cancelled ORANGE phone contract through their store - now Morecrap are chasing me!

[jono9969]

Hi,

 

Can I just seek some assistance on a debt matter, in March 2011 I cancelled my telephone subscription with Orange. I

did it at a phone shop who made the call on our behalf and passed the phone to me to verify that we wanted to end the contract. We also followed this up with a letter a short time after.Next thing we know we are sent a few bills from Orange telling them that we had cancelled the phone contract and they will see from their records that it has been cancelled and not used at all.

 

They really tried it on saying that we cancelled one of the phones but not the other one, we advised them that we did and if they check their telephone system they would find the call we had made. They appear to have ignored this and just kept sending us the same bill out. Now they have passed this debt to Moorcroft Debt Recovery Limited.

 

The telephone contract was with a Limited company I have which is not actually trading at the moment and reads:

 

Moorcroft Letter____________________________

 

 

We have been instructed by ORANGE PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS

 

To collect an overdue debt of £104.04

 

It is a legal requirement for you to send a notice of 'Intended Litigation' before legal proceedings in the

County Court are issued. We believe that this letterfulfils this requirement even if it is not read by you.

 

To prevent legal action being taken by external solicitors instructed to act on behalf of our client it is essential that you settle

account without delay.Payment should be submitted in full to us in 7 days or contact made with this office immediately, by telephone on 0161 475 2811 or by letter, with your payment offer.

 

Failure to contact us by 10.00am on 10/08/11 may result in legal proceedings being issues against you without further

notice. If proceedings are commenced and judgement is entered, this may increase your debt because of the addition

of court costs and solicitors fees.

 

We would draw your attention that if judgement and an order for repayment in full are obtained abnd remains unpaid, it will be open to our client to consider enforcement of debt by application for other legal processes (eg Attachment of earnings, instruction of baliffs).

 

You should also note that should judgement be entered against you tyhis may affect any future credit application you may make elsewhere.

 

ORANGE PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS has informed us that upon reciept of full payment they will re connect your service and willnot charge a reconnection fee. If you would like to take up this offer you should contact us to arrange full payment

and suppkly your bank details so that a direct debit instruction can be implemented in the near future. Payments to be

paid to ORANGE PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS

 

All payments must be made payable to "Moorcroft Debt Recovery Ltd" and forwarded with this letter to the above address.

 

The above balance includes an administration cost of £10.46 which has been added to offset some of the costs already

incurred by our client.

 

Yours Sincerely.

 

END______________________

 

 

 

So this is the first letter I have even had from this company and already they are jumping to threateneing me as well

as using what I am sure they believe is standard procedure (intimidation). They offer no proof that we owe the debt and cannot even make their mind up about who they say the funds should be paid to?

 

The main question I have is could someone please advise me on what strategy I should follow on this and should I

contact them (Moorcroft) who I actually dont have and never have had any business dealings with. Also is there any

other bodies I should inform/involve about this situation, it seems these people are being allowed to demand monies

in an intimidating way whenever they wish, without any sort of regulation.

 

I must stress I do not owe this money since we called them and wrote to them when we cancelled the contract, in the end we put one of the phones back on contract with them under a private name rather than a limited company name so they still retained one of the phones and now they want to charge us £140 for their incompetance.

 

Any help/advice you can give me would be much appreciated.

 

Many Thanks,

J.

[ploddertom]

May I suggest you click the little black triangle and ask that this is moved to the Debt Collectors Forun where others better versed can advise.

 

PT

[Lefty]

Thread moved to Debt Collection Industry forum.

 

Cheers

Lefty

[starman59]

Hi jono. The first thing is NEVER EVER phone a DCA as they will lie and trick you. There are some very well educated people on the site here who will advise you whats best for you, so do not worry someone will be along soon I would imagine. From what I have read on here Moorcroft are so bad at what they do it's laughable. Best advise I can give you is not to worry. I think you can get attention by typing "BUMP" well thats what i'm hoping. (new to here myself but learning all the time from the experts here)Regards Stev

[dx100uk]

ignore them

 

orange would have no doubt written this off against tax already asnd sold it on a phishing list

 

and these spoofers have brought it, in an attempt to make a quick profit.

 

you have done all you need to do to correstly cancel the contract

 

igore the threat-o-grams

 

no mobile phone co has ever gone near a court on such an issue as yours

 

dx

[dx100uk]

thread renamed and moved to mobile phones forum

 

dx

[watchinginvestigation2011]

OH ORANGE:lalala:

 

 

Your at it again !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

What does our signatures on a contract mean to you?

 

Persecution for the rest of our lives for your mistakes, perhaps?

 

Hey orange, let your customers go !!!!!!!!! (I can see a song in that)

 

 

 

And you choice of dca:whip: Notice the 'valid even if not read by you" CARP:madgrin:

 

 

OP, orange report that they only record 1% of their 5 million calls a month I believe the quote was. So you can have dene everything by the book and the rep who dealt with you either messed up or did not adequately put notes down and you guessed it orange will have no proper records their end due to THEIR failings and yep, they will blame you even though NOT your fault.

 

Check they have not damaged your credit file re this account.

 

Moorcarp, ignore them

 

You could complain in writing to orange, that you want it put right, cancelled properly and all hounds called off and if they ignore you or say no, ask for deadlock letter and go to cicas as the chances of only deciding to cancel one of two phones not used and still not use it, is slim a person would not do that, so common sense should reign.

 

Perhaps orange have a deep need to cause such situations because if they acted friendly towards their customers and did all by the book, there would not be such a need for their staff pretending to resolve, hey thats it, they mess ups are to keep people in work!!!!!!!!!!!

 

SERIOUSLY ORANGE NEED FINING LIKE THE POWER INDUSTRY WAS FOR SHODDY CUSTOMER SERVICE.

 

Dont stress over it op, orange will have to sort if one way or another or they will perhaps owe you compensation and an apology too xx

[watchinginvestigation2011]

By the way the ceo office have staff that dont trust their own stores, so from that, you can argue perhaps if any failings of procedure are stupidly argued, then get them to talk to the store as they put you through to them and let you leave confident it was sorted xx

 

Orange are hastle magnets, RECORD ANY CALLS TO ORANGE FOR DEFENCE, but in your case better to write anyway, but I do so like to warn in case they ring or you ring to do it so as many people as I can know to start to protect themselves from this company as you see we cant trust them, they themselves are proof of that xx

 

RANT OVER

 

Best of luck and update op xx

[locutus]

If this is now with Moorcroft, I would STRONGLY suggest you check your credit file.

Orange report to Experian, so you could either get a free 30 day trial of credit expert (if you cancel straight away you will still get the full 30 days usage) Remember that is £15 per month after the free trial. OR you could get a £2 report by clicking here.

 

I would expect your credit file to have a negative marker against it. If that is the case, post back here and you'll get further advice. If there is nothing negative posted there, just ignore the DCA. They're not going to do anything against you.

[jono9969]

Hi guys,

 

I agree watchinginvestigation2011it seems to me that these type of companies are running a mock and the only people making money from this appear to be the courts/solicitors and often the companies who treat us like this. They are still keen to take our money on the other hand for the mobile my partner has from the time we changed the contract in March. I like many other people are just disillusioned with the regulators who seem to do little or nothing while these people continually take the mickey.

 

I would like to put in place a strategy to deal with this and as part of it report them for this, they know we cancelled this contract and as you rightly say so do the guys at the shop where we purchased the new phone from when one of the phones was swapped over.

 

Hi Locutus, Thanks for your reply too. Firstly I am going through some hard times at the moment and I am struggling to make regular Full payments on my mortgage, so my credit record is most probably trashed anyway and this is something I have to put up with for now until I am fully out of the financial mess. I have a plan and am executing that. The letter they Moorcroft have sent is addressed to a limited company that I used to run but has not traded now for some time, therefore will this appear on my credit record, just not sure of the significance, however it may be worth me checking it anyway just dont want to depress myself any more unless I have to .

 

Thanks for all the advice so far.

Jon.

[cerberusalert]

Moved back to the Debt Collection forum at OPs request.

[locutus]

Best of British luck to you. If Orange posting on your credit file is not a concern, there is very little a debt collector can do. Modify this letter and send it to Moorcroft.

 

This seems like the best way forward :-

ignore them

 

orange would have no doubt written this off against tax already asnd sold it on a phishing list

 

and these spoofers have brought it, in an attempt to make a quick profit.

 

you have done all you need to do to correstly cancel the contract

 

igore the threat-o-grams

 

no mobile phone co has ever gone near a court on such an issue as yours

 

dx

 

You could also follow Orange's complaints procedure set out here.

 

Keep us up to date with any progress.

[jono9969]

Hi Locutus,

 

Many thanks for your assistance, I will send the letter you suggested out first and see what comes back before deciding the next step.

 

Thanks,

Jon

[jono9969]

Hi,

 

Hope you are all well, just writing back to let you know what has happened since we last spoke, following me sending the letter that you suggested, I got a letter back from Moorcroft saying that my file was on hold pending their investigation. Then I got another bill for the amount I dont owe from Orange, then the next thing is I got the letter below just today:

 

Dear Companyname

 

Re Orange Personal Communications Balance £140.04

 

To prevent the above possible legal action please send payment before 31/08/11 or Telephone 0161 475 2811 immediately.

 

If you do not contact us following reciept of this letter we may have no alternative other than to reccomend to our client that solicitors issue legal action against you which may follow. Please note if legal action isnecessary and if solicitors instructed are successful in entering judgement then your debt may increase as follows:

 

They then highlight that they will add £90 to the current amount they say I owe them if they are successful.

 

Please do contact us now. Neither we nor our client want proceedings to be issued and it is still possible for you avoid this by agreeing a repayment plan that you can afford and maintain.

 

End________________________

 

Naturally I have not done anything other than just write back to the site, to a) keep you a breast of the current situ b) ask if I should do anything different than I am already doing, (ignoring them).The envolope was addressed to my partner who is the secretary of my old limited company, but the letter itself is addressed to the Limited Company name. I do not owe this money since the contract was cancelled in March.

 

 

Thanks,

Jon

[2Grumpy]

Orange obviously knows that this is for a limited company. Maybe they think that addressing the envelope to an individual whilst putting the company name on everything else will make that person pay up.

 

Might be worth replying to orange that:

1. the contract was cancelled in March & that no money is owing

2. the contract was with a limited company that is not currently trading

then follow Orange's complaints procedure