My wife received a letter today from a collection agency. They were asking for over £300 in unpaid vodafone bills. My wife doesn't have a vodafone contract, she has an O2 one. Before that she had t-mobile, and before that orange. She hasn't had a vodafone contract in 7 years, when she had a different name, and an address nowhere near our current one. The previous vodafone contract is all paid up long ago.
She had received a phone call about 2 weeks ago; a cold call asking if she was the resident of 'not our address' or 'also not our address'. She said no, was thanked and thought no more of it.
Then today's letter arrived, threatening CCJs, balifs, repossessions. This is the first of these letters, there hasn't been a simple request to pay, just this one letter. She phoned them up, and was asked to confirm if her birthday was 'not her birthday / month / year', on saying no she was asked if it was similar in any way (not clutching at straws or anything), she replied no. They then asked what her birthday was! Strangely she declined to tell them. The matter is now, apparently, closed. Mistaken identity! Yeah, right!
In this day and age of identity theft how are you supposed to prove who you are without handing enough details over to pose a problem to your identity? Also, why should you have to prove who you aren't? Shouldn't they be working better to find the right person without bothering you? I'm willing to bet their due dilligence in this matter went as far as ringing all those in the county with the right sort of name, and then, on getting no where with that, sending all of them a letter hoping to bully / flush out the guilty party.
Now to write them a nice letter requesting they purge all my wife's details from their database in accordance with the data protection act. I wonder what the response will be.
2nd post to follow once I get the web browser on this phone to work properly!
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