Being chased to pay outstanding nursery fees that are 2.5years old

[Sarah74]

Hi

I'm new to this forum so just hope I'm posting in the right place!

I've recently received an email from a private day nursery that I used for my children up until aug 2009. Apparently, due to internal accounting errors, my account has an unpaid balance of £512 on it which they are asking me to pay.

I've requested and received more detail from them (list of all transactions from their accounting system) and it does look like I owe this money but purely due to their own internal errors.

Where do I stand legally on this? Does anyone know? The debt is more than 2 an a half years old and i knew nothing about it until very recently. I don't have £500 hanging around with which to settle the debt but also feel a little peeved that they are chasing me for it after all this time.

Can anyone offer me any advise please?

Thanks in advance
Sarah

 

[Needhelpandadvice]

Sarah,
i am not by any means an expert. But I have heard of the similar matter - and as far as I know the companies cannot chase the individual for MORE than a year for the unpaid invoice. If you are a limited company they can chase you for 6 years... I am not 100% on services, but if it's so old I doubt you are obliged to pay it ....However, again, not sure if this is a different case...

 

[Sarah74]

Thanks for your reply. My gut feeling is that I shouldn't have to pay this after so long but would like to be able to revert back to the nursery with some legal facts of some kind to argue my case! Is there an organisation that I can contact for advice, like CAB or similar?

Just want to point out that if this had been brought to my attention soon after my children left the nursery, I would have paid the balance as I clearly owe it but given the time that has passed, I'm less keen and quite frankly have less spare cash these days!

Sarah

 

[Needhelpandadvice]

I@d try the phone number on top of here - i'm pretty sure it's quite a common question and they will be able to point the exact info out to you.

 

[Sarah74]

Thanks - will give them a call!