electricity charges & property ownership

[easwara]

we recently bought a house hoever the owner died before the house was written over to us. anyways we started renting out the house etc, and it has been a few years. we never lived in the house but rented it out for around 5 years. after a few years we got a water bill to our own home address stating that the address we have given for rent owes water charges of �1000. after ringing them up it turned out part of the charges were from the previous owners, and the remainig charges were from the tenats we had living there. however since a few years had passed, it turned out the numerous tenants had not recieved an water bills and so had not paid it and the current tenants had supplied the water company with our home address. i spoke to the water company who said that if i provide tenancy agreements of all the tenants that have lived there since we bought the property then they will close the account on us and chase up the tenants. we did so and was told the accounts closed on us. after several months we got a bill again for the property ands wen i rung up they said it wasnt closed and want to see whehn we bought the property. we explained to them we dont have deeds as the person died before handing over the deeds to us and their sons arent writing over the property ethier. anyways they keep sending us the bill even after explaining it to them. at one point we said, we'll technically we dont own the property so we arent liable. but any idea of what should we do?

[jennyp]

try http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk There is a forum on utilities on there