I'm being wrongly pursued for a large energy debt in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity.

EDF says I must pay a gas bill of £4,763.34 for a flat in London, relating to a period between March 2021 and September 2025. 

I've never lived in London or had an EDF account, but it seems this person has the same name as me. 

I disputed the bill but EDF doesn't seem to want to listen. I'm now being pursued by LCS Debt Recovery on behalf of EDF. 

I'm terrified. What can I do? R.D., Northumberland

Helen Crane, This is Money's consumer champion, replies: The first you heard of this was in mid-March, when a letter from LCS debt collectors dropped on your doorstep. 

Although it was addressed to you, the gas bill pertained to an address in Camden, North London - some 300 miles from your home in the North East. 

It was described as a 'formal demand for payment' and said that LCS would be sharing details of the debt with credit reference agencies and that this could harm your credit rating. 

I received scores of these kind of letters at a previous address, thanks to a former resident who had neglected to pay their bills. 

For anyone who hasn't received one, let me tell you that they are really quite frightening. 

While you thought this odd, it was clearly a mistake and one you assumed would be easy to sort out. You told me you have only ever been to London four times.

You emailed the energy company and the debt agency to inform them of their error. 

Your name is common enough that there are at least tens, if not hundreds of others around the country - so surely EDF and LCS would accept that they had got the wrong one. 

But a week or so later, a 'final notice' letter followed with even sterner demands, insisting you pay the full amount 'immediately' to 'prevent any further action.'

You contacted LCS on the phone and were met with a combative response. 

It told you that it was not required to prove that you were the correct debtor. 

Instead, it said the onus was on you to prove you never lived at that address - and you had one week to do so. 

LCS didn't say where precisely it found your details, but commonly debt collection firms use credit reference agencies such as Experian and Equifax; public databases such as the Electoral Roll, Land Registry, Companies House and County Court Judgement records; as well as specialist search software which aggregates this type of information. 

Increasingly, they also scour social media for clues as to where debtors might be located. 

You lived at a number of other properties in the period in question and have documents such as bills to prove this, some of which you provided to LCS.

However, you were understandably not keen to provide details such as your parents' address to a debt collection firm - especially as they had already shown that they were happy to chase down people for debts that weren't theirs. 

If your namesake had walked out on one £4,763 debt, it's likely others could be lurking. 

I completely understand why you would rather not make your entire financial and address history available for LCS' future use. 

After all, you had done absolutely nothing wrong - and weren't obliged to provide anything at all.  

After that, you returned to EDF to ask it again to call off LCS. On this call, it admitted that the email address and mobile number it had on record for the Camden flat, which it passed to EDF to start this whole charade, did not match your contact details at all.

Despite this, though, it didn't agree to stop hounding you for the money. Desperate, you contacted me for help in late April. 

As well as wanting to end these ridiculous demands for payment, you were keen to get some answers over how you ended up in the LCS system. 

Hundreds of thousands of people across the country have the same name as someone else. 

You were prepared to stand up to the companies who sent these frightening letters, but what if this happened to someone vulnerable, or who wasn't able to fight their corner?

When I contacted EDF, it placed the blame on LCS's shoulders. It said it passed the Camden address and the name on the account to LCS, but it was the debt collector who dug up your contact details and made the substantial leap of linking a debt in North London to a woman in Northumberland.

An EDF spokesman said: 'Following a period of non-payment over several months, this debt was passed on to a third party to pursue, who utilise their own independent databases to trace individuals.

'Following an investigation they have found that they were contacting the wrong individual and have ceased correspondence.'

EDF did pay you £125 in compensation because it said it didn't inform you properly about how to clear your name.

I then approached LCS, which gave me a more substantive account of how this happened. 

The debt firm, which is a trading name of a company called 1st Locate, said it had launched a full investigation into your case. 

Its spokesman said the mistake 'resulted from human error during a manual trace process, where an individual with the same name was incorrectly matched to the account.'

He continued: 'The required validation checks were not applied to the expected standard in this instance, which led to contact being made with the wrong person.'

LCS said it would review the way it worked to make sure this did not happen again. 

The spokesman added: 'While cases of this nature are rare, we recognise the seriousness of errors of this type. 

'Following this incident we have reinforced trace validation standards, strengthened escalation guidance for potential mismatches, and increased monitoring/oversight controls to reduce the likelihood of recurrence.'

You also made a formal complaint to LCS, as well as obtaining records of your conversations via a Subject Access Request. The firm has since responded to you fully in a letter. 

LCS said it searched for people linked to the EDF account by doing a name search using a 'third-party data aggregator' which threw up your name. 

However, it again admitted that the staff member concerned 'missed key checks' to ensure that the person identified had 'clear links to the supply address, that placed them in London.'

It also admitted in its letter to you that it did not respond to your email enquiries adequately, did not call you back when promised and that customer service staff did not escalate the issue when they should have done. 

It has paid you £1,000 as an apology. 

You thanked me for my help and said you 'genuinely do not think this would have been taken seriously' without my involvement. 

Equally, I applaud you for your tenacity in continuing to ask questions of EDF and LCS. I hope it means someone else doesn't have to endure the same thing.