Meter read errors over 12 mths old

jalexa

spicetee wrote: »

The billing error is that they were using meter reads of 4 figures rather than 5.

No they were using the "4 figures" you provided.

I hope this is unintentional resulting from a laypersons lack of understanding of metering and billing but, even after Terrylw1 speculated on what can happen to the wrong number of figures, still no posting of your actual readings. That is necessary to get meaningful help here.

Terrylw1

They may not notify you until they have finished investigating the issue unless they needed you help in which case they would call/send you a letter.

If they took forever to resolve it, that's another matter since they should have made you aware and at least take some form of debt reduction activity so you don't get buried later.

Resolving a digit issue like this is actually very very easy to investigate. They check data in their systems, may call their agent, may call you and if there is no resolution, they book an engineer to confirm it once and for all.

The rebilling part is also very very easy to do. The bit that's difficult is sorting out a switch that went wrong and their agents energy records. Now, if the switch was over 14 months ago...its very easy to correct since the agent can't change the switch reading, so they just correct it at 14 months ago and send the supplier an additional invoice for energy if needed. The supplier can though change their internal account records from your switch to get your billing right, but if the back billing code applies they have to write debt over 12 months ago off.

The problem here is the supplier and you are responsible for the problem. However, it may not be fair for the supplier to make you 100% responsible for the energy debt. So perhaps your angle is the delay and a compromise due to shared responsibility?

The Standard Licence Conditions (SLC) are 12.9 for gas and 12.14 for elec. You will note elec only relates to 2 years with the current supplier. A visit can be by an engineer though and they don't need to take a reading if the work doesn't require it.

nPower

Hi spicetee,

I'd like to take a look into this for you and see what's happened.

If you can provide the reads and dates shown on the bill, that would be really helpful. You can send me your details to [EMAIL="forumresponse@npower.com"]forumresponse@npower.com[/EMAIL]

If you were giving 4 digit readings to your previous supplier, then they may also need to amend their billing history.

Many thanks,

Adam

Terrylw1

nPower_company_representative wrote: »

Hi spicetee,

I'd like to take a look into this for you and see what's happened.

If you can provide the reads and dates shown on the bill, that would be really helpful. You can send me your details to [EMAIL="forumresponse@npower.com"]forumresponse@npower.com[/EMAIL]

If you were giving 4 digit readings to your previous supplier, then they may also need to amend their billing history.

Many thanks,

Adam

They won't be amending that far back, its settled. The disputed reading process won't extend that far back, making the correction only take place from when the customer switched to you.

Besides, if that was needed...wouldn't the process used to generate this bill have already dealt with it?...