British Gas? or Central Recoveries?

In light of the recent stories about first Wonga, and now the Student Loans Company, pretending to be other people when collecting debts I thought I would point our that British Gas certainly used to do much the same thing.

Back in 2007 I was in dispute with them, because I had moved supplier but they had decided to ignore my final meter reading and try and bill me for gas that I should have been paying my new supplier for and in the course of that dispute I received this letter from “Central Recoveries” saying that my account had been “passed to them”:

If you look closely at the small print ringed in red you will see that they are in fact a “Centrica business” and appear to be just another name for British Gas Trading Limited.

As much as I would have loved to see them in court and ask them to explain why I should pay them for gas that somebody else had supplied me, my new supplier decided that they would credit me what British Gas was wrongly demanding so I unfortunately had to let the whole thing drop.