Backdated billing

devilish1190

I left my last house at the end of 2006 only to have our gas/electric supplier slap us with a £1500 bill covering 3 years as they had only estimated our bills and not read the meters.

It took us a year to pay off.

My question is , I have just read on another forum whilst hunting for a different question , that utility suppliers can only backdate billing for 12 months.

Is this correct and would it help us get any cash back in our scenario.

thanks

Cardew

Someone is confused here.

They can only back-bill 12 months if they haven't raised any bill in that period and it is their fault; not for estimated bills. What if they had over-estimated bills for 3 years and owed you money?

Bear in mind that it is often not possible to gain access to the meter, and if we could get away with not being back-billed more than 12 months, nobody would allow a meter reader access to their meter.

The bottom line is that the bill states if the meter reading is estimated and you should check every bill and inform them if the meter reading is incorrect. The T & Cs tell you to do so.

johnnybouy

Hi, we are in a similar position at the moment with British Gas. They want to charge us £2000 for estimated readings for 2 years.

I think this is unfair as in the Code of Practice For Accurate Bill it says: "Your supplier has processes in place to ensure that unusually high or low bills are checked before they are sent out."

Checking my bill, I had one for £25, plus when I gave them a reading they said we were in credit. So, you'd have thought they would have checked at that point.

Also, it states "Your supplier will provide a final bill within 30 working days of the supply end date". We received and paid a final bill. Surely they can't re-bill us after the event.

Unfortunatley we're still with Brit Gas at the new property.

Totally confused by this and why they can get away with these kind of HUGE bills.

Can I ask - did you have to have a pre-payment meter while you were paying of the debt? British Gas have advised we can only split the bill into three payments. Again, seems a bit extreme for such a high bill.

Premier_2

£2k for 2 years use is not unusually high.

Also £25 is not unusually low - I often have bills for less than that during the summer period.

You have the meter, not the supplier. The bill will tell you if the reading is estimated and if so usually invite you to supply your own reading to ensure accurante billing.

If you had provided a meter reading when you left the property, you would have been billed to that reading. As you didn't they would have estimated it ... and if that estimate later proves to be wildly inaccurate, they will bill you the difference.

johnnybouy

"If you had provided a meter reading when you left the property, you would have been billed to that reading"

When we left, we gave the accurate reading. So, our last bill was calculated between the previous estimated reading and the correct final redaing.

Surely, if we give a correct FINAL reading, this makes all of the other readings fall into line and we have paid for all the gas used?

June 09 Reading: 19151 (Estimate)
Dec 09 Reading : Missing
May 10: Reading: 23571 (Correct)

Do these reading help and if so, how?

Premier_2

Ok I'll answer this in your thread you created:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2541809