Cost of a unit of Electricity in Devon

chris1973

So all one has to do if the bill is not forthcoming is to refuse to pay the amount demanded, Ultimately, the creditor can only pursue this in court. If the defence is that the defendant doesn't believe the cost is what the creditor themselves is paying, then I'm sure the court will want to see the original bill for themselves ...and probably will show it to the defendant to prove what they owe.

Depends on how many waves the OP wants to create for themselves and how strongly held any belief that their landlord is in some way cheating them is. By deliberately withholding a due payment to the LL they may find their 'tenancy' terminated as the LL actively seeks to mitigate any continued debt increase by their presence within the property. Like I said before, the rights in many respects under these loose agreements are often very few or simply not as protective as a standard tenancy - including any eviction process. I'm no expert, but i'm sure its far easily to evict somebody from a holiday appartment (with no tenancy agreement) for refusing to pay their way, than from a normal tenancy with the relevant protection to all parties.

Its also normal for a LL to take some form of a deposit even on a holiday let, so it could also happen that the OP gets evicted for their deliberate non payment of the utilities, and the LL keeps part of their deposit in respect of the payment which was originally due and in that scenario, it would fall to the OP to take the LL to court.


Of course the OP will still [eventually] get their day in court regarding the non payment of the utilities, but may also have find alternative accommodation in the meantime. There also exists the risk of it being proven that the LL wasn't at fault, and the OP found to have been deliberately withholding the payment for no good reason or without any real evidence of any actual wrongdoing then they would have seem to have lost a lot but gained nothing - apart from a bill for any costs incured by the LL, and all of this purely based on the assumption, that the LL was on the fiddle.

There are often positives to these types of rental agreement that are made outside of the usual tenancy system, but also far more negatives when disputes like this occur.

IMO 19p per KW/H isn't in itself wholly indicitive of any wrongdoing or profiteering in this day and age (one of NPowers pre increased tariff's is currently 17.9p kwh), especially as the LL has probably got better things to do than constantly read MSE or shop around for the best utility deal for a property which , lets play fair here, was originally only intended to be occupied by people on holiday for 1 - 2 weeks at a time...... had he have been charging something like 30p per KW/H however, then I suspect it would be worth the gamble of taking your advice.

Ultimately, any court action may only prove that the LL simply doesn't care, has too much money to spend on his own bills or simply isn't thifty, non of which, I believe, is currently a crime, and may also ultimately backfire on the OP if they should need a reference in future.