Help with Powergen! (surprise surprise)

stumpjumper

after having an unpleasant shock when £577 disappeared from OH's bank account without warning, we discovered it was powergen. Called them up and asked !!!!!! was going on and they said it was to pay the gas bill!! We only live in a 2 bed back to back terrace and there's no way we use that much gas! We explained that we'd never ever had a bill from them at which point they offered to refund the money (not sure whether we've had it credited yet or not) and send us all the paper bills. Today we got the paper bills and noticed the meter readings didn't look anything like the ones on our meter at all and the bill stated cu ft and our meter reads in cu meters. We checked the meter reference number and it's totally different to the one on our meter!! It would appear we've been billed for someone elses gas! Where do we go from here? We know we need to tell powergen that they've got readings from the wrong meter, but how will they know how much we owe without the correct meter readings from our meter?

lizzie666

firstly you need to check your meter details. and give them to powergen. there may be a tag on the meter that gives the details of when the meter was fitted. give them any info on this tag.
they may have your address details incorrect.
call transco ( 0870 608 152)
give them your address and ask for your mpr number for your property. this way powergen can find the correct information by searching on your actual meter and not your address.
if you want to make sure that they bill you for a reasonable amount of units, take a reading every week for a month. this will give you an average usage which you can use to work out a reasonable reading to be billed from.
this is alot of effort I know but if you ask powergen to deal with all of this, they won't. trust me.
the best way is to find all the correct info and give it to them!
keep all the information and don't stop till they get it right.

(paying by quarterly direct debit is risky as they often take out the money before you see the bill, resulting in problems)

lizzie666

yup. the numbers on the meter are usless. as above.
For gas info - call transco. get your mpr number and confirm with them who your supplier is.
for electricity info call 0845 6030618 and get your mpan number.

please note. there are 2, yes 2 powergen's.
(as one was previously eastern energy)
powergen eastern - 0800 183 1515 (if you are in the cambridge area this is probably the one you need to call. yes, it's a call center I'm afraid. )

and I'm afraid i don't know the other number.
if your house is new (and by new I mean less than 2 years)
then there is often a problem with postcodes as they tend to get changed alot when houses are first built as they are often given temporary codes, then they get changed by the post office and no one tells the company!
so this is why you need you mprs /mpan number. it is unique to your house and powergen are more likely to find it on their system.
Speak to the home moving department as they are the ones who should deal with this......

System

lizzie666 wrote:

get your mpr number and confirm with them who your supplier is.

Even thats no guarantee i am afraid, my house is linked with a woman in a different road to me. We have similar addresses and postcodes, she even has the same forname as me and a similar surname. What makes it worse, is that her electricity meter serial number is only 1 digit different to mine.

Each time i change suppliers, i get the new supplier to come out and check i only have 1 electricity meter to my house and that the numbers on the meter correspond with theirs. I have given up changing suppliers now, its not worth the hastle i have to go through.

lizzie666

you could ask the company to change your meter....
but they would probably go to your neighbours house instead!

stumpjumper

our house is 150 years old so it's not a new build problem. The gas meter was installed in 2003 (before we moved in) and it's got the meter reference number on a yellow tag as well as printed on the meter, the bills Powergen have sent have a totally different meter reference number on. We're going to take daily meter readings to back up our case. We've recently switched suppliers to british gas so we're also going to have to double check they're using the right details too.

lizzie666

ok.
ts_aly2000, you must keep on to transco and edf for your mpan & m-number.
they are responsible for this and no other company will be able to sort it for you. Both companies are not good at giving information or amending information. If you are struggling, talk to energywatch and they will hassle edf/transco. until they can give you those numbers, there is nothing powergen or any other company can do.
This is something the builders should of finished off.

MVC

We had this when we switched to Powergen a couple of years ago. It took a while to sort out but they did send us the money back.

They charged roughly triple for the gas (Ours is Metric but they thought Imperial).

Waiting to see what happens and will switch soon...possibly.....