Pensioner mums £1000 bill

beverley1296

my mum moved into a 1 bedroom flat end of May 2009, we couldn't find out who the Electricity provider was within 3 months a EON card arrived they had been to read the meter, I rang them up to arrange the reading and gave my mums details so they could put the account in her name, They Would Not!! they said until the other person whose name is on the bill lets them know she has moved she is responsible, after a while my mum received a bill for £1000 there is not a chance in hell she owes this bill, She is paying £5 a week and the bill is going down so how can that be? EON have since changed the meter but are now asking the landlord to get an independant electrician out to check the meter does not feed the upstairs flat? well surely they should know they changed the meter they must know which wires are connected.


Email from Eon

Account number xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hello Miss xxxxx and thank you for your email

I am very sorry for the problems you have been experiencing with your mums account I do understand your concerns.

I have read through your notes and can see we have been out on numerous occasions and investigated your meter.

On one of the visits the report back stated that the meter may be supplying the flat upstairs.

As the landlord owns both flats he will need to get a private electrician to come and investigate the wiring to the meter if it is found that you meter is supplying some of the flay upstairs you will then have to dispute the charges with him and not E.ON.

This is a third party dispute between you and the landlord and you will need to take this up with him. E.ON will not become involved this.

I would strongly advise you to contact your landlord to get this investigated so your account can be corrected.

I am not able to give you details of previous tenants due to data protection and also we did not supply this property until the landlord changed supplier to us in May 2008.

I am very sorry if this have not been explained to your before.

Again if you also dispute the readings that we have used to open your account with you will need to take this up with the landlord as the account was his responsibility before you took over.

We have been informed you moved in the property on 24 May 2009 however we did not receive this information until March 2010 and therefore no payments had been received on the account until this time which would also contribute to some of the charges on the account.

I will rasie a formal complaint on your account and keep this open for seven days to give you chance to contact your landlord and discuss this with him If I do not hear from you in this time your complaint will be closed and the follow up the balance will continue.

Should you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to email or call me on 08485 302 3812 and O will be happy to help

Kind regards


HELP PLEASE

dogshome

Hi beverley 1296 - There are several issues here
To be fair, mum should have noted the meter reading in the day she moved in If she did, does she still have it? If so give it to E.on and ask for a bill covering the time since she moved in.
Without this reading Mum is liable for the previous tenants use and probably debt to make up a bill of £1000 in 3 months, so look at the bills you have since that first one to see what she is spending and how many Kw she's used over a year.
If it's a lot less than that first bill, write to E.on challanging the first bill - It's a slim chance E.on will re-calculate, but worth a try.

From E.ons Email, they now seem to have accepted your Mum's moving-in date but be aware that they will have registered her as a new customer and put her an an expensive Standard tariff, so contact E.on to get her on a better tariff.

Worryingly, from E.ons Email the original meter has a 'history' and even now that it has been changed
they suggest investigating the possibility of it supplying more than your Mum's flat.
It's worth making a check your self by switching off everything in the flat then looking at the meter to see if it's still recording - watch it for some time because if the resident of another flat it is supplying is out, then it will be only powering a fridge or something on Standby and turn very slowly

If it is recording, then use the Switch(s) on the fuse box(s) to turn off the supply entirely.
In a small building with just a few flats, it's not too much of a problem to knock on doors to ask if the Elec is on, in a big block this isn't an option, but in either case report the meters behaviour to the land lord

beverley1296

Her bills from moving in have been tiny, we have done the switching off and testing and the meter is not running off anything else, they had there own fraud investigator out several times checking on the meter, so why are they trying to pass the blame for THEIR ERROR!
She pays £5 a week on a card for electric and the bill is going down? so how could it have ever been £1000, I am disabled and my mum stays here with me more often than not, so its only the fridge and washer that gets used. Its daylight robbery, why have they changed the meter? they have taken away the meter that must have been giving wrong readings. mum gave them the numbers from moving in but her eye sights not great and I wonder if she has given a wrong digit but they should have picked up on this next time it was read.

dogshome

Hi beverley 1296 - From your 2nd post I gather that your Mum did declare herself the new resident to E.on and gave them a reading, then after 3 months she recieved a bill for £1000. I am however having difficulty getting my head around the meter being set to recover £1000 at a rate of less than £5 a week?

As your mum is on a card meter, this first bill would actually have been a 'Statement', but what you need is the details of the period it covered and the Start & End meter readings - You are entitled to ask for them and E.on have to provide them.

If you are certain your Mum registered with E.on when she moved in, the later coversation with them where they insisted on talking to the previous occupier leads to the conclusion that E.on failed to change the account over, have ignored your Mums Start reading and are demanding that she pay for the previous tenants consumption.
A further spanner in the works is the possibility that Mum mis-read the meter, but at the first proper meter reading this huge discrepancy should have shown up - Mark you, where there are big discrepancies in meter readings, the computers are programmed to ignore the new reading and issue a bill based on it's own estimate - However if this happened E.on will still have a record of the reading that the meter reader took - look at the bills, do they say E for Estimated when your Mum knows the meter was read

You need to set out the facts clearly in a letter headed Complaint to E.on,( Your Mum is the account holder and must sign it )asking why they did not register your Mum as a customer on the date she phoned them - She may have lost the note she made of the meter readings, but the date she moved in should not be hard to work out - and that she requires a fully detailed statement listing the period covered and Start & End meter readings for that £1000 bill

beverley1296

Thanks dogs home.
They sent my mam a card to pay at any paypoint she agreed to pay £5 as obviously she does use some electric, but no way can she afford to accept and pay £1000.
I have contacted the energy ombudsman as this has gone on long enough, and on Granada news last night there was mention of EON doing this with other unsuspecting people.

Terrylw1

Hi Beverly,

If a Revenue Protection Agent has been out and the meter supplies nothing else (which would have been part of the investigation), then other issues include meter "speeding" or the fact your opening reading is far too low no the account. The latter occurs per other posters where a previous tenant hadn't been billed properly or perhaps they estimated your opening reading. If they did the estimate and had underbilled the previous account, you would get stung.

However, what you can do is work out how much Kwh you mum uses per day and work this back to the move in date. This would usually give you an idea of what the start read should be. However, you need to make some logical assumptions about seasons. If you calculated on winter months, then your overall usage would be lower given the summer periods if you have elec heating.

If you did this and you owed nowhere near this £1000, which given the fact you say her bills are low, it sounds like you have had some previous consumption dumped on your bill.

Your Supplier, should look at your current consumption by doing this and then determine if it shows a gap, which could be due to underestimation of a previous tenant, a missing previous tenant, or...sometimes, a landlord using the consumption but never telling the Supplier. Another option could be if any work was done on the property, a builder could run up a bill without telling thee Supplier they are there and it gets dumped on the next unlucky tenant.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Hi beverley1296,

I must admit I am a little confused about some of the details in your posts, I would be grateful if you could confirm a few points.

Did you contact E.ON when your mother moved in with the move in date and start meter readings?

Is the current meter pre-payment?

Is the £5 per week collected though the meter and is this to go towards the £1000 balance?

Is the account now billed up to accurate meter readings from the meter readings taken when your mother moved in?

You say you have now contacted the energy ombudsman, have they taken your case and how far along is this?

From your original post, it appears that an agent has raised a complaint on your account, have you followed this up and asked for details of how the balance has occurred along with charges and payments made?

Helena