Urgent help needed gas disconnection threatened

Adam1234

Hi

Just looking for some advice. I have received a notice of warrant for an unpaid gas bill going back to march of this year. the reason i wasnt paying the bill is because southern electric who i have been paying for over 3 years supply me with both gas and electric. Everything was fine until in jan of this year i received a letter from edf advising that i owed them over £2000 for unpaid electricity and they then preceeded to start billing me for monthly electricity. After a lot of calls to both edf and southern electric it has been decided that edf are my actual suppliers and i have legal proof from an independent body confirming this. This means that southern elctric actually owe me 3 years worth of payments now because of this i have refused to pay the gas until they pay me what has been taken. However they have done nothing to sort this out and last week issued me with a warrant to disconnect my gas. i rang them today to explain the situation and even offered to pay 50% of what is supposedly outstanding £400. i was told that i owe £800 and without payment in full today (which i cannot afford) they now have a warrant and will be executing tomorow and turning up at my flat to disconnect the gas.

Has anybody got any advice as to what i should do? Should i take the day off work and try to speak with the warrant officers. southern electric are clearly no help. Legallly are they allowed to do this if i am currently in dispute with them over the elctricity supply?

thanks

Cardew

Were you notified they were going to court to get the warrant? or is there an element of bluff here?

davidgmmafan

Not sure of the legalities but I would say a complaint is in order. There could be a delay in returning the payments if some investigation was required to determine who the supplier was or is. Given that that is settled they should have refunded it by now.

However I genuily don't know if a dispute on one fuel has any bearing on enforcement action for another. It should I guess, as if elec charges are cancelled you must by definition with the electricity.

It probably wasn't ideal to withhold payment on the gas, but equally they should've handled this better. If it hasn't already been raised as a complaint ensure it is looged as one as it will help if you ultimately decide to go to the Ombudsmen.

PNPSUKNET

Its classed as a third party issue, you need to sort the refund out with the other company. In the mean time pay the actual supplier. They have a right to withdraw your supply, as per the gas and electricty rights of entry act

davidgmmafan

As I understand it the actual supplier for the gas is the same supplier that hasn't sorted the refund for the elec. Whilst I would not have taken the course of action the OP did, I do agree they have a point. At this point, as the OP states they have proof, the elec account is by definition in credit. This is why I have advised to ensure this is logged as a complaint pronto.

Poosmate

In this case would EDF only be able to charge the OP 12 months worth of electric as it wasn't the OP's fault?

Personally, I wouldn't have stopped the payments for gas (assuming SE are supplying it) and there's no problem with it. I do wonder though how the gas bill could be £800 since January. I have a 2 bed semi and my gas bill for the last year was £293!! EEK! I did have the gas fire on 24/7 at some times during the very cold winter and also had to put a couple of burners on the gas hob on for the odd 10 mins here and there.

I would definitely question the £2k EDF are asking for 3 years electric. If they are correct in requesting this amount then SE should reimburse all of the money you have paid them for electric you thought they were supplying you.

If EDF only charge you for 12 months electricity then SE should only pay back what you've paid for the past 12 months. Then they can argue amongst themselves about the 24 months preceeding that.

If they've supplied you with gas then you need to pay the bill, then maybe change that to EDF to get the dual fuel discount (if it's cheapest in your area). But then you maybe wouldn't want to change again once everything is all sorted. I know hearing all these horror stories puts me off trying to switch, cashback or no cashback!

SwanJon

Poosmate wrote: »

In this case would EDF only be able to charge the OP 12 months worth of electric as it wasn't the OP's fault?
If EDF only charge you for 12 months electricity then SE should only pay back what you've paid for the past 12 months. Then they can argue amongst themselves about the 24 months preceeding that.

I think the 12 month rule will apply if EDF havn't sent a bill.
Howeverm SE have not supplied the customer any electricity at all and are not entitled to any money for this time and so need to refund it all to the OP.

However, this doesn't help with the gas.
I'd call them, ask them for copies of the letter they provided advising of the court date for the warrant. Without this you didn't have an oppurtunity to defend yourself.
If they are bluffing and havn't been yet, go along with your proof and show the court that they are holding more money than they are asking from you.

dogshome

Hi Adam1234 - "Erroneos Transfers" where a supplier thinks an account belongs to them, when in fact it is registered to a different supplier, are an inter-industry c*ock-up that is not uncommon.
Unfortunately your understandable action of witholding payments to SE for gas, to compensate for thier failure to return money you paid to them for Elect they did not supply, has muddied the waters even further.

SE look on Gas & Elec as two different accounts and issue a seperate bill for each one, and as with all other suppliers, the whole billing procedure is controlled by computers
So we have the situation where the Elec computer system has failed to return what you paid on Elec,
whilst the Gas computer has seen unpaid bills and gone into wolverine colection mode.

Forget contacting them by Email or phone
As a matter of urgency you need to write a letter headed Complaint to SE, listing your probem concisely, explainig why you have witheld the gas payments and stating how much money they owe you on the Elec. account and the date from which it has been owing.

Dealing with EDF is a seperate issue; There is a Back-billing agreement whereby companies agree not to Back-bill for more than 12 months in cases where they have failed to issue bills over an extended period despite the customer asking for bills
In writing, have a go at EDF on back-billing as they failed to issue bills for 3 years, and because you were paying SE over this entire period you had no reason to ask EDF for bills
Also
It's likely that with SE, you opted for a discounted tariff - D/Debit payment? , but when EDF eventually billed you they would have charged your Elec on an expensive 'Standard' tariff, and you being unaware of EDF's involvement had no opportunity to switch to a discounted tariff of the type you had with SE - So tell them you want the 'dead' period billed as though you had

Cardew

The OP has made no mention of getting any bills from Southern Electricity for the 3 years during which he(apparently wrongly) paid them £2,000.

They also apparently have a warrant for the gas debt - but no mention of him being notified of Court proceedings.(no DCA involved?) It normally takes months from the start of a dispute to get to the stage of a warrant being issued, plenty long enough to have sorted out the electricity issue.

Also we on this Board are making the assumption that the £2000 that EDF are demanding is for 3 years electricity supply. Is it?

£2000 electricity in 3 years and £800 gas since Jan seems to be rather a lot!

Who/what gave the 'legal proof from an independant body' about the electricity debt?

Something doesn't add up here!!!

Premier_2

Poosmate wrote: »

In this case would EDF only be able to charge the OP 12 months worth of electric as it wasn't the OP's fault?...

SwanJon wrote: »

I think the 12 month rule will apply if EDF havn't sent a bill...

I don't, as presumably the OP has not made efforts with EDF to set up an account with them or asked to be billed by them.

The OP can use the money they should get back from the supplier they've paid but haven't been supplying (SSE) to pay the supplier that has been supplying (EDF)

The difference probably won't be much, and the OP may even end up being up on the deal (or likewise down )

undaunted

Cardew wrote: »

Were you notified they were going to court to get the warrant? or is there an element of bluff here?

As Cardew says / implies they almost certainly cannot have got a warrant of entry without you being notified of a Court Hearing at which you could have put your case.

If they have no warrant you do not have to let them in (assuming the meter is inside). I would suggest you contact Consumer Focus who are supposedly able to help those threatened with disconnection & ask whether they can do so for you. http://www.consumerfocus.org.uk/