Limited Company Utility Bill In My Name

[Genie10]

Hi all,
We closed our business in 2017 & closed down the limited company in 2018. During this time Anglian Water business had produced a high final bill which I queried. I was told to not pay it until it had been investigated. I told them the date the company would close & the final bill was not resolved by then. Fast forward to December 2018 & i finally got one person dedicated to my case. I presumed because the limited company had been liquidated that the bill could not be paid now but he says the problem is that the water bills had my name trading as **** & the business address instead of the limited company name.
I received the email below this morning & wondered if anyone could advise if I have to pay this or if there is some way round it?
Thanks in advance.
Genie

There is nothing wrong with the evidence that you have provided to us however we are unable to make historic changes to your account as this is prior to when we as Anglian Water Business/Wave were your retailer.

Should Anglian Water have been made aware prior to April 2017 when the market opened then the account name would have been able to be changed, however in this period you continued to pay the account despite the account being in your personal name. This meant that when we, as Anglian Water Business, took over your account when the market opened it was migrated in your personal name trading as the ****. What this means is that you are responsible for the bills as per the market code. Should you have had a problem with your name being on the bills this should have been queried between 24.01.2013 through to 01.04.2017.

I'm afraid that this does mean you are responsible for the outstanding balance on the account and that if no arrangement if reached then further action will be taken.

 

[Newchodge]

If their comments are accurate, then I would say they are right. Were the bills in your name, t/a ,,,,,,,?

 

[Blaby Loyal]

What sort of value are we looking at here please?

 

[Mr D]

What does the contract say? Between them and whom?

 

[Genie10]

If their comments are accurate, then I would say they are right. Were the bills in your name, t/a ,,,,,,,?

It was a pub we ran so although the Ltd Co was called Bigbarrells the bills were addressed to Joe Bloggs trading as the Red Lion. This will have been how we set up our account with Anglian Water & all utilities when we first took over before we set up the Ltd Co. It's only about £600 that we owe. It's more the principle. They have messed us about so much in the past 18 months. It's only because I took to social media about it in December 2018 that they finally assigned me someone to assist. I can't find the contract & it almost certainly had my name & not the Ltd co name. It's not helped by the fact that Anglian Water changed to wave in 2017 so cannot look back to see if I asked the name to be changed as I did with all the other utilities.

 

[Blaby Loyal]

I would try and argue on the basis that you did .previously notify whomever of the change. The fact that it has not migrated from one of their systems to another following acquisition/sale/takeover is not your problem. If what you say about them 'messing you around' is correct then you will have a good case to argue that losing such key account information is distinctly possible.

In addition, if you have made payments to Anglian Water from the company's account from 02.04.2017 onwards and they have not been rejected then you can claim that Anglian Water have accepted the change through a course of dealings. It's a bit tenuous but well worth a go.

 

[Newchodge]

Add the evidence of the other utility company accounts that you changed.

 

[Mr D]

It was a pub we ran so although the Ltd Co was called Bigbarrells the bills were addressed to Joe Bloggs trading as the Red Lion. This will have been how we set up our account with Anglian Water & all utilities when we first took over before we set up the Ltd Co. It's only about £600 that we owe. It's more the principle. They have messed us about so much in the past 18 months. It's only because I took to social media about it in December 2018 that they finally assigned me someone to assist. I can't find the contract & it almost certainly had my name & not the Ltd co name. It's not helped by the fact that Anglian Water changed to wave in 2017 so cannot look back to see if I asked the name to be changed as I did with all the other utilities.

Your principle or their principle?

 

[Blaby Loyal]

Your principle or their principle?

Nietzsche?

 

[Mr D]

Nietzsche?

Dunno.
They are chasing a bill they know is payable. OP is disputing its payable. So whose principles apply?

 

[kulture]

Solicitors get rich on people's principals. By all means try as suggested, but I would not waste too much time on this and pay up. It will come back and bite you sooner or latter. If by chance they accept that it was the company that owed the money and not you personally, then they will go after the property owner instead. That would be your old landlord. Now the chances are you will have had a personal guarantee with them, so guess who they will pass the bill on to, plus their costs.

 

[Blaby Loyal]

* principles

 

[Genie10]

I wrote out in brief for the person assigned to my case the saga since we left the pub. I've copied it for you you below so you can perhaps understand my irritation. I feel they have behaved incompetently with this case & thats why I feel I should fight it! But only if I have a legal leg to stand on! I guess claiming we definitely changed the name to the Ltd co name is an option. I apologise for the length of this...

We ran pub until June 2017. I let all suppliers know we were leaving well in advance & Anglian Water asked me to provide meter readings on our final day which I did.

We paid what we thought was a final bill however in September we received another bill for £600ish. I called you to query it & the lady agreed it was a lot of money as it was only for part of the year. I explained that there had been a leak at the pub for the past 18 months, that Anglian Water had admitted responsibility for it, but it had still not been resolved when we left the pub. She advised me not to pay the outstanding balance & she would look in to it. I explained to her that we were closing our limited company down & the business bank account was closing at the end of October 2017 & if we hadn't heard back from yourselves by then it would be very difficult for us to pay you what was actually owed.

In July 2018 I received a letter from Wave stating that our account has been passed to a debt collection agency. I called Wave who assured me they had put a stop to the debt collection & would look in to the matter.

I have heard nothing from you since.

I returned from holiday on October 7th 2018 to two letters from a debt collecting agency, the final one stating a debt collection agent will visit my property.

I called you immediately. I spoke to Adam who passed me on to a different department where I spoke to Wayne who informed me that he was not the person I needed & that he would have someone call me from the debt department before lunch. That call was 29 minutes long.

When no one had called me by 2pm I called you again & asked to speak to a manager. I spoke to a supervisor who could not help me & put me through to another department where I spoke to Kyran. She said she would get confirmation from Anglian Water that the leak has been fixed (I have no idea if it has or not) The new owners of the pub would then need to fill in a leakage allowance & then it might be possible that we could get it backdated to our time at the pub! She put the debt collection on hold for 2 weeks. I asked what would happen after the two weeks & she didn't seem to know & was surprised that I requested somebody call me to keep me updated. I asked to speak to somebody who might be able to deal with the debt & apparently she had spoken to her senior & the debt can not be written off. That call was 1 hour long.

On the 9th October 2018 I had a phone call from Anglian Water to say he could confirm that Bigbarrells Ltd was liquidated & he made a note on the system & passed it to the legal team as a legal insolvency case.

On the 6th December I received the bill again via email.
I spent over half an hour on the phone to yourselves. Apparently the case has been closed. I have not received an email or letter telling me this. Why wouldn't somebody inform me?

The chap I spoke to said as the bills were in the name of Joe Bloggs TA The Red Lion I was liable as a sole trader & not the LTD company. I explained that we took over the pub & put the bill in my name until we formed the LTD company a couple of months later. I am confident that when the LTD company was formed I informed all suppliers. I asked for him to look back through records to see if he could find evidence of this. Apparently it was a different company before 2017 & there are no records.

The issues I have are:

We ran the pub through our limited company. The company closed down in June 2018 a full year after we had left the pub.
There is no company to pay the debt.

When we left the pub I gave Anglian Water my home address for any future correspondence. My home address is now on the debt collectors letter. The pub address was the business & our Limited Company was registered to our accountants address. Our home address has never been linked with the business. I am alarmed that Anglian Water has passed this information on.

No one has looked in to why the bill is so high. None of our bills over the previous 4 years had been that high. I believe the leak has still not been resolved!

No one is owning this problem. It is 19 months since we left the pub & I am not prepared to spend an hour an a half every couple of months on the phone to you being passed from pillar to post with the threat of a debt collector turning up at my front door.

We kept our limited company open for a full year to allow any unexpected bills to be paid. Anglian Water did not manage to deal with my query within this time & failed to keep me updated.

In my last telephone call to yourselves you said you presumed you were dealing with a sole trader. This cannot be so as for 4.5 years you took the direct debit from our LTD company bank account.