Carphone Warehouse

[louisd77]

Hi,

 

I had a dispute with Carphone for £70. After some weeks they passed the debt to Roxburghe debt collection. After receiving harrassing letters I wrote to ask if they could provide the signed copy of the credit agreement, which they could not do so they closed the case file. Thinking the matter was over I was shocked to receive another letter this time from CCS informing me of notification of legal proceedings for the same alledged debt.

 

Any advice please.

 

Thanks,

 

LD

[twofoot]

Think you need to go into more detail, i.e. what was the dispute over and dates etc. Also phone contracts are a bit different than credit agreements.

[KER]

Aye, from reading posts on here, mobile phone contracts aren't providing credit so the terms of the CCA regarding enforceability aren't applicable!

 

 

(please someone correct me if I'm wrong...!)

[Lula]

no Kyr, you are quite right

[louisd77]

Hi again,

 

The contract was for an home telephone line not a mobile phone. I asked Carphone for the original contract or credit agreenment but they said they did not have one. Still they passed the debt to Roxburghe and now CCS. No one will tell me if the debt was sold.

 

Thanks,

 

LD

[IdaInFife]

As above utilities are not covered by cca.

 

Are you disputing this as you are not liable for a line after you cancelled etc?

 

If you want to get any info from them you would need to send carphone warehouse an SAR and you would need to include £10 postal oreder or cheque.

 

edit to suit:

Subject Access Request - Consumer Wiki

 

Ida x

[miaow99]

This is a disconnection fee, isn't it?

 

I have been in a similar position. The debt wasn't sold - it's passed on the RB to chase it.

 

 

I got CPW to cancel the £70 by disputing it.

 

They claimed I agreed to it in the contract (which I didn't sign). The contract is on their website. If you have agreed to their services, and are using them, then they can claim you have agreed to them whether or not you have a signature as far as i know.

 

However, the 12 month penalty clause only applies to people who took their free broadband. If you have phone only, it's 3 months.

 

I got the charge cancelled in two letters to CPW.

 

1:

 

You have recently sent me a demand for the sum of £XXX As far as I am aware, this is for a “disconnection fee”. I do not believe you are entitled to charge me this fee, and am thus disputing it. The reason I moved lines is because of constant poor line quality from your service, which made the line unusable. This was not fixed despite a visit from an engineer, and repeated complaints which about which nothing was done.

 

Please provide a copy of the signed contract in which I allegedly agreed to pay a fee. I do not recall agreeing to this.

 

Please also provide proof that I allegedly consented for you to move my line across from BT; it was not my intention to do this, and I do not recall asking you to do it. I only intended for you to take over my billing, not my line as well.

 

 

This got a reply that "i must have ticked a box to agree to their terms and conditions". They didn't answer the question about the line. They offered me a £10 discount.

 

I then looked up their terms and conditions at the time of my signing up with them, using archive.org

 

This gave me the info to write to them:

 

2:

 

I am unable to to accept the proposal outlined in your letter, namely that I pay you £XXXX by way of settlement, for the following reasons:

 

 

• In your letter, you have told me that under the Terms and Conditions I agreed to, if the contract is terminated early, I am liable for a disconnection fee. The terms and conditions state that the “Minimum Period” for Line Rental customers is 3 months. It was well beyond that period when I finally gave up trying to get you to fix the line and terminated the agreement.
  

 

 

• The terrible line quality and dreadful customer care that I received when trying to address the problems meant that the service was so bad as to be unusable. This situation, for which you have already offered to credit me £10, represents a failure to provide the service “with the reasonable care and skill of a competent service provider”, and this is a breach of contract on your part. I have over the past 10 years used the services of British Telecom, Virgin, NTL, Telewest, and OneTel, and I have never experienced such abysmal delivery of service and total lack of competence.
  

 

You are therefore not entitled to charge me a disconnection fee.

 

I await your reply.

 

This letter got a grovelling apology and a full credit (they cancelled the charge). They did say they couldn't change my credit file to reflect their mistakes, but I'll deal with that in due course. (using the Data Protection Act)

 

On the subject of penalty clauses, it's my understanding that this £70 cancellation charge would be unlawful. They should legally be allowed to charge you line rental up to the end of the contract, but not a penalty charge.

 

During this, RB kept writing to me... despite my dispute. If it had continued I would have sent a "i have a dispute with CPW. let's fight it out in court if you wish." letter.

[OnMyWayOut]

In case you are interested - it cost them no more than £2.50 to take over your line, so £70 is outrageous profiteering. It didn't cost them anything for BT to take it back. When it did revert back to BT they would have received a pro-rata rebate of the unused part of the line rental for the current month.