal monthly bill has been £15-£20… obviously most of these have been estimates that Eon says are based on the average electricity usage of a property that size. She has had 1 letter requesting she is in to allow them to come and take a reading, about 2 months ago, which she tried to arrange but they said they could only come in the day when she is working. At this point she looked for the meter, couldn’t find it and left it to ask me to have a look when I went round. On looking, I couldn’t find it either. In this time Eon came round and took a reading, without our knowledge, then sent the back bill. So we got in touch with the land lord to find out where it is to check the reading and discovered it isn’t actually inside her bedsit but outside the building. When we rang Eon, the guy I spoke to was so unhelpful! He twisted my words and was so stand off-ish that I ended up putting the phone down… the rate for calling them is a joke! Anyway, he told us that they can back bill as long as they like and he wouldn’t tell me the last actual reading date, which seemed very strange. He told us it was our responsibility to get readings and when I told him we didn’t even know where the meter was, because as far as we knew, they should have been coming, he told me that we must have been there to let them in to the property to get a reading on the 4th. It turns out that the meter had been outside so they didn’t need to enter the property. The problem with the back billing is that the amount of electricity they say is being used is a lot. We worked it out at about 10KWh a day, 7 days a week. She works full time so is out from 7:45am to 6:30pm 5 days a week. We have also been on holiday in this time and she travels out of the country back home 4/5 times a year for between 4-7 days so this bumps the daily average up even more. I have done calculations for the appliances that are used for the amount of time they are used and we can only just get to the 10KWh usage on the weekends and that is ONLY if we use a fan heater! Bear in mind most of the year we don’t use the electric heater due to the warmer weather! Eon told her to do her own investigation and only then could they send an engineer out and it not cost (which turns out to be a lie, it will still cost us unless they find something wrong with it which we found out about in the next call to them with the update on our investigation). We kept a track of the other same size, and even bigger, flats in the building while doing our investigation and only 1 of the other 4 on a meter is using anywhere near (about 11KWh a day) but he doesn’t work so is in all day. The others that live a similar time away were using between 2.6KWh and 3KWh per 24hour period. Since we have been keeping track of how much is used, we noticed 2 strange spikes in the usage. One in a period of time where it had been consistently using 3KWh (upon returning home and using the oven, lights, kettle etc.) there was suddenly 7KWh used! This happened again another night when we had previously recorder around 2KWh being used and it jumped to 5KWh! So, here are the questions: Does this sound like a lot of KWh’s for a bedsit considering the amount of time spent out of the property in the week days when there is 1KWh being used by the fridge and freezer (which need leaving on 24/7 obviously). Can we put it to Eon that they haven’t made enough effort to get an actual reading…. Especially now we know they didn’t need access to the property. Is it good practice to put a customer over 10 times their monthly bill in debt? Can they really charge £93 for an engineer to come round and check the meter after our very specific investigation and obvious proves of it might being wrong? If they come and find nothing wrong, puts the bill over £400! Are these spikes in usage normal? If not, surely this should be reason enough for Eon to come and check it. Also, I’m no electrician, but there is a wire that runs from all the other meters in to hers then back out again… a green and yellow one which looks quite recent… We have no idea what tariff this is on, there is no info on the bill and she was never provided with which tariff or even her options… she had no idea you could even have a different tariff! I know this is a LOT of info but we are seriously worried about this. Her bill has gone up to over £40 since she started checking and gave Eon an actual reading last time she called. There is just no way we have £330 to give them for a daily usage of something that just isn’t possible! Thank you in advance

That's great Lee, thank you. I will check every few hours.

Hi Lee. Sorry I hadn't checked and my junk deletes after 7 days! So sorry! Is there any way you could re-send it and I will check for it. Sorry again.

Any news on this yet Lee? I haven't herd from FPC for a while now which is only making me more nervous about what is going on. Thanks again.

Thanks Lee. So glad to finally have contact to someone that understands the situation and isn't just after money. Hope to hear from you soon.

Unfortunately, I didn't record it, just said so to see their reaction. Which, as expected, was un clear! I thought exactly that, I shouldn't have to prove anything. I will wait to see what the team says then decide what to do. Really appreciate your help, I will post the response. Thank you so much

After following the instructions I received the code : WRT135 [#6124097]‏. Hope this is right! Thanks again silverfox

Thanks for the reply silverfox1961. I have since received another letter from FPC saying that I MUST pay the full amount in 7days or I will be taken to court. I rang them back and was told it was Phones 4U that have upgraded my contract so as far as VF is concerned I still have to pay! They were happy to tell me that over the phone but would not put it in writing and when I said I would have the call I had recorded drafted by a solicitor they said I had to pay £10 for the call! They are saying I have to prove VF have not supplied me with a service... which is pretty much impossible really. I will follow the link as you said and HOPE it gets resolved. I am very worried that this is going to end up in me being robbed. Oh and I will not be parting with this contract! Thanks again.

This is my first post, so I do hope I am writing in the correct place. I have a few financial problems in my life currently, due to me going back to university as a mature student. So anyway, I will explain the story up to where I am now and see if anyone has any advice or has suffered the same. I took out an 18month contract on the 11th September 2008. I was fully aware that this would need a months notice at the end of the contract to ensure service was not continued by them. Within 30 days of the end of the contract, I rang to inform them I did not want to continue service. This was when the problem started. I was informed that there would be an early cancellation charge of £500 This was a huge surprise as I knew the date my contract finished. I asked why it was so much when I was informing them of this within their specified time limit. I was then told that I had signed a new contract and there was still 12 months of this new contract left. I obviously contested this and asked for them to send a copy of the contract, which they wouldn't do. I was told to speak to customer service, which turned out to be in Malaysia, and was further told that I must pay the early cancellation fee. I refused to pay this and told them I would not be using the phone again, took the card out and cut it in half. A month later I received a letter informing me my phone had been disconnected due to missing a bill payment and that I must ring them to make a payment. I once again rang to explain and was told that the bill was now £560... even though my monthly contract amount was £45. I once again refused, standing by the contract I had signed and was still in possession of. I then took my contract in to a Vodafone shop and explained to the manager. He was confused so looked on their system, only to find I had no contract on their. Another 3 months passed with no word from them until I received a letter from FPC Debt Collection Services informing me they were acting on behalf of Vodafone. I rang them in the hope I would speak to some one in the UK that might actually understand what I was saying and be able to offer me advice... If only they were so civil!Apart from being spoken to in an incredibly patronizing and sarcastic way, the person I spoke to would not listen to what I was saying. This phone call did throw up some thing I find very disturbing. I was told that I had first signed a NEW contract then after explaining, for the 3rd time, was then told that the original contract I signed was a 26 month contract. This started the alarm bells ringing! I knew for a fact I hadn't, I had a copy of the contract in front of me! I asked for an address to which I could send a copy of the contract to and have since sent a copy to them, highlighting the length of the contract, my name and the price of the monthly plan. I received a letter thanking me for my letter and was told that they would inform me of the outcome, as per my instruction. To which I am still waiting to hear form them. I find it very troubling that if I did not have my original contract there would have been no way of proving I hadn't signed the term they were saying I had. This would of lead to me having to pay over £700 that I do not owe. Does anyone have any guidance/information on where I stand regarding this? The stress this has brought me, not to mention that they have said there is now a marker on my credit recored which should not be there, should not be allowed or go unnoticed Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated, so thank anyone in advance that has taken the time to read my rant.