Honest Mistakes or Attempted Fraud

Hiveoccupier

In the last 4 months I have switched 4 energy supply accounts. One of the accounts was my domestic gas supply switched from British Gas to EDF and the other three were business electricity supply accounts switched from Eon to Npower.

On 3 of these accounts the 2 suppliers concerned have both attempted to charge me for the same energy usage. I.e. The final meter readings on the final bill recieved from the company I was leaving were higher than the start meter readings on the company I was joining.

Obviously I have challenged the situation and have had corrections made after the normal inordinate amount of time waiting for them to answer the phone, check their systems and then debate the issue between themselves.

I am sure other contributors to this forum are too savvy to let utility companies get away with this sort of "mistake" but it does strike me that many others are not and will simply pay the bills they receive. It makes me wonder why and how they are allowed to have systems that let this happen - in a regulated industry it just should not be possible for two suppliers to charge for the same product or service.

Just in case anyone has fallen foul of this "mistake" If you have switched supplier I strongly recommend that you compare the readings on the final bill from you old supplier with the first bill from your new supplier.

Somehow if lots of people did this now I suspect it might be even more difficult than usual to get through to Eon, British Gas, NPower et als customer service people on the phone.

Premier_2

Maybe I'm one of the savvy contributors you referred too?

But I did compare the readings when I switched and indeed they were not the same - there was a gap!

As I had given the meter readings to both my old supplier & new supplier on the day of the switch, my records showed the old supplier had indeed billed me correctly.

Being the honest person I am, I contacted my new supplier and advised them of the apparent error they had made. They informed me that although they acknowledged that I had provided them with a meter reading on the day of the switch, they had also received a higher meter reading from my previous supplier which they were informed my previous supplier would bill me up to.
I advised the new supplier that the old supplier had billed me only to the reading that I supplied and that there was now a gap in the readings. My new supplier said I will be getting some free energy then :beer:

Cardew

Whilst there have been disputed readings, I don't recall anyone on MSE reporting an 'overlap' of meter readings.

So for you to have 4 separate cases is amazing.

You had to give the meter reading to the 'gaining' supplier, who supplies that reading to the losing supplier.

Did the gaining company use these readings and the 'losing' company claim the extra units. or vice versa.

As it is now sorted, who has admitted liability? It can only be a mistake with estimated readings.

I can't see it being a 'Honest Mistake' in 4 cases and so would report it to the regulator for investigation.

Hiveoccupier

Cardew thanks for the reply - it was on 3 out of 4 (1 of the switches was ok).

In the case of B Gas they eventually admitted they were wrong and had used an estimate despite claiming on the bill that it was an actual meter reading (the give away here was that the meter had been changed and was a 4 digit version at the time of the switch - yet their final bill used a 3 digit reading as an actual reading !)

In the case of the electricity supplies I have switched from Eon to NPower both accept that there is an error neither accepts that it is their mistake - Npower have agreed to bite the bullet on one of the accounts, they are still debating the other one ! Bizarely having raised the issue with Eon - who I thought I had finally got rid of they responded by sending me an even higher bill than the one I challenged. When I spoke to them again they assured me that they had the issue under discussion with Npower, needless to say when I spoke to NPower it was the first they had heard about it.

The amount of time, effort and distraction I have had to experience dealing with these organisations over this sort of issue is unbelievable - I am at the point of hating them with a passion. All I want is to get a properly calculated bill that I can trust and pay without having to scrutinise the damn thing in immense detail. At the moment it feels like the holy grail.

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Hi Hiveoccupier

Sounds as though you have really been through the wringer.

As Cardew says, it is the responsibility of the gaining supplier to inform the losing supplier of the meter readings following a change of supplier. This is so the final readings used by the losing supplier match the start readings used by the new supplier.

I can't speak for other companies but at E.ON we usually ask the customer to provide readings when the supply switches. Did you provide readings to the new supplier when you changed over?

If you did, were those readings used? If not, were you given a reason as to why your readings were not used?

Estimates will be used where readings are not available or are out of line with the previous meter history. Sometimes this can lead to discrepancies between the two companies depending on how the estimate is calculated.

In these cases there is an industry wide process to resolve the issue. This is called the Agreed Reads Dispute (or ARD) process and is followed by all the major suppliers.

The two suppliers will then re-agree readings between them so the closing and opening readings correspond. In this way, the customer will only be charged once for the energy used.

An ARD can be raised by either the gaining or losing supplier. Were you advised about this at any time during the changeovers?

If there are any outstanding issues I would make sure an ARD is in progress and ask for it to be chased. If the dispute has gone over 30 days ask for it to be escalated through our complaints process.

I do understand how frustrating it can be waiting for these matters to be resolved but hope this sheds a little light on to what should happen in these cases.

Malc

Hiveoccupier

Malc

Thanks for attempting to shed some light on this. Here is an update for you. Today I received an overdue final bill from your company on one of the accounts on which I have already paid NPower for the electricity concerned.

I phoned your customer service centre again to ask them what was going on and the adviser (Carl) told me that he would initiate the agreed read dispute procedure with Npower and that no further demands etc would be sent out until it was resolved. All well and good apart from the fact that this is the third time I have been told this by one of your advisers on this issiue and it was obvious from the discussion I had with Carl that neither of the previous advisers had done anything they said they would do.

I have been through the escalation process with your company before and eventually got a settlement that I could just about accept - when I got to the point of having submitted a formal complaint to the ombudsman and entered into a direct dialgoue with your director of business customer services. The settlement took derisory account of the amount of my time your company had wasted, time which I could have spent on my business rather than defending my business from Eon's unsubstantiated and demonstrably incorrect demands. Part of the agreed settlement was an undertaking to allow me to transfer my business to another supplier without further hinderance, an element which your company has now reneged on.

Laughably I received a phone call from one of Eon sales people a couple of weeks ago asking me if I wanted to save money by switching my supply to them.

All in all the conclusions I have reached from my dealings with your company is that Eon seem to be completely under the control of a computerised paper and contact generating system that no-one seems to understand let alone be able to control. As a result my experience suggests that Eon don't honour agreements, deal with customers as if they are non-entities, and try to rip people off by system controlled institutionalised incompetence.

Sorry if this sounds harsh - it is not directed at you personally - I just can't stand your company because of the amount of my time they have wasted and can't bear the thought of having to deal with them any more.

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Hi Hiveoccupier

I am really sorry you have suffered the problems described. The ARD process should be a straightforward way of resolving disputed opening/closing reading issues between suppliers.

There is no reason I can see why these weren't raised the first time you alerted us to an imbalance. For this reason, I feel it is time you went down the complaints process.

I strongly recommend you contact our Directors Office and ask for a complaint to be raised. An actual person within this area will take control of the complaint and follow it through to a resolution.

Also, any agreements previously made will be noted on your account. They can check these out and re-instate the agreement in accordance with the notes.

Again, I am sorry you have had such a frustrating time in what should be a standard procedure.

Malc