Resolved Question

Fraud. Advantis Credit. Virgin Media. Help!?

okay. so i got a letter through my door a couple months ago saying a company was looking for me and that i owed them money. I phoned up and they said i owed virgin media £130 from a previous address. I'm with virgin media at my current address but before i moved here in feb 09, i'd never owned anything to do with virgin media before. so i explained this and they put me through to fraud team and explained that it was my mothers previous address where the bill was run up, but it's in my name.
I have no proof of living anywhere else at this point because i was living with family elsewhere and had just closed my bank account. so i have nothing to prove i was never living there. they say my only option is to pay the bill....or to sue my mother for fraud. I refuse to pay this bill because i really cant afford it and i didnt run it up the first place!
How would i go about getting this resolved?

Additional Details

I didnt use my name for this..my mother stole some sort of Id from me and opened the account herself. I didnt DO this.
I dont speak to her anymore and i dont even know where she lives.

1 week ago

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

Don't pay it. I strongly recommend that you speak to your local Citizens Advice Bureau. They're great, do it now!

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Other Answers (2)

• Ask at www.consumerdirect.gov.uk
• If Virgin Media are genuinely owed the money, you need to ask your mother to sort this out.
  
  Edit: if your mother stole your identity, this is a truly tragic situation and I feel for you. This debt must be the least of your pain.
  
  I suggest you firmly tell Virgin (not the scabby debt collector) that this is not your debt, that you signed nothing and tell them they will have to find evidence to prove otherwise. Hold your ground. Give them no information, not even that this was an address where your mother lived. Just say you never had a Virgin Media account, end of story.
  
  You do not have to prove you were not at that address because that is not relevant. You could have given this to your mother as a Christmas present for instance. You don't have to prove anything, they do.
  
  As you now have your own account with Virgin Media, you know what you had to do to set it up. I'm sure they needed a signature and a debit/credit card. At a guess, the debt collection company knows perfectly well that they don't have enough evidence to hold up in a court room and are faking it.
  
  If they take you to court, be sure not to miss the date.
  
  Remember, nobody can collect a debt from you that you never authorised. They cannot prove you authorised it if you did not.