Why gas threat is just a lot of hot air
P.B. writes: My daughter is currently in remission from cancer. As you can imagine, when she received a notice from Tremark Associates of Leeds, referring to a debt of £3,182, she was distressed. I contacted Tremark and explained that while the debt is to Contract Natural Gas Limited, my daughter’s gas supplier is British Gas, with no outstanding debt. Tremark said it had spoken to my daughter twice and she had agreed to pay off the debt. I AM not surprised your daughter – Ms JB – was distressed. The letter from investigator and process server Tremark was headed ‘Urgent – Notice of Impending Legal Action’ and it told her the gas company had already instructed it to open court proceedings with a view to registering the debt against her home.
Anyone inspecting credit agency files or Land Registry records would see the debt and your daughter could never sell her home without paying the £3,182.
But of course, your daughter never owed a penny. Contract Natural Gas quickly admitted to me that Tremark had got the right name but the wrong person. The real debtor lives in the same city but has a different date of birth.
Tremark confessed it had picked on your daughter by mistake, but blamed ‘coincidences’, though it is hard to see how the confusion arose. It took me less than five minutes to trace the real debtor, her address and date of birth.
When I revealed this, Trem- ark boss Mark Hodgson threatened: ‘We note that as part of your own investigation you have identified another JB and other personal data about that individual. We remind you of your duties under both the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act.
‘You must not under any circumstances publish this individual’s date of birth, address, or any other information which may identify this individual and/or breach an individual’s right to privacy. Any breach will be reported.’
He warned: ‘We wish to make it clear that if anything is published about Tremark or Contract Natural Gas which is false, misleading or defamatory, Tremark will have no hesitation in instructing our solicitors to vindicate its reputation and seek damages.’
Finally, he claimed that if I went ahead and r eported any of this, I was somehow obliged to ‘ adopt a neutral approach’.
Well, to heck with that. I told Hodgson that if it were not for his own company’s negligence, I would never have held the debtor’s details that he was so anxious to keep secret.
As for claiming damages from me and The Mail on Sunday, I found it ironic that all he offered to the one genuinely innocent party – your daughter – was an apology.
This may have pricked his conscience. Last Thursday, you told me Tremark had now offered to cover the cost of the phone calls made to try to sort out Tremark’s mess. Your daughter will also be getting a hamper of goodies instead of a court summons.