Swalec Bill - surely I can demand a refund!!

BigGar34

Hi,
Wonder if you can help!! I live on my own in a medium sized 3 bedroom house and to be honest I hardly give the heating system a pounding during the winter.

Currently pay Swalec approx' 60-65 EACH for the gas and electric. Have just had my new bills and to my pleasant surprise Swalec are giving me back £130 on the electric account. The gas is a different story!!!

That account is £679 in credit but no mention of a refund!!! Am I crazy to expect something back? Yes, I know we're heading into the winter but that must be a huge amount to be in credit, especially when I will be paying the 60-65 per month anyway!
Am I missing something here??!!

Thanks,
Gareth

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

How long as it taken to build up that credit?

If that credit(£679) is showing on your latest bill, then on the face of it you would expect to get a sizeable amount of that back as a refund.

Have you asked?

brazilianwax

BigGar34 wrote: »

Hi,
Wonder if you can help!! I live on my own in a medium sized 3 bedroom house and to be honest I hardly give the heating system a pounding during the winter.

Currently pay Swalec approx' 60-65 EACH for the gas and electric. Have just had my new bills and to my pleasant surprise Swalec are giving me back £130 on the electric account. The gas is a different story!!!

That account is £679 in credit but no mention of a refund!!! Am I crazy to expect something back? Yes, I know we're heading into the winter but that must be a huge amount to be in credit, especially when I will be paying the 60-65 per month anyway!
Am I missing something here??!!

Thanks,
Gareth

Just phone and ask them to refund you. They'll send you a cheque with no arguments or need to demand. You can also ask them to reduce your payments so that you don't build up so much credit in the future.

Chill out a bit

BigGar34

Hi,
Thanks for the responses. My bills back in March were on estimated readings. Anyway, I checked about a month ago and my actual readings were less than what was shown on the bill. Had the official reading for the bill last week and this is the net result.

Had a quick chat with Swalec a month ago and they said that if in credit they'd likely refund me when the actual readings were taken. Well,, they seem to have kept their side of the deal (elec) but not the gas!! I'd expect a fair portion of the refund back as I know I don't use the boiler etc that much but have a feeling that they must have a reason not to offer it now (on covering letter of the gas bill) if they have acted differently with the elec.

Cardew

Well you need to ask for a refund.

It is probably a simple case of the 'all seeing all knowing' computer not programed to look at the possibility of a refund as Autumn approaches. (Electricity consumption in gas heated houses is reasonably consistent each month).

These bills are 'untouched by human hand' and it will take human intervention.

macman

Why on earth didn't you give them an actual reading back in March when you had the first estimated bill?

BigGar34

Hi,
I was away from the area when the engineer came around. He only tries twice but I was away for a fortnight!!
And I then daftly assumed that I would have to accept that until the next round of bills (now!).

macman

They leave a card, you can normally phone in the reading, post it in, or submit it online.
BTW they don't send an engineer, they send a meter reader.

BigGar34

Macman,
Please refer to my previous post where I "daftly assumed".
I would have only had an opportunity to place the meter reading online AFTER the meter reader had left and the bill already issued. Apologies for my lack of knowledge on this subject so I will have to bow to your greater experience.

1carminestocky

Surely it wouldn't take a huge amount of propramming to build into an energy company's computer system a safeguard whereas any amount of credit that exceeds a set amount is flagged up for manual checking? Maybe they could make it even more sophisticated and instead of having a set amount maybe have a set %tage of average annual spend above which the account is flagged? Would stop extreme cases like this happening...

macman

BigGar34 wrote: »

Macman,
Please refer to my previous post where I "daftly assumed".
I would have only had an opportunity to place the meter reading online AFTER the meter reader had left and the bill already issued. Apologies for my lack of knowledge on this subject so I will have to bow to your greater experience.

But if you send a revised reading, they will immediately issue an amended bill. You don't have to wait until the next billing quarter.