Debt collection threat over billing error!

[#1]

Just received a threatening letter from PN, with the header - "We've passed your debt of £37.50 to a collection agency." What debt?!

The letter comes after closing my PN account 3 months ago. There was an issue at the time - PN's billing dept. seemingly hadn't got the memo that I was no longer a customer and continued to bill me for their services. They sent an email saying that they couldn't take payment as DD had been cancelled. An immediate online chat with a PN customer support advisor at the time, culminated in PN admitting it was their mistake, "...a mess up in the system." They confirmed that I didn't owe anything and, in fact, they owed me a small amount. A cheque was subsequently sent out to me.

So this morning I opened an online chat again. I was told the debt is from the DD they couldn't collect - the one that they had admitted was a mistake. My new online buddy told me not to worry and he would sort it out. He is writing to the billing dept and it will take 3 days to hear back. The irony that a communications company can take so long to, well, communicate, isn't lost on me.

Meanwhile, I am left with the phrases, "...further charges or penalties," and "Legal action," and "...affect your credit rating," hanging over me. Marvellous.

Anyone else had this recently? I found an old thread of this exact problem and tried to leave this as a comment there but it was deleted.

[#2]

@og

A warm welcome to the forums.  I am not going to respond to your substantive concern (not my place) however I will respond to the comment about the post being deleted.

There is a general policy around here about not doing "me too" on stale posts as generally the issue might appear to be similar but have a different cause.  I saw your resurrection of a dead topic and sought to notify the mods with a request to split to a new topic ... within that process I found that the post had indeed vanished (not the same as being deleted).  Right now that topic has reappeared.

I would suspect that (given that was your first post) it got moved to the spam prevention folder until you completed your registration process.  Be assured that there would have been no ulterior motive for "deleting" your original post.  Only offensive posts around here get deleted.

EDIT: The original post has again disappeared ... looks as though we both caught this in the middle of work by the mods to tidy up the me too piggy-back Lazarus posting.

[#3]

Moderator's note:

Not sure about the disappearance and reappearance of the original post in an old thread but I have now removed anyway it as it was cross-posted.

@Townman was correct as it had been caught by the Spam Filter and released by another mod.

[#4]

Welcome to the community forums @og

I'm sorry to hear of the experience you've had following the closure of your account.

I've looked in to this and see we had confirmation from our billing team that this had been rectified the day following this post, however I do sincerely apologise for any concern this matter has caused you and I wish you all the best with your new provider moving forward.

[#5]

Looks like plusnet still have not learned anything since this https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2017/plusnet-fined-880,000

about time they stopped [-Censored-] footing around the New billing system , 8 years behind schedule

[#6]

Hi @HarryB, thanks for your reply. Can you tell me how it has been rectified? I have heard nothing from Plusnet and am still worried about these threats. After such an officious letter, an email confirming matters are resolved would be appropriate, rather than a screenshot from a forum. I especially need your guarantee that my name has been erased from the debt collectors database and that this will not affect me in the future. Are you able to arrange that for me? Thanks

[#7]

Our billing team had removed your account from the collection agency's records.

I'll send an e-mail over to you now.