Please PLEASE can someone offer me some advice. I have had a small business account with British Gas for over 10 years. In 2010 I received an invoice from BG for several thousand pounds saying that my bills had been estimated for several years and here was a bill for what I owed them. Up until this point I always paid the bills they sent me and un be known (yes I agree this was my fault for not reading the bills properly) I hadnt realised they were estimated The recession had hit however and I was unable to pay this HUGE bill so I contacted BG. My turnover fell to £14k! It was really bad. This took several months of backwards and forwards between us to sort out and their "Special Credit Solutions Team" allocated me my own account manager and they agreed for monthly repayments. This amount they agreed was the minimum amount they would accept and I was bullied into agreeing to repay at this amount. I wasnt asked to produce or prove my zero income and my lack of work. These payments started, but then I stumbled 6 months later due to lack of work and monies. I contacted my account manager who said not to worry they would sort it and get back to me. They asked me for an up to date meter reading which I gave and they explained they would sort it. This didnt happen. I then received a notice of disconnection and called BG again. They repeatably said "Dont Worry" ignore the letter and they would sort it. Next I find that they have a Warrant, entered my premises at 5:00pm on a Friday evening, changed the locks and left me with a note to contact for new keys and another bill. This contact number went through to an telephone number that was unmanned. As we had work to carry out over that weekend we called a locksmith who changed our locks so that we could then gain access. I called BG on the Monday morning discussed this and the ongoing issue with their Warrant Dept who said that they would speak to "Special Credit Solutions Team" and get back to me. I was asked if I would like to file a complaint and I said yes and was given a Reference number for the complaint. I was told the complaint procedure could take up to 8 weeks for me to get a response but in the meantime they would get the Special Solutions Team to contact me and sort it out. I outlined that I was told to ignore the letter to disconnect my gas and that my account manager said they would sort it and get back to me. I also explain to the Warrant Dept that I have queeried if my meter was faulty because the offices were unmanned and had been for several years. There were no staff present on site and I was not happy with why my meter readings were this amount when I had not been working there at all. I asked if my meter could be looked at. I was told they would have to check to see where the meter was and that were not sure if they still had it. Nothing happened and I heard nothing. I called again at the beginning of May and the Warrant team said they would get my account manager to contact me and sort this out. Again I heard nothing A month later I email them and am told "I will look into this for you and reply as soon as I can. It is in the hands of a manager, please be reassured that we are dealing with your account." And again I still hear nothing. Then I receive a letter and several answerphone messages from a debt collection agency threatening me and then two weeks later I've received a formal demand for payment. By now another £500 has been added as administration fees! So, I'm writing to ask what I should do. As far as I'm concerned I filed a complaint with BG. I've had no response. I've had no letters, email, or telephone calls from them. They then appear to have passed this over for collection, even though I am told that this was being sorted by their Special Credit Solutions Team. Can I contact the Ombusman about this case, or do I file another complaint with BG? I need to get this sorted as we have no gas on the premises. (This happened back in April) I would like my meter testing but they dont know if they still have it, and havent let me know when they said they would. Look forward to some advice PLEASE

Hello I was supposed to sign on yesterday however I was laid out with a full blown migraine I got my mum to ring up for me however she could not get through to the actual jobcentre after many attempts of ringing the 0845 number If I was to go in and ask for the JSA28 form tomorrow would that prevent me from being sanctioned? Will it be okay that I did not make contact on the day? Cheers, Mike

All You Need, Ambrose Wilson, Classic Confidence, Classic Detail, Comfortably Yours, Country Garden, Crazy Clearance, Discount World, Fashion World, Fabrici, Fifty Plus, Heather Valley, High and Mighty, Home Essentials, Home Shopping Direct, House of Bath, Inspirational Home, Jacamo, Julipa, Marisota, Naturally Close, Nightingales, Oxendales, Premier Man, Selections, Shapely Figures, Shoe Tailor, Simply Be, Simply Yours, That's My Style, The Brilliant Gift Shop, Special Collection, The Value Catalogue, Trading Post, Viva La Diva, Williams Registered Address J D Williams & Company Limited, Registered Office: Griffin House, 40 Lever Street, Manchester, M60 6ES. Registered in England. No 00178367.

Hi I currently have mortgage arrears and have a court order for suspension of eviction in place where i have to pay extra each month. In December my payment was a bit late but it has been made, I have received a letter, dated 24.12.2013, from my mortgage company that they have passed my details to a company called Ascent Contact. This company have now visited my home and left a letter asking me to contact them to "discuss my arrears". the letter states there is a charge of £70+vat if I meet them, if i refuse to meet them a charge of £40+vat will be debited to my loan to cover the costs involved in offering this service, at which point the mortgage company will have little alternative but to progress legal action!! On the letter it says "At the meeting we will discuss your current financial position and, hopefully, be able to put in place affordable payment proposals with the lender based on your circumstances. This is an excellent opportunity for you to find out what solutions are available to assist you". I don't know what to do about this as I feel i've been to court and given them all my I&E details and feel that there is some sort of ulterior motive on the part of the mortgage company. Any advice will be gratefully received

Hi folks, new to the site and looking for any advice on how to deal with Mitcheldean Collections/Contact centre. A little while back I received a letter from them stating they were seeking repayment of £881.82p of unpaid crisis loans, dating from 2000 to around 2003( when I then had a partner and her 2 kids whom I was claiming for as a couple). The bug bear for me with this claim is that several large amounts are not, rightly in my mind, for repayment as we were at the time 'told' to claim crisis loans to the amount of out Income Support at the time. Which was £180 a fortnight. after receiveing the letter I called them, and asked for all the dates in question to be sent to me. I in turn sent these letter to an 'apparent' office in Clyebank asking for details of all my signing on dates to be confirmed as well as receipt of payment by Giro cheque. This I know they must have as I was told back then that it would take 11 weeks minum to process any lost cheques. These never turned up. There are payments on there which I wouldnt mind paying back ( although a part of me stupidly asks that if they knew I couldnt pay it all back then...why give it to me at all????). Can anyone help or have advice on this. Much apprecieted in advance

Hi Caggers had a look around about Oakam and didn't really find much. Posting this on behalf of the in laws, they had a loan with these people, being OAPs and rising costs they couldn't afford the repayments of about £67 a week (yes I know). I did them a letter back in June with a repayment offer but this just increased the amount of phone calls they got. Then out of the blue after 5 months they got a Default Notice letter. Now from personal experience it doesn't look like a default notice and they refer to another letter that was previously sent to the in laws that was never received. This letter I'm taking for granted would have had the Loan Amount, Default Amount and you have 28 days from this letter to sort out before we issue a DN. Now should I ignore the DN and get a SAR into Oakam for them or challenge the DN so they can reissue it correctly. The letter also said 14 days and its passed to the Debt Collectors, not that I'm bothered and I've told my in laws not to worry if this happens either. I'd just like to know the next best step as reading one of the posts on here, I think my mother in law would have a fatal heart attack if she got a letter via the post asking for 159 grand. Any help as always is much appreciated. PM

I need some help and advice for a work-related problem. This one is quite the reverse to the usual scenario whereby the employer is constantly contacting an employee on long-term sick leave. I work for a large company and have been off work for over twelve months because of ill-health , during this time I have kept in contact with the company through the payroll office on a regular basis by telephone and email to ensure that I was paid. Having been off for so long I have used up all my sick leave and long service leave and have only been getting paid one day per month through annual leave days which I have accrued over the time I have been off. Without any forewarning the company now have not paid me for the last 4 weeks even though I have sent them sick leave forms and doctors certificates and well as annual leave forms. Not once during the entire 15 months I have been off has anyone from any level of management contacted me to inquire when and if I was returning to work, did I need any assistance?, could I perform other duties?, could they do anything to help me?. I have been with the company for over 20 years and my employment record is solid with no black marks of any description on my record. If any anyone can offer any advice on how I should proceed from here that would be greatly appreciated.

help, I've got an overdraft with Natwest bank, we were ok paying it back slowly however my wife's hours reduced drastically at work and I'm self employed, work dropped to nothing over the past couple of years and put us in a situation, we tried to struggle on paying one bill leaving another situation until it came to a head and we contacted a specialist debt management firm, they took all of our details, the debts and sorted it out pretty much, sadly when comes to this it seems Natwest stick their head in the sand and ignore any/all contact from the DMF! Now we've had a letter from Triton DCA, we duly sent it to the firm dealing with it as they hold all our records, they have responded however Triton have ignored this and now a letter has arrived today stating they've advised Natwest to go to county court, all the things to happen, etc etc, I feel it's a threatening letter to say the least but it's quite simple, I can't pay with what I don't have, we went through all our income/outgoings with the DMF and we give them every penny we can do monthly to try to sort things out, we had two catalogues, Natwest bank and CC and a small OD with Barclays (whom are also ignoring contact), my wife had a Barclaycard. is this a bank thing, the two catalogues have instantly agreed to payments as did Barclaycard instantly but Natwest with the OD and CC are ignoring any contact from the DMF and I feel have passed it on to threatening DCA when they've got nowhere themselves, we've sent ALL letters to the DMF and they have copies of the letters sent to Natwest/Triton! I want to send a simple letter, stating simply 'this matter is in the hands of X, please contact them for further details on the matter' kind of thing, send it recorded so I can prove, if it ends up in court that we and indeed our DMF have attempted to sort this out with them before a CC happens! My credit rating is shot anyway thanks to going into a DMP so that's not particularly an issue for me, a CCJ would be discharged over time I know if it came to it, I've accepted that, long term anyway will do me good to be uneligible for credit, it's more the threatening tone throughout the whole letter and specifically their lies that they have had NO contact when they have that's getting to me! Our DMF has told us before that if we feel we wish to that we can send a simple letter stating we are registered with a DMF whom are dealing with all our financial circumstances and debts but I'm not good with written word really so was wondering if anyone has a template to use that says back off, you have had contact, we are registered with a DMF whom you are ignoring, all this information will be brought to court should it go that far, I'm not ignoring the debt, I am willing to pay it when I can, I accept it's my debt and it's to pay but I thought by going with a DMF whom have sent them the nomimal £1 a month until they sort thing that they would accept knowing if we've gone to a DMF we've obviously not got the cash to hand!

Basically I took out a loan with mini credit a last year november time and defaulted. At the time they were hounding me and took several small payments from my account. But they suddenly stopped all contact, stopped taking payments and have blocked my account. Where do i stand with this? Ive sorted out my payday loan hell now all bar these cowboys and dont want it returning to bite me in a few months time. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Vinnie

hi all just had a call from my boss. .stating she had a call from mmf going to visit her home. ..she told them I don't live there. .was really embarrassed. ..can they do this ..i felt sick knowing they contact her and am being bullied daily by them. ..Im on jobseekers have arrears with my rent ..so all I have is going to them.. .anyadvice. .my boss is really understanding. .but this should not be allowed..

Hello. I've started on a PPI campaign but have absolutely no records of account numbers so I'm just sending SARs to the credit card companies I remember dealing with. Problem is, some of these companies seem to have had their credit card arm bought out by other companies since my accounts were closed so who do I contact? For example I had an Associates card & a Providian card. Now I don't know what happened to Associates but I do know that Barclaycard bought Providian (after Providian became Monument) but that was after my account was terminated so Barclayclard won't have any record of me, right?

This is a follow on from thread 399587 - as suggested in there. http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?399587-DCA-s-stopped-contacting-me-want-to-set-up-some-form-of-plan-though. Moorcroft were chasing for £400 (error in previous thread, I said £260 - as I'm sure thats the amount asked for in a previous letter.. Yet my Credit Record says £400. ) regarding a PDL taken out at the dreaded W-word. This was taken out 30/04/2012; and then defaulted on 07/08/2012. Moorcroft began attempting to recover this around December or so, and sent out the usual scare-mail, but stopped around March. Since then I haven't heard anything, and I have had a sharp decrease in the amount of phone-calls I've ignored. (If I don't recognise the number, I don't answer.) Surprisingly, simply ignoring them appeared to have put a spanner in the works, and they've stopped chasing it. As circumstances have changed, I've decided to try and put it right, if only to prevent any further action - and perhaps getting the balance down (considering it's reported on my CR as outstanding debt). It will also stop this from hanging over my head and I can stop fearing them coming after me at any time, of having a bad letter in the post or a knock on the door. It's doing my head in a bit to be quite honest with you. My main concerns are: Have they even got the debt or have they sold it on? Are they going to play games when I'm genuinely coming forward to put an end to this situation? If I let sleeping dogs lie, whats the worst case scenario? Essentially I'd like to open contact with whomever owns this debt and: Confirm they are in possession of the debt. (CCA Request?) Confirm that they haven't sold the debt. (SAR?) Confirm that upon paying off the account that they will report the account as settled at £0 to relevant CRAs and provide me with a valid receipt/letter confirming the status of the account (i.e settled. I will ask for this in writing prior to making the first payment?) Is there anything wrong with this idea? If so, who should I contact - the original creditor or the last known collections agency? (I'm guessing the OC!) Are they likely to confirm these things in a reasonable manner, or am I going to have to go the route of "In accordance with OFT guidelines, until I have the requested information it's a deceptive and/or unfair business practice to commence collections activity" and so on?

I just wondered how all these companies work after you've paid off a loan, I know someone that's had a few with Wonga, all repaid on time, they tell me they have not had any kind of attempt by Wonga to contact them again, either by e-mail, snail mail, text or phone calls. I doubt this is the norm.

Hi my son bought some tickets and paid for signed for delivery from Ticketmaster, the concert is tomorrow night no tickets have arrived and we can't get through on the phone and actually talk to a person and can't find an email address anywhere. He has called the venue and they won't accept his invoice if he prints it off... Any idea of what he can do?

I had a business account with NW and recently sent them a SAR (and £10 cheque) which they received on 16th August now well in excess of their 40 day requirement I have also now sent them the letter before court action, time period also expired without any contact. Wherer do I go from here?

Perfect Homes is a trading style of Temple Finance Limited. Registered office is; The Lodge, Coleshill Manor, Coleshill, West Midlands B46 1DL Consumer credit licence-this is actually listed as Temple retail Ltd. Licence Number:0609601 Licence Status:Current Business Name Company Registration Number Temple Retail Limited 5981917 Categories: Consumer credit Consumer hire Credit brokerage Right To Canvass Off Trade Premises:Yes Trading Name(s) (Current): Perfect Home Issued Date: 30-Nov-2007 Expiry Date: 30-Nov-2012 Current Individuals that run the organisation: Alaric Michael Smith James Roy Clark Michael John Sweetland Michael William Cooper Current Address(es): Correspondence The Lodge, Coleshill Manor, Coleshill, BIRMINGHAM, B46 1DL Principal Place Of Business The Lodge, Coleshill Manor, Coleshill, BIRMINGHAM, B46 1DL Registered Office The Lodge, Coleshill Manor, Coleshill, BIRMINGHAM, B46 1DL

Hi, like many others i cant cancel my membership for lifestyle fitness(in stoke on trent) i am 5 months into a year contract but have been sacked from my part time job(i am a student) and have no income.. the phone number i have been given just puts you on hold for hrs. i want to write them a letter stating my intentions but cannot find an address, all the gym will give me is the phone number which noone answers.please help(first post so be gentle)

Hi, Hope I have posted this in the right place. I have been receiving ESA for a while now. I have had my ATOS assessment but I still have not heard a decision. However, I now have new information they need to know to support my decision, which is very important as it means I am no longer allowed to take my medication. I have rang several numbers and been sent round and round in circles. ATOS told me there is nothing I can do now until I receive their decision, but I don't want to have to wait for that, then appeal (which I will probably have to) and wait again, as we really are struggling money wise and I am unable to eat properly, so that extra bit of money added to my ESA would make all the difference. I can't find a telephone number or even an address to contact the DWP about my situation, does anyone have this information that they can share with me please? I can't believe how difficult things are.

Hi fellow caggers Does anyone have the direct telephone number of MBNA PPI claims line I found this 0800 08451409 on a thread here but the number is not in use now. I've also tried the Bank Of America line and was just put on hold after asking to be put through to the PPI department..........figures!!!! Am I being realist in trying to phone them to chase up my PPI miss sold claim or would it be wiser to write to them. To be honest FOS have been handling this case for me and they just keep asking me to wait, it's been going on for almost two years now. Fos gave them till 6th December to respond to their findings of upholding the complaint. Lola xx

Could someone tell me where on this site to find bank contact details (Santander and EGG). There used to be an easily accessible list in "bank charge" days gone-by. regards Splitty

I CCA'd my 2 accounts with NDR, both was valid, now ive sent a letter asking them to freeze interest and charges and accept £10 a month (for a 12 month period), they replied with 'it doesnt reach their minimum payment' and they wont freeze charges and interest. is there a follow up letter for once they refuse? I saw one before but cant find it now not sure if it was on this site tho. They also said if I dont get upto date they will forward onto a 3rd party - which i wouldnt mind, they wouldnt be able to add charges, and would probably agree to a lower payment. But I also recieved a letter saying it would go to court, wish they'd make up their mind!

I use Accueview Moist daily disposables. I have seven contact lens holders and starting with one pair of lenses I use them for a day and then store them in a holder using Tesco or equivalent saline solution. I continue to use a pair a day until all seven holders have been used and then use pair one again. It helps if you put numbers on the holders with indelible ink. I then continue to rotate the lenses and in this way one pair will last me approximately seven uses. The number of time may vary, sometime a pair may only be used twice and may then feel 'gritty' and have to be discarded because they've been used in dusty conditions (or whatever) but others may last longer than 7 days. I've been doing this for many years now without problem, and the (obvious) secret is absolute cleanliness and disinfecting the holders once they have finished their cycle. In this way a month's supply will last me six to seven nonths.

Hi all, Would someone please provide me with names/addresses for Currys or 'Whatever Happens'. In particular the contact details of the C.E.O would be good. I have tried dealing with Gary Perryment, but to no avail. He WON'T reply to emails or letters. I am going to send a LBA requesting their initial engineers report on an item returned to me after they refused to repair it under WH. I will also be requesting a copy of the report from H.M Investiagtions. I will need this as evidence in court. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks to all in advance.

I am in the process of making a claim with tesco credit card under section 75 CCA and have written to them several times since November and not had even an acknowledgement!!! of any of my letters. Now you can contact them by phone, which I tried, using my mobile which is all I have, and cost me about £8 just to get through all the auto speak, to be told, put in writing? and we will get back to you! Apparently there is no email address or one that they will give out, unless somebody knows otherwise? Dealt with banks, most have email contact, but never hit a stone wall like this before. Any ideas?

Hi Everyone! The builders who conducted my house renovation in 2010 cleared off without finishing it. I could never get them to return & they have since gone bankrupt. Clearly they have started up again under a different name I now have water ingress into my living room, destroying the oak floor. The waterproofing specialist who was involved with the job says it is due the builders not building the wall / floor interface correctly and possibly a leak in the DPM. Looking at the damage, he seems to make sense. As the builders are bankrupt I'm lead to believe the NHBC can help but I'm struggling to find a suitable contact number. I'd appreciate anyone's help / advice! Regards Pete