Ok, here’s the plan of action we’ve discussed backstage. @iseb and @NeddyMorai you are welcome to use this if you wish, but we will understand if you’d rather not.

The consensus of four Forum Volunteers - myself included - is that this is a phantom and/or unproven debt. If it is, then you owe nothing.

We recommend you challenge LCS by asking them for proof of this debt. The evidence they provide needs to show EXACTLY how much is owed down to the penny and EXACTLY who it is owed to - including the Registered Company Name and Company Number as they appear on Companies House. Anything else is not acceptable - I’m happy to dig into whatever company name they give if you need me to.

In other words, ask them to clarify exactly who’s instructed them to collect the debts. They may fabricate evidence, so please scrutinise everything carefully.

We also wish to offer some advice that I’ve adapted to be published here. This comes from us as Forum Volunteers, rather than from OVO or SSE.

Tell them that should LCS fail to provide satisfactory evidence, inform them politely and firmly that without such evidence the debt is invalid and unproven, for which they must cease recovery action until they can provide actual evidence. If such evidence cannot be found, they must close the case completely and withdraw/retract any detriments they have placed against you, such as on your credit records.

Tell them that you’ll report any further collection attempts for that unproven debt will be treated as harassment/fraud and reported to the FCA/Financial Ombudsman as such UNLESS they can provide that solid proof.

Without proper evidence, they cannot go to court and get a debt recovery order - the judge would quite likely reject it and throw the book at them.

Many thanks. I will formulate a response to LCS. I will keep you informed.

Just a quickie. The Forum Moderators have agreed to help dig deeper. They may post here with an update soon if they have anything to share or ask you.

I got this from LCS after going back to them with your suggestions.

“

Thank you for your recent email.

Your account is currently on hold whilst we await an update from our client. Once we have received further information from them we will notify you accordingly.

Kind Regards,

LCS “

Then that suggests they have nothing to back it up. So there’s a chance you might never hear from them again.

I would expect a DCA to just have that stuff ready on-hand immediately.

Its a definite shift in tone. All correspondence thus far has suggest my compliance is inevitable, and that I might as well just pay up. 

It’s also the exact opposite of what we expected. We thought they’d try to brush you off!

In the meantime I have all my ducks in a row now if it ever gets to court. I have retrieved all my receipts all correspondence from SSE and Ovo. The account number they put on the Default notice was missing two digits.  I think they count on people not spotting things like that. Thanks once again for your assistance. 

@NeddyMorai 

You may already have done this

You are entitled to one off free statutory reports from credit agencies. These give you the raw information they hold without signing up for anything long term that costs money, although there are often offers. By law they have to provide these statutory reports free. 

For experian:

https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/statutory-report.html

For Equifax

https://www.equifax.co.uk/Products/credit/statutory-report.html

OVO use Experian.

It might be worth checking there isn't anything logged by SSE or OVO or anyone else.

I usually check my current address once a year just to make sure nothing dodgy has happened.

Will do .Thanks.

You’re most welcome.

This has been a pretty big collaboration between four Forum Volunteers who’ve done stuff like REALLY dig deep into the details, discuss a plan of action and even make a couple of phone calls to SSE Energy Solutions/SSE Heat Networks, and the Forum Moderators who picked this up this morning and have gone off to ping internals teams for help.

We love a challenge here, and you certainly gave us one. We hope this all gets sorted, but we’re still here if you need us to please do keep us posted.

So there was soft search done by SSE last September. Maybe this isn’t over just yet.

Soft searches aren’t meant to be used for debt collection, and besides… Only you can see those anyway - no credit provider will ever see that.

Okay. It does suggest that SSE were interested in locating me though. 

Yes… Does it say which part of SSE, or just “SSE”?

I don’t understand why they didn’t just write to me then. Why the cloak and dagger. 

Just SSE via TDX

My thoughts exactly. The process is SUPPOSED to be that you (as the creditor) write directly to the customer/debtor FIRST, BEFORE calling in a DCA. Failure to do breaks the process and could cause the case to collapse.

TDX… Which is actually just Equifax… Hmm...

This brings me back to the previous issue - which “SSE” raised this, since there’s clearly more than one customer facing SSE company that either actively or historically took payments from domestic customers.

Just having it being so generic doesn’t help.

Yes this is the key. Here I checked all correspondence and it never said limited anywhere. It just said SSE Energy Services. 

Not helped by the fact there were effectively two SSE companies with that name. SSE Energy Services and SSE Energy Solutions both had companies on Companies House with very similar names, but very different purposes.

@Blastoise186 I have now written to Raman customer Team , I came across this ad which says all SSE customers have been migrated. But OVO customer team stated that they have only migrated active accounts of SSE. They cant find any account on my postcode. EDF who is now my provider of top-up meter they have said my account was always in credit. I am just now waiting to see what LCS comes back with. I would appreciate if forum team can help me I have records of top up pay point receipt for that period is that not an evidence. As LCS was saying that this is not evidence you have to give meter reading so I said PAYG top doesn't work like this  , can you please share some light on my evidence of top up why this cant be considered. I asked them to provide me meter reading at this point they said they will speak to SSE and provided me SSE number which doesnt work.

Please can you guide as I formulating paper work to dispute and take legal route to challenge. Also they threatened me that this could affect my credit rating on this basis I asked but you are yet to prove this.

Maybe the “anomaly” didn’t become apparent until after the migration. Lets assume that there is shortfall between what I have paid and what they think I should have paid. Maybe caused by estimated readings. Now SSE need to go after me. That’s the only thing I can think of. It still doesn’t explain why the debt didn’t transfer to OVO.

Don’t go the legal route. If you read back in this thread, we’ve got a faster route which has so far worked to perfection for Neddy.

The Forum Moderators are also on the case. That’ll likely bring a much faster and far less painful solution (and cheaper!).