This is on behalf of my girlfriend.
My girlfriend & her friend found a nice house to live last July for their final year at university. Because they had an extra room they advertised it out & found an Austrian girl to take it. The Austrian girl moved in at the start of August and setup up all the gas & elec bills, linking them to her bank account. She setup a direct debit paying them the estimated amount each month, and all was well. My gf & her friend wired the money to The Austrian girl & it was then taken out of her account each month.
Come January the Austrian girl spoke to npower & they advised her to add the names of my gf & her friend onto the bill, which they did in good faith. Now, they paid the bills via direct debit each month, the money comming out of the the Austrain girl's account. To save hassle (my gf was pregnant & was due in may) & the fact that the student loan had come in, my gf & her friend paid the Austrian girl the amount due for the 5 months up until they moved out. This came to £170 (£34 * 5) to cover the bills for jan, Feb, March, April & May, upon which they would move out. That way they wouldn't have to fanny around each month paying the money in. When my gf & her friend moved out at the end of May the Austrain girl would cover the costs on her own (she is the only one left in the house as she is living there for a 2nd year with some new tenants). The Austrian girl was perfectly happy with this & agreed that their names would be taken off around May.
Now May arrived and my girlfriend called up to take her name off the account as she had paid her share of it all. The only problem was Npower told her that they were in £340 worth of debt. My gf couldn't figure out how this happened until Npower told her that the direct debit had been cancelled on April 16th by the Austrian girl for no apparent reason (She claimed it was end of May), without my gf's or her friends knowledge.
Now the Austrian girl is ignoring (she has a thick accent & isnt easy to understand over the phone so everything is via e-mail & txt - though iv asked gf to call her tomorrow) any mention of the fact that the money was all paid in January and the fact sh eis effectively askign my gf & her friend to pay for April & May twice (£70 worth).
Now, Is there anything my gf can do to get her name taken off the account? Npower initially said not until they get their money, but the fact that they allowed the Austrian girl to cancel the direct debit without informing/asking for permission from my gf or her friend is what got them into such a mess. Had the direct debits been continued then the money would have been taken out & the bills would have been paid. Surely Npower needs to inform everyone when such a change is made to an account. When we had a bank account open with HSBC for my uni house we could barely ask the balance of it without half of us signing something giving our permissions.
Thanks guys, i know asking for advice is a long shot but figured it was worth a try!
edit; The £340 includes bills for June & July aswell, which is when the Austrian girl was living there on her home - she is covering those herself, hence the above numbers not all adding up exactly.![]()


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