British gas help!

[wolins]

Hi all

I pay monthly to experian, equifax and checkmyfile to monitor my credit report as i am looking to buy a house as soon as a default drops off from 6 years ago!

Anyway i have monitored these for the past 6 months and all is crystal clear as soon as a default drops off later this month (santander overdraft default from 2008 full paid 5 years ago)

MY mate told me about another credit report you can get from free called noddle so i signed up for that too and to my horror see that i have 2 late payments down for british gas! These do not show on any of the other CRA's but here is the best bit.....i dont even have a british gas account!

After ringing there customer dont care line and speaking to.....well how can i put it nicely? i cant.....and absolute cow!She tells me that it is for a g+e account from a property i was a tenant in for 6 months last year. I told her impossible as i am with EDF and have been for the past 6 years, and had been paying them £120 pm direct debit all the time i was in that property...
Take that up with them, we supplied the gas and electric you owe us the money, and no we will not remove it from your credit file, it will be marked settled when its paid!

I told them that i never signed up to any british gas account so how could i owe them money?
It was a letting agent they supplied us with your details, we sent you a welcome pack, 1 bill, a final bill and then a reminder, thats 4 letters.......i can understand 1 but not 4....(she was a total cow)
I dont use british gas, any letters from british gas would have been binned straight away as junk mail as we have used EDF for 6 years

Anyway, got nowhere with her so ended that conversation...

Gets onto EDF, no sir the request was not completed we did not supply your G+E.....however i see you did continue to pay us 6 payments of £120 from 01 july - 01- Dec we will refund that!

So, here i am, i have paid british gas in full today what i owe them BUT the damn markers are on my credit file
After reading through some messages on here i see it has happened to other people too.

I have just sent them a long email which was a template from here regarding the DPA but modified to suit my circumstances

How the hell can any third party sign and other person up to a credit agreement or account and then they share your data without authorisation? It is beyond me how they are allowed to get way with this!

So whats my chances and what timescale we talking here? I will be absolutely devistated if i loose the house due to this.

Cheers all

[Never-In-Doubt]

Re: British gas help!

Two late payment markers based on a plausible excuse shouldn't affect you that much, I'd not worry about them too much at this stage.

if they do affect the mortgage then just appeal it. Explaining the error and that it was paid when you first became aware of it, however noodle is uncheckable to lenders, they use Experian and Equifax primarily - not many lenders base a call credit report as factual and solely so you should be ok.

[wolins]

Re: British gas help!

Its a bit of a relife to know that, i though that about noddle as you only har about the main 3, ex, eq and cc

It has payment history as Oct was OK, Nov was AA, and Dec was QYthen JAN 3 (payment was upto 3 months late)

Ive never seent that before, just know the normal 1,2,3 etc...


cheers for the help, will let you know if BG even bother there arse to get back to me! Id still like it completely removed though!

[Never-In-Doubt]

Re: British gas help!

You can appeal to BG senior managers, there a a few threads on AAD wit he details to get them sorted..... Have a search above

[wolins]

Re: British gas help!

I have emailed them from the addresses i found on here

customercomplaints@britishgas.co.uk; sara.richardson@britishgas.co.uk; janette.pincott@britishgas.co.uk; kevin.roxburgh@britishgas.co.uk; chris.jansen@britishgas.co.uk

[Never-In-Doubt]

Re: British gas help!

Chris Jansen is the main man

[wolins]

Re: British gas help!

So we have a reply from BG, as expected totally avoiding the fact that i have never agreed to sharing of date etc...

Any advice or template for my next step would be very very much appreciated!

here is the letter, thanks all!

Dear Mr & Mrs XXXXXX

Re: XXXXXADDRESSXXXXX

Thanks for your email to Kevin Roxburgh, our head of complaints. As a member of his team, details of your complaint have been passed to me.

Thanks for your payment of £803.54, this was credited to the account on 3 February 2014.

I understand that you’re not happy that we’ve applied late payment markers to your credit file in relations to the outstanding balance on your account with us as you never agreed to be supplied by us.

I’d like to clarify that we were the existing supplier to this property, therefore when you moved in we automatically took over your supply, which is called a deemed contract. As the contract is to supply a particular property, not a person. It therefore doesn’t end when the contract holder moves out.

This means we would've still had a valid contract to supply the property until a new company contacts us to take your supply over. This is also confirmed within our terms and conditions attached under Section 1. You can also see under section 1.3 that we’d still be entitled to supply you without this being agreed over the phone.I'm sorry if this wasn't clear.

This also would have been confirmed by your new supplier when you asked them to transfer your supply. This is part of a verbal or written contract that all suppliers read customers during this legal process, when they take over from one another. Therefore, even if you say you dispute our contract (which was a different type of contract as it was deemed), this was made valid by the new contract being completed.

We sent you a welcome letter on 11 June 2013 and have been sending you regular bills and reminders to make you aware that we supply this property and there’s a balance outstanding on your account.

You were late making payments on your account and this has been reported correctly.

If you’d like to discuss this further, then please contact me on the above details by 18 February 2014.

I’m genuinely sorry for any inconvenience this matter has caused you and I look forward to your response.

Yours sincerely


Sarita Kakar

Customer Relations Team

[Never-In-Doubt]

Re: British gas help!

Sadly as the facts are, you DID fall into arrears you're kinda snookered. Paying and being "honest" puts you in a worse position as you could have bribed payment for removal as part of a deal.

[wolins]

Re: British gas help!

So does this give them the right to share my data without consent? I only discovered this british gas account yesterday and paid it straight away to avoid any further issues