EDF wants £5/week for £100+ bill due to faulty meter - HELP!

r.a.i.n.b.o.w

I was contacted by EDF last year because they had noticed a possible fault on my pre-payment electricity meter, meaning that I apparantly wasn't paying for the electricity I was using. To be honest, I didn't notice, apart from a slight drop (a quid or 2 per week?) in the amount I would need to top up, but put that down to better fuel prices and spring/summer approaching, although I accepted that my meter may be faulty.

Man changed meter in May 2010. I thought that was the end of it.

Received letter today. Apparantly the engineers report says that the units on my meter haven't advanced since December 2009. SO they've calculated my usage based on the average SINCE the meter change in May 2010, and I have to pay them back £105, at the rate of £5 per week loaded onto my key...

I CAN'T AFFORD THIS!!! I CANNOT AFFORD THIS!!!!!



OK, freak out over... how and where do I stand legally with this?

Garz

If you owe them money I'm afraid you will have to pay it back somehow. By a small sum of £5 per week I think that is reasonable considering the length of time it may take. They could ask for it in a lump sum, imagine you were owed that fee and they said they would send you cheques of £5 for x amounts of weeks..

Anyway, check that it is not an estimate and provide them actual reads as this may help if your lucky. Look into what the final reading was when the meter was changed and see if they are overestimating the usage.

r.a.i.n.b.o.w

Garz wrote: »

If you owe them money I'm afraid you will have to pay it back somehow. By a small sum of £5 per week I think that is reasonable considering the length of time it may take. They could ask for it in a lump sum, imagine you were owed that fee and they said they would send you cheques of £5 for x amounts of weeks..

I don't consider it reasonable, that's TWICE what I'm currently paying by key!

r.a.i.n.b.o.w

Garz wrote: »

Anyway, check that it is not an estimate and provide them actual reads as this may help if your lucky. Look into what the final reading was when the meter was changed and see if they are overestimating the usage.

It's not an ESTIMATE, it's an AVERAGE, calculated on my units usage in the 6 months-ish after the meter change.

shortchanged_2

Tell them to take a running jump. A faulty meter is not your responsibility.

forgotmyname

Did you topup between Dec and May when the meter got changed? Did the credit actually go down at all
on the meter?

If no credit got used from the topups you put on then i guess you do owe them something. If it was me that
£105 would be cheap, But i dont know how much you use?

If credit actually went down during that time then i would ask for proof of why you owe them money. Exact meter
readings.

Is it the £105 your querying or the £5 a week? Both?

If the meter wasnt working correctly then thats their fault in my eyes. I thought they can track
meter readings and stuff these days. So should have spotted this quite quickly.

r.a.i.n.b.o.w

forgotmyname wrote: »

Did you topup between Dec and May when the meter got changed? Did the credit actually go down at all
on the meter?

If no credit got used from the topups you put on then i guess you do owe them something. If it was me that
£105 would be cheap, But i dont know how much you use?

If credit actually went down during that time then i would ask for proof of why you owe them money. Exact meter
readings.

Is it the £105 your querying or the £5 a week? Both?

If the meter wasnt working correctly then thats their fault in my eyes. I thought they can track
meter readings and stuff these days. So should have spotted this quite quickly.

I was topping up and the money was going down, just not as fast as it does now!! EDF say that I was only paying the standing charge and not the usage, which it didn't seem like to me at the time, as I would have noticed if I was only paying £2 a week!

I'm querying the fact that this has come out of the blue, no warning, 7 months after the meter change. My letter says that my key will automatically be loaded with the balance the next time I use...I'm also querying having to pay £5 a week when I had no warning and have no money!

And yeah, I would have thought it was their fault too, leaving it 6 months before they spotted a fault. Surely their system can flag strange behaviour within a month or 2??

Premier_2

r.a.i.n.b.o.w wrote: »

I was contacted by EDF last year because they had noticed a possible fault on my pre-payment electricity meter, meaning that I apparantly wasn't paying for the electricity I was using. To be honest, I didn't notice, apart from a slight drop (a quid or 2 per week?) in the amount I would need to top up, ...

Received letter today. Apparantly the engineers report says that the units on my meter haven't advanced since December 2009. SO they've calculated my usage based on the average SINCE the meter change in May 2010, and I have to pay them back £105, at the rate of £5 per week loaded onto my key...

r.a.i.n.b.o.w wrote: »

I don't consider it reasonable, that's TWICE what I'm currently paying by key!

:huh:

So you didn't notice the 50% reduction in the amount you were paying last year???

Sorry, you'll have to pay for what you consumed ... even if a faulty meter didn't record it correctly.

Edit: Actually it was presumably about 80% reduction??? :eek:
The meter was changed last May and you only genuinely use £2.50 per week.
By your own addmission, you were paying a guid or 2 less than this when the meter produced a fault, so as little as 50p a week???