EDF- Accused of tampering with metre

samlouise01

Hi Everyone,

I hope someone can help.

Basically last year in october I had builders in my flat to do some renovations.
I went away on holiday for a long weekend and returned to find that my electric prepay key was missing from the meter and no electricity was left. I contacted the builders Liaison officer who came up and tried to help find the key to no avail.

I contacted EDF to have a replacement key sent out but because these builders had been carrying out electrical works they refused to send a key till they got the certificates of the works carried out. so for 2 weeks i had no electricity and had to live with my mum.

I finally got the key through, topped it up and stuck it in the meter. ONLY to realise that the meter was broken.

I contacted EDF who informed me that someone will come out to fix it, they came and accused me of "tampering" with the meter.

I have since been hit with a £600 bill as they are stating that from December 2008 through to March 2010 there was no registered top ups on the key.

I am at my wits end. I have tried to explain to EDF that "IF" in fact I had tampered with my meter then why in hell would I ring up to report a missing key if it was totally irrelevant to obtaining an electrical supply? and from what i have been told even a blown up meter wouldn't stop me from getting an illegal supply if that was what i was doing. The response I keep getting is that because I am the legal account holder it is my responsibility and i just have to deal with it as its a "third party dispute"

Well that is no bloody help to me at all.

I have said to them on several occasions that i have been topping up my key since moving to the property in november 2008. my provider at the time was scottish & southern and i switched to EDF. Scottish and Southern have records of my payments up untill the switch so it must be a problem with EDF.

All I want to know is how do i go about finding where those payments went? I have been paying the electric top up for that whole period, if EDF havent received the payments then who has?

Any help will be much appreciated.

spiro

Two questions:

1) Do you have the receipts from the payments you have made - shop should give you one?

2) When you changed supplier did you continue to use the key provided by SSE or a new one provided by EDF?

samlouise01

ha... see I tore my house apart trying to find one of those stupid little receipts. as i did not find out that the payments were not being received till October of last year so thats 7 months after the period of supposed "non payment". i didn't think to keep the receipts as long as the money registered on the meter as being paid i threw them away. like i am guessing the rest of the world does!

I received a new key from EDF that I immediately swapped to.

spiro

Given you answers what I would do is phone EDF and ask to speak to the department that deals with 'Misdirected Prepayment Payments'. When you get through to that department explain your situation and ask them if you meter point number or meter serial are on 'Unallocated Transaction Report'. If they dont know what you are talking about tell them to refer to MAP14 v2.6 - Procedure for the Allocation of PPM Payments Transacted Against an Incorrect Device. This is an industry wide process that covers a variety of prepayment payment issues and their resolution. If they ask what a MAP is the full name is MRA Agree Procedure.

samlouise01

Thank you so much for your help, EDF have promised to reimburse charges incurred.

I will hold my breathe till I actual receive this though.

Thanks again!