Hi, thanks for the info. So to confirm; they are totally within their rights, even though I did everything I was supposed to, provided my new address details, for them not to contact me for 3.5 years, I receive no demands from NTL or Virgin media direct, but that I get several letters from debt collection companies and have to spend plenty of my time looking into the matter, phone calls, sending letters recorded delivery (which I dont ask THEM to pay for) to find that I now HAVE to pay them a further £10 just to get a copy of the account, which I dispute? The world has gone mad.

Hi, If anyone could help me I would really appreciate it, I am absolutely incensed by this one.... Up til December 2004 we had services with NTL. When we moved house in Dec 2004 we tried to cancel NTL but however we tried we were not able to. During November 2004 we tried calling; couldnt get through, we tried submitting online forms on their customer service pages; no response (other than automated 'thank you for your enquiry we will contact you soon' ones) so we let our last DD go through 26 November and then all we could do was cancel the DD as we were moving out 1st week December. As a last ditch attempt following cancelling the DD and when we were in our new house we wrote to the Accounts Dept at NTL's head office saying that we had gone and that we had cancelled the DD and had tried to give more notice but all our attempt had failed and we sent this letter 13 December 2004 recorded post. We are now receiving letters from a debt collection agency trying to collect debt for what they are saying is our last months payments (for Dec) but we were not even in the property at that time and had already given our notice in November and paid the final month end November. I wrote a letter of complaint to customer concerns at Virgin Media and was pleased to get as phone call today. However they haver informed me that because the accounts records are now 'archived' that I would need to send them a postal order for £10 if I want a copy of the account proving I owe them money!!!! The cheek of it! Are they allowed to do this? To force us to pay £10 (which doesnt come off the bill if it does result in my owing the money) or force it to go back to a debt collection agency? Its so unfair, what can I do?

Hi again - no the name on the letter was me although the surname was mis-spelt so it makes me think it could be another person with similar name and they are just doing searches on the electoral roll and bashing out letters in the hope of finding those involved, or maybe a very old store card or something I had (I did have a CCJ arise a few years back from TOPSHOP who hadnt updated my change of address and without knowing court orders etc went to my old address for a spend on the account which was after I moved and I had no knowledge. Eventually caught up with me and I refused to pay, took them to court and got the whole thing overturned as I was able to prove that I had informed them of my change of address and they were not able to prove i had made the transaction! So I used CreditExpert to monitor my credit report and they helped me once I had the court papers overturning the CCJ, to force them to delete the CCJ and show the item as settled.) Even so, I KNOW I dont owe anything and even so why would you respond to such an awful cloak & dagger letter which desnt even say its about owing money, they make it sound like Im a lost person or something! So unless someone in proper authority contacts me or they write and say exactly what it is about I shall ignore the letters I think - based on the fab advice of this site!!! Thank you!! Otherwise I probably would have got in touch with them and be enjoying 'fruitful' conversations with them as others have had which Ive read about on this site, so glad about that. And anyone else reading this, I urge you not to deal with anyone that you cant validate as having an authentic reason to contact you. BTW - who is this TS you mention babybear39?

OK, thanks to the 2 people who have replied already. Id certainly be interested to know how many others are currently having issues with Mackenzie Hall in particular. Thing is I dont see that I could go directly to invoking their complaints procedure on the basis of just reading this forum?! I guess I have to take it as far as asking them to what their enquiry pertains, but only communicate by phone, would you agree or suggest alternate action?

I have read with great interest the many posts on here with reference to Mackenzie Hall. I received a letter today containing exactly what others have reported, that they are "attempting to contact the above named person regarding a personal matter" and "we have been provided your address as being the possible residential details for our subject." The way this company goes about its activity and the other stories I have read here is shocking. I too will not be telephoning the company thanks to this site. I did an internet search purely to try and get their website to read up about them before I rang them up tomorrow, so my sincere thanks to you all for the insight. What I actually want to ask, because this has clearly affected more than a just a few and the complaints date right back to 2006 is, does anyone actually know of any outcome resulting from either the financial ombudsman, BBC watchdog, Trading Standards etc taking it on and looking further into this? If all these people who have posted have filed complaints has it not been taken up yet by one of these organisations, and if not Id like to know what needs to happen to get it escalated to the right place in order that these people are either stripped of their rights to operate in this way or simply, stopped altogether. I have in the past had to have arguments and put in writing 'my case' on many a situation before but always with the small hope that if I persevered I would eventually get somewhere due to at least knowing who I was dealing with and having access to the information that I required. I.e. if you owe money you get all the details and can arrange to pay or if something has occurred which is totally unfair, you can start proceedings against such a company/person, knowing your rights. But it does seem that there is no stopping these people and that the ONLY way to resolve is to ignore which is AWFUL. Quite frankly when I read the letter this evening, it was 8pm, I just got home from work, was tired and it was the last thing I needed. But more importantly, I found the letter quite stern and it did instantly get me worried as the nature of it goes beyond the usual scare tactics and they use a cloak and dagger approach to make it sound really sincere but without giving any detail whatsoever. Im a 30 year old woman and run my own business, and if it got me worried, I hate to think what it would do to say an older person or someone living on their own who isnt able to access advice and re-assurance online that this is not a genuine letter, as I have here tonight. So, my post (eventually getting to the point!) is not actually to ask for advice for myself as I hope I can take care of it, but more to ask what can we do collectively to stop Mackenzie Hall from causing grief to others who may unfortunately decide to phone them and subsequently get hounded by their aggressive agents? If anything has come of previous complaints Id love to know about it. Surely someone has sat up and listened from all the posts I have read where people say that they will indeed go on to contact the Citizens Advice, financial ombudsman, police even. We should harness the power of the internet and club together and say no to corporate bullies!