Do you have an issue you need to put right? Which? is here to help get your consumer problems sorted.
Dear Which?,
I’ve received an email purporting to be from ABD Debt Recovery, requesting payment, by bank transfer, of £56 – which I allegedly owe to Brilliant Energy.
I was indeed a customer of Brilliant Energy, which ceased trading in March 2019. This is the only correspondence regarding this alleged debt that I’ve ever received. The phone number in the email doesn’t work. I have replied to the email requesting evidence of the debt. What else can I do?
Name and address supplied
Put to Rights
Faye Lipson, Which? senior researcher, says…
You were right to be cautious, as this email raises many red flags.
Brilliant Energy was swiftly taken over by SSE, overseen by regulator Ofgem. You and fellow customers would have been automatically switched to SSE and any inherited debt balance would have been managed by the new supplier, or Brilliant’s administrator, Begbies Traynor, in the months following. Not three years later.
The inclusion of a sort code and account number in the actual email is quite typical of scammers – they prefer bank transfers as they are much harder to reverse.
Then there’s the non-working phone number and the fact that ABD’s stated website doesn’t work either. A quick look at Companies House tells us there is an ABD Debt Recovery Ltd registered, but it’s listed as dormant in 2021. Our attempt to email the firm led to an automatic bounceback.
A list of former Brilliant Energy customers may have been sold on or otherwise fallen into the hands of scammers, for whom ABD – which may be genuine – has proved a useful front.
Don’t send any money. Speak to SSE (sse.co.uk) to verify whether anything is owing. If it says no, report the email to Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk.
- Find out more: what happens if your energy supplier goes bust
Need to know
|
Get in touch. If you’ve got a consumer rights problem you need put right, email us at yourstory@which.co.uk.
Please be aware that we can’t help with, or respond to, every email that we receive. The inbox is monitored periodically during office hours, Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm.
Get your money questions answered
Join Which? Money – find the best deals, avoid scams, and protect your savings and investments with expert guidance from Which? Money magazine and Which? Money Helpline. You’ll get:
- Independent one-to-one phone guidance on all sorts of money issues
- Pensions, tax, savings, investments, mortgages, insurance, credit and more
- We’re impartial jargon busters, not financial sales people – we’re on your side
- No limit to how many calls you can make or how long you can spend talking to us
- Which? Money magazine delivered monthly to your door
source https://www.which.co.uk/news/2022/02/ive-received-a-surprise-energy-bill-from-an-old-supplier/