Advice for a strange problem

Dacelonid · 05-02-2012 6:23pm #1

This is a story about my mother and her recent troubles with a Telecom provider. I won't say which, or for what services as it doesn't matter

My mother switched provider a few years ago and every month received her bill as normal. And every month it showed the previous month bill had been paid, this has been going on for 2 years or more.
Then last October (2011) she received a phone call from the provider asking her to confirm her bank details. Having trained her well, she got their name and a case number then hung up and rang them directly and got put through to the same person. She confirmed her details and the customer service person said, yep those are the details we have.

In November (2011) then her monthly bill was for two months (September and October I guess). She rang up again and was told someone would ring her back. They never did. She rang again and was told her direct debit was cancelled. She requested to know who cancelled it as she never did. They couldn't give out that information. So she got put through to their data protection department. As of today, she is still waiting to hear back from them.

In December her bill was for €1000. As you can imagine she was distraught at that. Rang up, and nobody could tell her why. Neither could they help with the previous request for information regarding direct debit. Was told they would ring her back. Surprise surprise, they never did.

Into January and she rang again because another bill of more than €1000 arrived. Rang again. Was told she would have to pay the full amount. She asked where the hell that amount came from. The customer service guy basically accused her of giving the wrong direct debit details originally. She again confirmed the direct debit details with them. They requested that she pay €96 a week to clear it. She refused, because in her own words, I am out of work and my husband is on a pension, how to you expect me to pay that.

So next she got onto ComReg and they advised her to open a formal complaint. She did and then heard back from them.
It turns out somehow that someone else has been paying money to them and it has been credited to my mothers account. They had to pay all that money back to that person and are now chasing my mother for the money she owes.

She does not deny that she owes the money, neither is she unwilling to pay it back, she also accepts that it was her mistake not to check that the money was actually leaving her bank account. But as she said herself, the bills were showing as paid, so she had no reason to check.

So she doesn't deny that she owes them this money however she will not be bullied into paying it back at a rate that she cannot afford. She has been threatened with selling the debt to a debt collection agency. Also I guess her credit rating will be fecked.
She has offered to pay it back at a rate that she can afford, but they won't accept it. As far as I can see, they are tarnishing her name with their mistake and are unwilling to come to some sort of arrangement.

Is there anything in consumer law that can help her out. Either to tell them to accept a payment that she can afford, or something to force them to accept their part in this. I (and her) am not looking for something that means "she will get away with it" (although that would be great), we are just looking for something to stop them bullying her.

Thanks

dudara · 05-02-2012 6:31pm

This cannot affect her credit rating with the ICB - only financial institutions can influence that.

What she needs to do is make an offer in writing to them, outlining how much she can afford to repay each week/month. It should be a reasonable offer but not place her under any undue pressure either.

Then she should start paying the money, irrespective of whether they accept or not.

foggy_lad · 05-02-2012 6:41pm

The company can't sell the debt to any other company as your mother's contract is with them and she does not have to deal with any other company. Her credit rating can't be touched unless the company is registered with the Irish Credit bureau and since they only deal with financial lending institutions this is unlikely.

She should pay what she can afford each week(obviously a few € a week is just being childish!) even though there is no agreement in place! If the company are not happy with that they may take her to court seeking a judgement against her, but in this case the fact that she would have a record of regular payments would indicate a willingness to pay and may sway any decision in her favour.

Gillo · 05-02-2012 9:17pm

As the other posters said, get her to write to them and offer to pay what she can afford. While going from what you said they won't accept that, she should still pay this weekly or monthly amount so at least if it was ever brought to court she can show that she is making an effort.

Maybe I am misunderstanding the post but did she never query that she wasn't paying a monthly amount out of her bank account?

Dacelonid · 06-02-2012 10:09am

Thanks for the advice so far. That is what I will get her to do.

Gillo wrote: »

Maybe I am misunderstanding the post but did she never query that she wasn't paying a monthly amount out of her bank account?

As regards this, each bill indicated that the previous bill had been paid, so there was no need for her to check that it had in fact been paid.
She doesn't have internet banking, so would just get her statements from the bank every so often, and as I said, there was no reason for her to go looking for the bill being paid.
She does realise now that she made a mistake in not checking it.