Help needed! EDF & an incorrect bill mess

adele.earnie

Hi All,
Could anyone offer me advice:

Bought a new house Aug 2005, supplied by EDF, up until March 2007 when we were finally sick of their poor service & high bills. Changed to nPower and have been with them ever since. Had a phonecall from npower saying that our MPRN no was wrong for the last 3 yrs and as such it is illegal for them to bill us on it, and they are refunding £1800 for the past 3 yrs gas.

I thought that this should apply to EDF, as the MPRN no. was wrong with them too. The MPRN was wrong when we moved in. I believe that EDF should give a full refund too, as npower have. EDF now say that the supply has never left them due to the no.s being wrong, and therefore we owe them for the last 3 years. npower gave us a new MPRN no, but EDF now insist that they can bill us on this. I know that the 12 month billing rule may apply, but I don't want EDF as my supplier and disagree with the fact they should attempt to extract money out of me 3 years on, especially when I have a final bill that says £0.00!

I have informed EDF that I will not pay them a penny even if they take me to court. I have also said that I will take them to the small claims court with a solicitor, watchdog, energy ombudsman, consumer direct, press etc. including Martin Lewis!

Any help or advice would be gratefully recieved!

Cheers,

Adele

kjsmith7

Where you a shipperless site (with no MPRN attached to your property at all)? If nPower have provided you with a new MPRN, they have registered it, then I'm sure that they would be your supplier, so I doubt this is the case.

If you weren't a shipperless site, I believe EDF are correct, I'm afraid. nPower will have returned you to the previous supplier due to the incorrect MPRN that they took over. As nPower have refunded you all charges, you will now need to pay EDF for the last 3 years of consumption, as technically you never left them.

It may be that the MPRN they (EDF) had, whilst wrong, was the correct one for your property. Obviously, I cannot give you the exact answers, but it's merely a hypothesis.

It is irrelevant that you have a final bill that says £0.00, as meter readings, meter serial numbers, etc. can be changed in the future if they were incorrect (either in your favour or otherwise). At the end of the day, the energy you have used needs to be paid for. Why should it be written off? nPower have done the right thing by refunding you the money, so pay EDF and it'll be done with. Or not, as you may decide.

To go to the energy ombudsman, you'll need to go through their (EDFs) in house complaints procedure. Either write to them or complain over the phone and ask for it to be formally registered. They have an amount of time to try and reach a solution with you. During that time, you can liaise with consumer direct. If, after that time, you're still unhappy you can go to the Ombudsman.

I'd probably exhaust those avenues before I invested in a solicitor and the small claims court.

Premier_2

adele.earnie wrote: »

Hi All,
Could anyone offer me advice:

Bought a new house Aug 2005, supplied by EDF, up until March 2007 when we were finally sick of their poor service & high bills. Changed to nPower and have been with them ever since. Had a phonecall from npower saying that our MPRN no was wrong for the last 3 yrs and as such it is illegal for them to bill us on it, and they are refunding £1800 for the past 3 yrs gas.

I thought that this should apply to EDF, as the MPRN no. was wrong with them too. The MPRN was wrong when we moved in. I believe that EDF should give a full refund too, as npower have. EDF now say that the supply has never left them due to the no.s being wrong, and therefore we owe them for the last 3 years. npower gave us a new MPRN no, but EDF now insist that they can bill us on this. I know that the 12 month billing rule may apply, but I don't want EDF as my supplier and disagree with the fact they should attempt to extract money out of me 3 years on, especially when I have a final bill that says £0.00!

I have informed EDF that I will not pay them a penny even if they take me to court. I have also said that I will take them to the small claims court with a solicitor, watchdog, energy ombudsman, consumer direct, press etc. including Martin Lewis!

Any help or advice would be gratefully recieved!

Cheers,

Adele

Who do you think you should pay for the electricity you used from 2005-2007?

You do expect to pay for what you have consumed, don't you?

Unfortunately, in the circumstances you describe, I doubt the 12 month back billing rule applies as the customer also has a responsibility to ask that their supplier has the necessary details to bill them. As it doesn't sound like EDF were your supplier, what attempts did you make to contact your supplier and get them to bill you?

You don't think you had a supplier? Well maybe you were served as a shipperless site, but whichever supplier then registers could bill you for the total consumption since the supply commenced.

Unfortunately, because this has gone on for so long, whichever supplier does bill you will probably do so at their (most expensive) standard rate.

cherry-picker

I agree with the previous replies. If this MPRN has infact still been registered to EDF (as it appears from your post) then EDF will have been paying thorugh the "settlements code" for the energy you used through that meter but npower were collecting the cash. The refund from npower is actually to reimburse EDF for the energy you used in the period where you thought you were an npower customer.

In the end you may have to pay a bit more than you've been refunded, or a little bit less as it depends what EDF would have charged you for the energy that you used over that period (i.e if they were cheaper than npower then you may have to pay slightly less than you've been refunded, or if its slightly more then you may be asked to pay more than you've been refunded)

When you get your bill from EDF it's worth checking what tariff they have applied to the bill. If it's their standard tariff then there were probably other cheaper tariffs available. You could try to argue that they should apply their "best rates" in return for a prompt settlement of the retrospective bill that you are now facing. In this case it sounds more like the fault was with npower than EDF as they were the ones that were responsible for taking on your meter properly. They shouldn't have been billing you if they didn't supply the meter, but this doesn't mean to say that you haven't been using the energy that EDF supplied over that time period unfortunately.