Hello, we bought our house (England) in July 2024 and once we got the keys, we did the usual meter readings and notified all the relevant utilities companies on the same day. However, over the past almost 2 years, we have been getting debt collection letters almost weekly from Octopus for usage that applied before we completed on the house purchase.
I’ve contacted them on numerous occasions letting them know that we are not the debtors and they would say they will stop sending the letters but we still kept receiving them. They also passed the letters on to a debt collection agency at some point who have sent threatening letters. I responded to the agency telling them the same thing and the letters from the agency stopped but we still receive the letters from Octopus.
I got quite annoyed about this and sent in a complaint to Octopus reiterating that this has been going on for almost 2 years and it feels like harassment. Octopus basically said even though they know we aren’t the debtors, there’s nothing they can do and they will keep sending the letters, which, in my opinion, makes no sense. They also keep telling me to pass the debt collection letters to the landlord/letting agent even though I’ve told them multiple times that I own the house.
The previous family that lived here sold the house to one of the major house builders in a part exchange agreement, so we actually bought the house from the house builders rather than from individuals. I told Octopus this and they are aware of who the house builders are, yet they keep still sending the letters to us.
Are Octopus right in their approach? And if not, is there anything else we can do to get them to stop? I’ve already told them that if it’s not resolved, I will escalate to the Energy Ombudsman but that doesn’t seem to have fazed them much.
Thanks!