I got an email through this morning telling me that BT had sold my debt of £66 onto a collection agency as I'd not paid it for ages. This was the first I'd heard of it, so I started digging a bit. First stop: The debt collectors. Spoke to a very nice Scottish lady and said that I was disputing the debt, so please check back with BT before proceeding. Now, this is where it gets interesting...
I've got both a personal account with BT for the home, and I'm the nominated contact for the work phone as well so I thought it best to figure out which one this debt related to. I went through five addresses before we found which one, and it turns out that it's my personal one that relates to my old house. That's a bit odd, since I moved out of there a year ago! After more digging with them, they said the account relates to the period between 9-7-08 and 23-9-15. The earlier date could well be when I switched back to BT, but the latter date? I'd been out of the house for nine months by then!
So I called BT. I gave them my details, they found my current account (which is up to date), but could they find the other one? Nope, no chance. The woman I spoke to was very helpful, and she was as puzzled as me as she said that although she wouldn't be able to do anything with my account now BT had sold it on, she should at least be able to see the details of it. But no, it simply didn't exist on the regular BT system. She could see it on a different system that the account number was correct, but nothing else at all. She gave me another number for BT Credit Control, but they couldn't see it either.
Now, can you guess where this is heading?
Yup, I think we can all see the future on this one. Debt collector goes back to massive corporation. "Our client disputes the bill", "We can't find that number. You need a different department.". "Hey new department, our client disputes the bill!", "Don't care, not our department, go bother someone else". "Hey newer department, our client..." etc and so forth, until the debt collector boss man says sod it, go chase him and take him to court anyway, he'll cough up as it's only £60.
No. No I won't. It's only £66, but I refuse to quit. This should be fun!