Hi there and wonder if anyone can help.

Unfortunately,

my husband passed away a couple of years ago and he handled all the payments of bills, etc.

since the 90s we hired a company to tend to the garden once a month and they billed us quarterly.

The problem is that two years ago when i went to pay for the services for the proceeding months ahead, they told me we haven't paid them since 1997 and gave a bill for a few thousand as they are saying it's back dated from then until now.

i told them that my husband would have paid them, and he always paid things like this in cash, and they should have a record as i cannot find any receipts of payment.

They said they will take me to court if i don't provide receipts as proof of payment but i cannot find any receipts .

I told them if it's true that he didn't pay, why was service still continued after all this time?

Their response was that the computer automatically generated the service to be met

i told them I cannot find anything but shouldn't they be providing proof that money is owed???

Also wouldn't this be classed as statute barred as well?

In actual fact, when i was first presented with this information about this so called debt,

i did pay them for the next six months as i still wanted the service of the gardener but the money was not to go towards the "debt".

How should i proceed with this one.

Thanks in advance.

You are correct, that someone from this gardening company is trying to take advantage of you.

Of course if anyone is providing services, they will invoice you each time and if they are not paid, they would simply not continue to provide the service. So the only bill that would be outstanding would be the last time they did your garden.

If i had an elderly relative in this situation, i would be thinking of reporting this to the Police. This appears to be an attempt to commit fraud and fortunately you have been alert to this.

It is up to you, but if you reported this to your local neighbourhood Police team on their local number 101, i am sure they would take this seriously. No gardening company would provide services beyond a few months without getting paid.

I'm afraid that I would hold back on fraud allegations at this point.

Although it seems extraordinary that these people might have carried on providing the service without being paid for 20 years, it is just feasibly possible.

If you start making allegations of fraud which later on you can't prove, then it could undermine your credibility generally. I would go slowly on this.

The first thing is to deal with your question about whether it is statute barred.

The answer is that any alleged debts beyond six years are statute barred unless you have acknowledged them or paid something towards them during that time. It seems here that you have not so we can pretty well say that 14 years of the alleged debt would not be enforceable anyway.

You have paid six months for a continuing service that you have stipulated that this money is not to be used towards the alleged debt. I'm afraid that I think it would be difficult to enforce this. How did you stipulate this condition? Was it in writing?

I think that making payment of six months in advance effectively creates a trust and if one of the conditions of the trust is that the money is not to be applied to some existing debt then technically it is binding. On the other hand, if they decided to ignore you and simply take the money as part of a set off towards the money they say you owe them then the only way you could challenge this would probably be to go to a Small Claims Court.

I must say that a judge probably wouldn't be very impressed to hear that a company is so disorganised that they are not able to recognise when the services they are providing are not being paid for – for a period as long as 20 years! It certainly seems pretty incredible.

I think that one of the things that you should do should be to ask them to provide you paperwork in respect of all of the services which they are provided to you in the past and which they allege has not been paid.

It will be interesting to see exactly what it is they can produce.

I understand that they say that they have a computer which automatically generates the service to be met. However, did they have this computer system in 2007? They were a pretty advanced small business/gardening services company if they did.

Although I understand that your husband paid things like this in cash, surely there must be more detailed than that. Are there no details of cash withdrawals at about the right time of each month – or about the right time of each quarter?

If it was paid in cash, then was it paid directly to the gardener or was it paid directly to their office?

And for the moment you may as well tell us who are they? Where are they? How much money are we talking about here – per month, per quarter, for the preceding six years, and for the whole 20 year period.

If they are so disorganised about getting paid for work, how are they managing to pay staff, operating costs, taxes due ?

The reason i suggested fraud, is why has it taken so long to find out they have not been paid. It just seems a little bit convenient that there has been a bereavement of the person who had been paying the account. Any company who is ensuring proper accounts are done will have a ledger they can go back to check on. They don't ask a customer to prove payment going back 20 years.

How many other people has this company written to along similar lines ? Are they all elderly people ?

I appreciate offering benefit of the doubt and not jumping to conclusions, but i hear of many situations where elderly people are taken advantage of.

do name the company. is it a big company...

wld trading standards be an option to poss have a chat with re?

I find it unlikely that a company that has failed to raise invoices is now asking you for copies of them to show you have paid. They should of course have their copies of the paperwork so you should reverse the situation and ask for copies of the invoices and receipts they have issued so you can compare them to your records.

How to proceed? Find another gardener si the first action so you then have a fixed time that the matter can occupy. If you continue to use them it will ony complicate things.