This evening I find two letters, one threatening to take me to court for non-payment from their debt collector, and one from O2 writing off the debt (although it was only the regular printed statement with the line "Goodwill. Failed Promise" added by the computer).

Indeed the statement was slightly bewildering due to its brevity, and calling O2 (ouch - always feel I'm contributing to their profits due to the 0870 number and the length of time on hold) required me to be transferred twice before I found someone who could answer a question.

Phoned their debt collector first, who tried to extract lots of irrelevant information as part of the "identity check". I'll charitably assume this is for the purposes of harassment, and not for the purposes of identity theft, or selling on. Particularly ironic is they asked for my mobile phone number, I bet that solicits some choice replies on occaison.

In order to prevent the potentially huge and escalating costs of debt collection I'd posted a cheque to the debt collector on Sunday. So the confusion of crossed messages is huge - oh if only they all worked with email, and online payments.

Of course the debt collector wrote a week or so ago saying O2 were insisting on the payment, so presumably someone at O2 finally read something I'd sent them, I assume the fax to the independent complaints group, but I'm none the wiser, since I've received nothing spontaneously from O2 except printed statement.

5 months, at least three letters, two faxes, and countless phone calls on my part in pursuit of trying to pay for my contract, and then trying not to pay for periods I hadn't had any service, but now I think the end is in sight?!

My 20 GBP Orange Pay and Go phone continues to function perfectly.