The case has been successfully resolved: we provided them with evidence of our previous correspondence, and they have agreed that the invoice was raised by an error on their part.
I do thank all of you at this forum for your kind attention and responses. You have really helped.
Yes, as I now understand from the answers obatined here, to bill us was probably just a mistake.
The only reason of mine to ask for opinions at this site was that similar things have never happened to us before, so I decided to ask what experienced people think on that.
Sorry for expressing myself unclear. Of course, "asking to revise their decision" was a polite form to ask them to cancel (withdraw) their bill, as no services for that have been provided.
Is crediting the fee in the whole, as they suggested in one option, will mean the same that cancelling the bill? That is, we will not have to pay anything and the incident will be over?
I am currenlty inclining to the b). Honestly speaking, I have no intention to consider this as a fraud. We all make mistakes from time to time.
If so, would it be reasonable to write them and ask to revise their decision, as there are no any evidence for providing us the services they claim, while we can prove with documents that our registered office has never been with them and we have always filed our annual returns ourselves?
It was there where it is now and where it has always been since we incorporated, that is it has never changed. Since the moment of the company formation we have properly received all correspondence both from HMRC and Companies House.
No, we did not provide them any passwords or authorised them anyhow else. On the contrary, when they once sent us an annual return for approval, we explained that we did not engage with them for that service and we just disregarded that return and informed the firm about that.
Yes, we signed a letter of engagement, but that letter was only about the accounting services, i.e. preparation of corporation tax return. Nothing else has ever been discussed, and no other services including the registered office and filing annual returns have been provided to us by that firm.
Of course, we comply with the law and file annual returns each year, but we either do it ourselves or asked for assistance from another firm (actually, that was our company formation agent; it assisted us with filing for the first two years after the incorporation, as we were not familiar with that matter).
My answers
We were not. But we decided to, in order to substantiate our position.
The case has been successfully resolved: we provided them with evidence of our previous correspondence, and they have agreed that the invoice was raised by an error on their part.
I do thank all of you at this forum for your kind attention and responses. You have really helped.
Yes, as I now understand from the answers obatined here, to bill us was probably just a mistake.
The only reason of mine to ask for opinions at this site was that similar things have never happened to us before, so I decided to ask what experienced people think on that.
Sorry for expressing myself unclear. Of course, "asking to revise their decision" was a polite form to ask them to cancel (withdraw) their bill, as no services for that have been provided.
Is crediting the fee in the whole, as they suggested in one option, will mean the same that cancelling the bill? That is, we will not have to pay anything and the incident will be over?
I am currenlty inclining to the b). Honestly speaking, I have no intention to consider this as a fraud. We all make mistakes from time to time.
If so, would it be reasonable to write them and ask to revise their decision, as there are no any evidence for providing us the services they claim, while we can prove with documents that our registered office has never been with them and we have always filed our annual returns ourselves?
Yes, I am inclining to the same explanation: they have been simply ruled by their automated system rather than made a deliberate fraud.
It was there where it is now and where it has always been since we incorporated, that is it has never changed. Since the moment of the company formation we have properly received all correspondence both from HMRC and Companies House.
No, we did not provide them any passwords or authorised them anyhow else. On the contrary, when they once sent us an annual return for approval, we explained that we did not engage with them for that service and we just disregarded that return and informed the firm about that.
Yes, exactlty.
Yes, we signed a letter of engagement, but that letter was only about the accounting services, i.e. preparation of corporation tax return. Nothing else has ever been discussed, and no other services including the registered office and filing annual returns have been provided to us by that firm.
Of course, we comply with the law and file annual returns each year, but we either do it ourselves or asked for assistance from another firm (actually, that was our company formation agent; it assisted us with filing for the first two years after the incorporation, as we were not familiar with that matter).