Somebody please HELP!!! I am at a loss now :(

Woo1406

Duggo1. Again, if you had read the posts properly you would have read my answer to Mark about the money I had set aside for the electric! To re-iterate at the time and since then I have managed to keep a roof over my childrens heads by using this money to pay my mortgage. Something which I feel as a parent is very important!!!

Maxtweenie. Same reply to you as to Duggo1. Read what has actually been said properly!

Woo1406

Kim! Keep your rude snide nasty comments to yourself if you havent actually got any advice. A forum is for advice, not for somebody to release their frustrations by slagging people off!!!!
I suggest you go to the nearest A&E department and ask them to remove the lemon that you have apparently and obviously got stuck! And I dont mean in your throat either!!!!

Cardew

Woo1406 wrote: »

Cardew. After over 3 years of asking for a bill, I did finally receive one late 2006 early 2007 as I stated earlier. Apparently they could not send me a bill any earlier as the computer could not generate a bill. This was to do with the computer not having an anniversary date.
Also your figures for what I have paid are wrong. In total I have paid £380 and not £20 (I know that is not a massive amount but I have tried to arrange payments with them) £240 was from 2004/2005 direct debits and two DD payments in 2007. One was for £20 and the other for £120. The DD was set up for the specific reason to pay for the electricity I was using from that date so that the debt did not get any higher. They were looking into what had gone wrong with the computer and try to sort out a way for me to pay the outstanding amount at a mutually agreed amount.

Your posts were not very clear on the payments you have made.

However you have made a total of £380 in payments in 5 years 4 months and have used electricity costing £4,894.58 up until the date of the last bill, and doubtless more since then.

EDF have written off £2,000 of that debt as a gesture, and have offered a further 10% reduction(another £251) or other methods of payment.

Since 2007 they have offered you several payment plans, all of which you have turned down.

Your ex-husband has abdicated any responsibity for the bills that he help run up, and refuses to pay child maintenance - yet you are not prepared to do anything about that situation.

Your internet subscription is apparently of far more importance than paying anything off your gas and electricity debts.

You seem to feel that you alone, amongst every other gas and electricity customer in UK, will decide how much you will pay for your gas and electricity and EDF have no say in the matter.

Well you obviously have your own set of values in life.

However to come on MSE and expect thinking people to agree that you are somehow the wronged party and that EDF are to blame is frankly incredible.

Capistan

mattcanary wrote: »

Woo, as you did not receive a bill between 2004 and 2007 after transferring your supply to EDF, then EDF were not compling with the code of guiidance, darwn up in conjuction with most of the other electric suppliers. If they do not bill a customer for more than a set period of time (and this is certainly less than 3 years), and the customer has alerted them to this, then they can only bill you for a maximum of one year before the bill is finally produced.
So don;t let EDF get away with the line that they withdrew £2000 from your bill as a goodwill gesture. It was done because they were not complying with the code of guidance!

Well said, I hope you are right, it seem unacceptable that they can leave you unbilled for several years, totally irresponsible. That one year thing seems fair to me. EDF will just be trying to get as much money out of her as possible, the energy companies are pretty rotten now.
Furthermore if what you say is true then EDF have acted deplorably.

Capistan

Cardew wrote: »

Your posts were not very clear on the payments you have made.

However you have made a total of £380 in payments in 5 years 4 months and have used electricity costing £4,894.58 up until the date of the last bill, and doubtless more since then.

EDF have written off £2,000 of that debt as a gesture, and have offered a further 10% reduction(another £251) or other methods of payment.

Since 2007 they have offered you several payment plans, all of which you have turned down.

Your ex-husband has abdicated any responsibity for the bills that he help run up, and refuses to pay child maintenance - yet you are not prepared to do anything about that situation.

Your internet subscription is apparently of far more importance than paying anything off your gas and electricity debts.

You seem to feel that you alone, amongst every other gas and electricity customer in UK, will decide how much you will pay for your gas and electricity and EDF have no say in the matter.

Well you obviously have your own set of values in life.

However to come on MSE and expect thinking people to agree that you are somehow the wronged party and that EDF are to blame is frankly incredible.

I don;t think it is incredible at all, some people here sound as if they work for the EDF repayments department.
Any company which does not provide a customer with a bill for several years despite requests quite frankly does not deserve anything at all because they are causeing people stress and anxiety.
In my opinion they should have a huge fine slapped on them to get them to buck thier ideas up.

I think it is reasonable to assume if they don't send you a bill after you reqyesting it then they have effectively forfitted their right to expect you to pay for it at all. Obviously they are so flush with cash from over charging they don't need the money!!

She paid he internet bill because they billed her, if EDF don't bill her then that is their fault, why should she be expected to manage accounts
for her? She need an internet account to help her deal with unscrouplous and incompetent companies such as EDF

Woo1406

Thank you Capistan.

I have been thinking that everybody on here, apart from yourself, MattCanary and dogshome actually work for EDF or some other company that treat their customers as apallingly as EDF.

I am actually sitting here totally astounded by some of the comments that have been aimed at me. This is the first time I have used the forum and didnt quite realise that this type of cyber bullying happens. I have constantly said throughout my posts that I want to pay this debt however it has to be a realistic amount. I feel that out of all the posts on here, only 3 people (incl yourself) have not bullied me for daring to spend the money I had set aside for EDF on my mortgage. As you pointed out, my internet bill is paid for along with every other service I receive from any other company. I have no debts with anybody else apart from my mortgage company, but I am pretty sure I am not the only person in the world to have a mortgage. If I had known that I had manage my own account and spend the last 4 years chasing up my bill I certainly would not have taken EDF on as my supplier.

I would like to thank you, MattCanary and dogshome for the sensible comments/advice you have made and given me and the fact that not one of you 3 has pre-judged me.

Capistan

Unfortunately I have noticed that there are a few people on here who are 'not very nice at all!!". Downright nasty would be a better word, very unsympathetic and always sideing with 'big business'.
The seem to be bullying in the same way the energy companies are bullying so I often wonder if they actually do work for them!!
EDF seem to have treated you very badly IMO and made the situation worse for you so I hope if it does go to court they get a rap on the knuckles.
It is not accpetable for them to set payments you cannot make when they did not bill you.
I think if it goes to court they will set a payment you can afford.
I think you should take a look at the Debt-Free Wannabe forum.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/forumdisplay.html?f=76

There is absolutely tonnes of good advice on there and they should be very supportive as I think the 'nasty folk' will hopefully be chased away.

There is a 'thing' there where you can put in all your bills and stuff and people will tell you where you can save money etc...
It should also help you work out what you can reasonably afford to pay.

Some people there have really serious debt, your debt is nothing compared to the situation some folk are in, so you will probably feel pretty fortunate when you see the mess some other folk have gotten into.

Anyway they have loads of idea of how you can reduce you bills etc, that you probably would never even have thought of, so good luck!

dogshome

Hi Cardew & Woo1406 - Cardew there is an anolomy in the 2nd Para of Woo's first post in that she says she joined Seeboard in August(ish) 2004 and paid 12 D/D's between
01/09/09 ?and 29/06/05. I think she meant to type 01/09/04, but who can complain about a typo with the pressure she is under, Also the 12 D/Ds in 10 months is bit of a puzzle. However the legislation dates on the backbilling rules you have given, (Admire you for always having the fine detail to hand), must have been retrospective and two years back from sometime in July 2006 is sometime in July 2004, one month prior to Woo joining Seeboard, yet Woo did not see any billing till Dec 06/Jan 07 - some 29 months after she signed up with seeboard, by which time the two year rule had been superceded by the one year rule.
I stand open to your wider experience on this point, but if concur, please post as I think Woo deserves all the help she can get.

duggo1

Woo1406 wrote: »

EDF have told me the £4500 bill (before their goodwill gesture) was for 2 years. That works out to £187.50 every month, which I think is an unrealistic amount of electricity use when I am out all day at work and my children are at school. But that is just my opinion that it is an unrealistic amount.

I just think you are missing the point - if you have used £187.50 a month assuming your bills are based on actual readings, then I would agree it is a huge sum, but if it is based on actual readings then you have USED that amount.

Are you sure the meter readings are right. Maybe you need to look at cutting back somehow. I pay a third of that per month for gas and electric.

Oh and stop being upity. I completely agree with Cardew word for word, and ok so you've paid what £380, not £20 over 5 years .... You seem to think that EDF will let you pay what you want to, not what you are actually using. There's a difference!

Cardew

dogshome wrote: »

Hi Cardew & Woo1406 - Cardew there is an anolomy in the 2nd Para of Woo's first post in that she says she joined Seeboard in August(ish) 2004 and paid 12 D/D's between
01/09/09 ?and 29/06/05. I think she meant to type 01/09/04, but who can complain about a typo with the pressure she is under, Also the 12 D/Ds in 10 months is bit of a puzzle. However the legislation dates on the backbilling rules you have given, (Admire you for always having the fine detail to hand), must have been retrospective and two years back from sometime in July 2006 is sometime in July 2004, one month prior to Woo joining Seeboard, yet Woo did not see any billing till Dec 06/Jan 07 - some 29 months after she signed up with seeboard, by which time the two year rule had been superceded by the one year rule.
I stand open to your wider experience on this point, but if concur, please post as I think Woo deserves all the help she can get.

There didn't appear to be any problem until 29/06/05 when the DD stopped.

I didn't take it that she had no bills since Sep 2004(and neither did you from an earlier post); but no matter, even in the unlikely event she hadn't received any bills since then until Dec 2006/Jan 2007 it would have meant that they could have only back billed her to Dec 2004/Jan2005 so she would have had 3 months without paying - except she actually was paying.

The 12 month backbilling rule came in in July 2007. so it hadn't been superceeded.

However we seem to forget that EDF have written off as a goodwill gesture £2000 - a hugely generous measure and probably a lot more than she used from Sep 04 to Dec 06.

To my mind, much as one might feel sorry for the plight the OP has got herself into, it is of her own making and EDF have been more than generous in writing off £2000 and trying to make further arrangements to assist.