Paid money under false pretences

[megzmcc1989]

After deciding we were going to buy a house through co ownership (which we have been rejected because of this default) my fiance opened up a credit expert account to find out he had a default with a company called Lowell but with no reference number we had no way of finding out where this was from. About a week later we received a letter saying we owed £162.85 because of an unpaid o2 account. We had thought we had cancelled and paid the early termination fee for this account but having spoke to o2 they can tell us this was not cancelled or paid. We never received anything from o2 to tell us otherwise, as the account was from 2007 they no longer have access to the notes on the account so cannot tell us about any calls made.

We got in touch with Lowell and explained all of this to them and that we wanted to dispute the money owed. After finding out this will take up to 6weeks we decided to exhaust all other ideas before paying the money.

After speaking to several different customer service advisors we got one who was actually willing to listen to our problem. We explained that we wanted to pay the money but because of no prior knowledge of the money we wanted to put a correction on my fiances credit report but we needed something to back this up. After explaining to this advisor that on top of a letter saying we paid the money we needed another letter saying that they posted out letters but we never received them and that the letter we did receive we paid in full. He said he would speak to his manager and having been on hold for a while we assumed he was confirming this. After he came back he said this was fine with his manager and I then asked could he email them and he said yes again after confirming with his manager.

We paid the money and only got the email saying the money had been paid but not the second email saying what we had agreed. When we rang back to ask if we were going to receive this email the advisor then told us (after promising us this email if we paid and supposedly confirming this with his manager) that 'they were not allowed to do that'.

Now we feel cheated because we were going to dispute the money owed but decided to pay it to save time as we only have 10 days to appeal the decision of co ownership (thursday 22/9/11) and thought we were going to get the letter to back up a correction we were going to put on my fiances credit report.

I then rang back and requested to speak to the manager who was able to tell me they only bought the account in 2009 but the other advisors had told us they had been posting letters from 2008. She also told that someone told them that my fiance had moved from his mothers address, after speaking to his mother and two brothers (the only people living at this address) no one spoke to this company to confirm this.

She told me she would investigate into the call and what we were promised to see what resolution she could offer, I told her the only one would be what we were promised.

We feel cheated because we paid the money under false pretences and disappointed that a company has to lower themselves to such lies to get money. Not to mention the stress this whole situation has brought onto us. We never knew about the money or it would have been paid years ago!

Is there anything we can do? The supervisor is ringing me on 19/9/11 with the resolution and if it isn't what we were promised, is there anything I can do or say to get what we were promised?

[bednobs]

how would lowell be able to state that 02 never sent you bills?

[boxtops]

Presumably if Lowells have bought the debt off O2, then they will have been handed all your file on this matter, so they will have all the correspondence (or at the very least, a note of the date when reminders were sent, and to which address). If you really want to pursue it further, you need to ask to see that evidence.
All you want to know is that your debt is cleared - if you apply for a copy of your own credit rating reports (OH will have to do his own) then the cleared debt should show up on the report. If it doesn't, you can write to Experian (or whoever provides your report) to get it changed.

[megzmcc1989]

it was Lowells that never sent us letters and to be fair we never received anything from o2 either, there was never any more money requested from the OHs back account and so no more bills were received (I have cancelled a contract before too and I know they don't send a confirmation letter). We were able to receive everything else except their post which seems a bit funny to me... the customer advisors told us they had posted letters out from 2007 but the team leader told us they only bought the account off another company in 2009... doesn't quite add up!!

I will see what the team leader comes back with on Monday for us - if she doesn't offer us what we were promised by one of her team members we will ask for a written apology like Joko suggested and they will supply evidence unwittingly.

Thanks for all the advice guys... much appreciated :)

[pink-kittens]

was it these?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...debts_not_always.html

[pink-kittens]

almost exactly the same story but with 3 not o2

[megzmcc1989]

That was the exact story we found... it's like the fourth or fifth thing that appears when you google Lowell!!

[pink-kittens]

If you read them why, oh why did you pay up?

It's not just this company that do this, many are doing the same. And some of the people debt collectors have done this too have posted here
I'm not saying you dont owe the money, not at all, but there are some seriously dubious debts being collected

[megzmcc1989]

We never saw it until after we had paid up. Stupid I know, we should have researched them first... it was also because we were on a time limit, we only had until this Thursday to get it sorted but they were going to take up to 6 weeks to dispute and with never having been in a situation anything like this we didn't really handle it right but when we were promised what we wanted we thought we were going to get it.

I will put the correction on his credit report and appeal the decision of co ownership anyway and explain the situation and just keep our fingers crossed that they don't ask for the back up which we were promised but never got.

We do feel really stupid but most of all feel cheated and let down, we are to trusting and in all honesty, I think that's what happened and we certainly got our eyes opened!!!!

[megzmcc1989]

I rang back tonight to find out that it has 'escalated to complaints' Hope this is a good thing!!