FURIOUS Stephen Harris has been credit blacklisted after a mobile phone company bungled his bill.

Minicab driver Mr Harris, 36, of Dringhouses, York, said his new business, Anytime Travel, was suffering because he had been labelled a credit risk over the £200 mistake - despite receiving written confirmation from O2 that he had never owed it the money.

Mr Harris, who is also kit-man for York City Knights, continued to receive invoices from the company for 12 months, despite cancelling his year-long contract with O2 in October 2003 and moving to another network provider.

He contacted O2 several times to inform them of the problem - paying premium rate charges in the process - and finally in October last year he received a confirmation email stating that his phone should have been disconnected and that his account was closed and clear.

So he was shocked to receive a demand letter last month from debt collection company Wescot Credit Services, who had been instructed to collect the £198.19.

Worse was to come when he tried to apply for a Total fuel card for his business and was refused because of his bad credit rating.

Mr Harris said: "I paid £15 to find out what my credit score was and I am on there for non- payment of my O2 bill.

"They put me on there as a bad credit rating at the end of October - three weeks after I got the email saying I didn't owe the money.

"I have been told by the debt company that it's up to O2 to remove my name, but O2 haven't done that. A woman from O2 even told me that it would be easier to pay the debt, even if it wasn't mine, to get off the bad credit rating.

"My only option is to go to court, but that could take 12 months. In the meantime, I have this black mark against my name."

The Evening Press contacted O2 and a spokesman confirmed that the company had made administrative errors - but they were now being sorted out.

The spokesman said Mr Harris's name would be removed from the debt company's books and his credit rating would be restored.

He said: "My colleague has left Mr Harris a message so we can discuss the difficulties he has endured and find out what gesture of goodwill it is appropriate to make. When we speak to him we will apologise in full.

"We accept that we shouldn't have forwarded his file to the credit agency because the account was closed. I can confirm that the account is now closed for good."

Updated: 10:28 Wednesday, March 09, 2005