just recieved an electricity bill! urgent help please!

glennplant

hello,
my housemate and i shared a 2 bedroom flat which was brand newly built and we moved in as soon as it was completed. Whilst living there we never received an electricity bill so we were of the impression that whoever the supplier was was still getting around to sorting out the meter readings etc as it was a locked meter room in the basement. We moved out of the apartment at the end of january this year after being there for 12 months and a week ago my old flatmate who lives in london now got a letter from E-On saying that we owed them £1400!

firstly this is insane as i now have a larger apartment elsewhere and its still with eon and the electricity is only £50 a month usually and thats with alot more appliances running!

secondly what is the law regarding this....we have tried speaking to eon but they have stated that the meter reading is correct and they are demanding payment....i have also advised them that there is no way the bill can be £1400 for a year especially as my housemate was working away during the weekdays!

i dont know how to deal with this because its alot of money at a tight time and secondly there is no way i can prove the meter readings to be wrong as we dont live there anymore

any help or advice regarding this would be amazing help as we dont know what to do now!

kind regards

Vestra

Not really a lot you can do if you didn't take the readings.

glennplant

a) the meter room was locked always so we assumed that eon would be taking readings and
b) nobody in our apartments ever recieved a letter from eon informing us that they were the electricity supplier in over a year of living there

Vestra

glennplant wrote: »

a) the meter room was locked always so we assumed that eon would be taking readings and
b) nobody in our apartments ever recieved a letter from eon informing us that they were the electricity supplier in over a year of living there

Don't want to sound harsh, but it's the occupiers responsibility to check the meter and bills to make sure they are correct, you should have taken that up with your m building management or landlord if you couldn't get access to the meter.

cleo1299

glennplant wrote: »

hello,
my housemate and i shared a 2 bedroom flat which was brand newly built and we moved in as soon as it was completed. Whilst living there we never received an electricity bill so we were of the impression that whoever the supplier was was still getting around to sorting out the meter readings etc as it was a locked meter room in the basement. We moved out of the apartment at the end of january this year after being there for 12 months and a week ago my old flatmate who lives in london now got a letter from E-On saying that we owed them £1400!

There is a Code of Practice about regular billing. See the Energy Retailers website http://www.energy-retail.org.uk/customerbilling.html

"In 2006 the ERA introduced a new Code of Practice to help domestic customers by clearly setting out what they can expect from their energy supplier, including:

Clear, accurate, informative and timely bills and statements

Support and advice on monitoring energy consumption

Support and advice for those having difficulty paying their bills

Contact details for raising questions and issues with suppliers"

Write to Eon, complaining that they failed to provide you with "clear, accurate, informative and timely bills and statements"

Tell them you think the bill is wrong, and ask them to look at it again.

They are supposed to follow their complaints procedure to resolve the dispute, and if no resolution is reached, the Energy Ombudsman can adjudicate.

Good luck. Eon are a ghastly company, they set their debt collectors on me once -- I won though. (smile)

DVardysShadow

glennplant wrote: »

a) the meter room was locked always so we assumed that eon would be taking readings and
b) nobody in our apartments ever recieved a letter from eon informing us that they were the electricity supplier in over a year of living there

This really beggars belief. The issue is not WHO you should have been paying to, it is HOW MUCH you should have been paying for. Locked or not, you should have been creating merry hell to get access to that room and take your own readings at the start of your tenancy and at the end. And you should have switched off your supply at the meter if possible, just to create more merry hell if someone else was on your meter.

£1400 is just the cost of not creating merry hell. Sorry, I have very little sympathy for the outcome you have experienced here. What other outcome could there be?

SwanJon

Cleo's right, you may also get something back form the 12 month billing rule (they can only bill you for energy used in the last 12 months) - so you would still need to pay August to January.
However, I think there is a clause that says the customer also needs to make an effort to be billed/pay (but don't tell them that bit when you speak to them).
You may have a real issue with the readings (if the cupboard was locked Eon probably havn't got a reading - it won't be their lock). It is entirely possible that the bill for 2 years (the year you were there and the year before) came to £1800, and they used an estimated read to open your account - giving the previous tenant a bill of £400. Now they have an accurate reading (I hope) and you have ended up wit the rest.. No-one can tell how accurate that read was, so you may be paying some of the previous tenant's bill
Good luck

E.ON_Company_Representative

Hi glennplant,

Quite a few points to look at in this case, firstly the billing code may or may not apply. There are lots of factors involved.

The billing codes of practice state from 1 July 2007, where the supplier is at fault for not sending a domestic customer a correct bill for a one year period, we are required to cancel any unbilled charges that would be created on the production of the bill, that are greater than a year old.

The definitions of the suppler being at fault, to name a few, are things like not attempting to read the meter, not sending ANY bills, not stating bills are estimated.

If E.ON has tried to contact the account holder during this time to ask for access to the meter, or to ask you to provide readings, then billing code may not apply.

Like I said above it isn’t clear cut enough to make a judgement on the information provided. This needs investigating in detail.

In regards to the accuracy of the readings used, as Swanjon suggests the start reading may be incorrect, as may be the final read. The problem here is if readings weren’t provided by yourself or the landlord/managing agent, on the dates you moved in and moved out, E.ON are allowed to estimate these based on historic meter reading data.

Change of tenancy readings are the responsibility of the customer or the L/L to provide.

If these were provided and the readings are showing as actuals, then the L/L may have sent these in at the hand over date, then if you dispute the readings, it will be a third party issue between you and the L/L.

Again there are so many deciding factors in these situations; a full investigation needs to be carried out by E.ON and all the facts looked at.

If the amount turns out to be accurate and justified, then I would expect E.ON to offer you a payment plan to clear the balance in more manageable amounts. Ensure you ask E.ON to put a hold on any follow up whilst this is investigated.

Brian

cleo1299

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Brian wrote: »

In regards to the accuracy of the readings used, as Swanjon suggests the start reading may be incorrect, as may be the final read. The problem here is if readings weren’t provided by yourself or the landlord/managing agent, on the dates you moved in and moved out, E.ON are allowed to estimate these based on historic meter reading data.

Since it was a new-build property, presumably Eon won't have any historic meter reading data for the flat.

I gather from the Code of Practice that the supplier is allowed to use historic data AND/OR "the average consumption for your type of property" to estimate the bill.

Since it appears there would be no historic data for the actual flat, maybe in this case the estimated bill was based entirely on "the average consumption for your type of property". If so, it could be quite inaccurate.

If the bill really was estimated on "average consumption for your type of property", can the customer now provide Eon with information about number of occupants, appliances, usage patterns, etc, and ask for the bill to be recalculated?

Ensure you ask E.ON to put a hold on any follow up whilst this is investigated.

Good suggestion.

cleo1299

glennplant wrote: »

a) the meter room was locked always so we assumed that eon would be taking readings and
b) nobody in our apartments ever recieved a letter from eon informing us that they were the electricity supplier in over a year of living there

You say "nobody in our apartments" -- do you mean no one in the actual flat you lived in, or no one in the whole apartment block?

If each flat was billed separately for electricity, all the flats would not necessarily have been with Eon. But if all the meters were located in a room that was kept locked, that must have caused problems for other tenants besides yourselves. Can you find out how the other tenants solved the problem?

If you look into this aspect, you might find out:

- either that it was a problem for everybody (in which case I'd suggest that the landlord or managing agent needs to be brought into this dispute),

- or that you were mistaken in believing that the meter room was always or usually locked (in which case difficulty of access would not be a factor that Eon or the Ombudsman would need to consider).

E.ON_Company_Representative

Hi cleo1299,

It’s a difficult scenario, and hard to be accurate with limited info, however, as it was a new build there will be a builders account on record with the readings the meter was installed at, the builders use very little so the first tenants start reading is usually extremely close to the installed readings.

This installed reading plus the actual obtained as part of the ongoing investigation will allow the bill to be corrected accurately.

As we said before the bill may presently be estimated for start and end readings, but this doesn’t have to be the case as the investigation progresses.

In normal circumstances average daily consumption figures are used to estimate, these will in this case be calculated from a reading taken today (for example) and the installed reading of the meter.

Usage patterns and the like provided by the customer aren’t normally used as part of the way to generate estimates, but can be discussed with the agent dealing with the complaint/investigation.

Brian