They have contacted me in writing stating that the account is now closed with them and that I should expect the notice to be removed on my credit report, although they did state that it may take several weeks... They also tried calling me only a couple of days after the letter was sent (I didn't feel like speaking to them so I didn't answer), so I guess they check their mail quite quickly. I think reason has won the day and this seems to have gone very smoothly. Thanks for the information guys it was very helpful.

Thanks for the replies guys, no I never initiated any contact at all with Capquest, I never paid them or acknowledged the debt as soon as I got the first letter from them they had already tripled my debt with orange so I decided I would rather be a non entity in the credit world than give in to such extortion. Obviously later in life this has come back to bite me in the ass, however if they had played by the rules I'd be home free by now and happily moving into my new home. I don't have the original default notice from orange, I have managed to get in touch with the former collections team though and the lady was very nice, she has managed to get a hold of a copy of the original default with orange and it is in the post. When it arrives I will submit this to capquest, if they weren't going to be total I shouldn't even need that, as they received the already defaulted account in 2010 surely the burden falls on them to explain why they registered the default in 2012 themselves when they had received the debt that was already in default in 2010?

I defaulted with orange back in early 2010.. ..late 2010 they sold the debt to capquest. ..it says so on my credit file thats when my capquest file was opened, yet capquest have only registered a default in 2014 meaning the life of this default has been extended far beyond the original debt(default on my file until 2020). There has been zero contact or acknowledgement of this debt, there was never a payment plan and they had no reason to believe they should carry it forward so long before declaring a default themselves other than to ridiculously extend the life of my default on my credit file. Is this legal? Is there anything I can do about it? Currently its standing between me and a mortgage. I know some people might think payment was an option but the original debt was 90 pounds(in 2010) and now capquest are saying I owe them 400+.. .I could do it but honestly it would leave a terrible taste in my mouth.

I mean I had to reconfirm my circumstances when I sent the email with my bank statement, I wasn't taking any chances so I was EXTREMELY detailed about my reason for cancellation. It was the only email ever given to me and it was given to me for the reason of providing evidence that they paid me because they don't keep records of payments apparently(lol?). So I suppose that counts as written evidence of cancellation?

@LEE/vodafone rep Web order 0000000171717177 , Ordered online Paid with Debit card. Its a long and painful story, I first ordered a phone on the 05/09/2015 From about one week after onwards I was in touch constantly and was constantly lied to that my phone was coming the next day blah blah blah. Fast forward though about 10 terrible 'customer service' interactions to the 20th of last month and I begin trying to get a refund. The person on the phone tells me 10 working days, I wait 10 days then call again to see if the ball has been rolling on my refund, no, it hasn't, "your phone is due to arrive tomorrow so we can't process a refund now". Eventually after much argument the call center worker agrees that my phone probably isn't coming tomorrow and tells me in order to get a refund I have to send my bank statement to a certain email address. So on the 30/10/2015 I send a bank statement to this totally dodgy south African company that they outsource to.(Not even the courtesy to keep your personal information on their own servers, which I thought would of been the least they could do in this day and age when data security is so important). Today, nothing. I have made over a dozen calls, spoken to their live chat 'customer service' as many times again, and I have still not managed to get my product or refund. I got the phone A month ago with o2 after I requested my refund it took one day to arrive. Vodafone were able to take my money instantly, surely you'd think standard practice would be to prepare to send my product and THEN charge me once it was ready to be sent? Is this too much like common sense for such a big company? How are they allowed to operate? If I opened a business and took peoples money and provided no service or refund for months on end they would lock me up as a criminal.