Unpaid Meteor contract, left the country!

MrsHyde

I've lived in Ireland for about two years to study, but had to move back to germany for financial reasons. I had set up a mobile phone and broadband contract with meteor for 18 months before i left the country. I gave the broadband stick to a friend who promised to transfer money to my bankaccount so i could keep it going and not get in trouble. But how these things go it didnt work out as planned. She didnt pay and meteor cancelled connection. I dont really know whats going on as i dont get any letters from them nor anything over email and i dont have the stick.
I now dont have the money to continue the contract and wanted to cancel it but they said i had to pay the rest of the outstanding months which would be about 280 euro. I also told them about the problems i have ie. not being able to contact them except via email but they ignored that.
Today i panicked and just cancelled the direct debit. So the situation is this. The address they have is my old irish address where i dont live, and the landlord doesnt have my new address. I'm going to cancel the bankaccount ( if they let me do it over the phone) but the bankpeople dont have my germanaddress either. So other then my previous bankaccoutnumber, my emailaddress and the fact i now live in germany the meteor people dont know anything about me.
Now I am wondering are they going to hunt me down and put me in jail as a criminal?

MitchKoobski

1. You should never have simply just trusted a 'friend' to pay for it for the remaining months. Speaking to Meteor before you left would have led to at least some sort of deal or namechange being worked out on the contract.
2. They're not going to pursue you into a different country. The chain of events would go from trying to contact you via letter or textx or phone calls, to cutting off your service, to the bank itself (possibly) and then to solicitors.
3. If your friend was using it for the outstanding months then why aren't you telling her to pay the outstanding amount?

MrsHyde

Thanks for the quick response!

Yeah, I've been quite stupid. I've known my friend for 10 years and thought she would be reliable but apparently not.
As a matter of fact she has just used it for one months. Meteor always charges you in advance, so the months she used it was still paid by me. Then when the next payment was due there was no money on the account. They charge on the 5th and the monthy period is from the 14th - 14th. So i think what happened is they couldnt get the advance payment on the 5th and then cut off the connection around the 14th. I cant contact her at the moment but they cut off connection, and i cant use the phone in germany either so technically im not receiving any services from meteor and dont really owe them money for something ive already used (because of the advance payment). I wonder would it be worth it for them to go through all this trouble of finding me just for the hell of that money. I feel very guilty for doing that to them but i'm totally broke and live with my parents now who dont have the money either. But anyway, thanks for the help. Much appreciated!

MitchKoobski

Well obviously if you weren't even in the country to use it, you wouldn't pay for it. They can only go so far to try and get payment.

Floppybits

MrsHyde wrote: »

Thanks for the quick response!

Yeah, I've been quite stupid. I've known my friend for 10 years and thought she would be reliable but apparently not.
As a matter of fact she has just used it for one months. Meteor always charges you in advance, so the months she used it was still paid by me. Then when the next payment was due there was no money on the account. They charge on the 5th and the monthy period is from the 14th - 14th. So i think what happened is they couldnt get the advance payment on the 5th and then cut off the connection around the 14th. I cant contact her at the moment but they cut off connection, and i cant use the phone in germany either so technically im not receiving any services from meteor and dont really owe them money for something ive already used (because of the advance payment). I wonder would it be worth it for them to go through all this trouble of finding me just for the hell of that money. I feel very guilty for doing that to them but i'm totally broke and live with my parents now who dont have the money either. But anyway, thanks for the help. Much appreciated!

I wouldn't about it too much. I left the country before without paying my bill and basically I was cut off and that was all I heard about it. Funnily enough when I came back to the country I ended up working for that same company.

nimrodsson

I wouldn't be too bothered about Meteor - but i'd sort your bank account if i were you - each time you have a rejected DD, there is a fee of over €10 euro, this will keep being debited to your account, whether you have an overdraft or not, for about 6 months or so (then they'll probably cancell the DDs for you), then there will be interest charged on that, and it will get bigger. Then it will go to collections - they won't bother chasing you for such a small amount, but if you ever wanted to return and bank with that insitution again, they won't offer you services because of the bad (albeit small) balance on your account. So, to get everything sorted you should call the bank, cancel the DDs, pay what is due, and close the account. You could do that over the phone. Wouldn't be worried about Meteor at all...