Huge electricity bill due to them!!

sujal321

Hey don't know if anyone can help. I've just had a bill for over £2800 for underpayments of a electricity bill, they say it is because of the meters being a six digit meter and not five according to systems. It gets worse. They shut account down for some reason over 18 months ago and gave me a new account which I was unaware of, so now in total they say I owe them £5000+. They said they can only go back three years, they have only offered me £500 off the bill, and to repay over 36 months!!
I feel this is grossly unfair as it isn't my fault they made a mistake. I have given them reading and so have there own men and it is taken them this long to figure it out!
What is my legal standpoint on this, what should I do?
Any advice will be gratefull.

Thanks

Sujal

loracan1

What sort of time period is it they are claiming for - and how much have you been paying per month?

[Deleted User]

all non digital electric meters have 6 digits, the last digit being tenths, some small business Ampy meters are used incorrectly for domestic propertys. On our hand held data collectors there are always only 5 digits needed for domestic propertys only. There is a greek manfactured meter ( the name escapes me ) I have seen installed in small numbers which was causing havoc which had 6 digits, meter readers were logging the tenths generating some huge bills.

chanz4

My guess is that your a comercial property?

Terrylw1

Are you business or domestic?

If business, there are few controls in place so they can bill back to the statue of limitations. However, this doesn't mean you can't raise a complaint and reduce this based on supplier failures.

If domestic, there are rules regarding back billing which prevent billing further back than 12 months due to their error where you haven't hampered them.

More info needed really.

To key is to understand every possible supplier touch point. In a case like this, this means the meter details they get when you switch to them, when a new meter is fitted, every reading taken by a reader, visits by engineers from their Meter Operator, etc.

You should also determine what they did with readings you gave e.g. did you give 6 digits but they took a digit off?

Then you need to ask whether they experienced billing rejections and what they did.

Basically, raise every single failure on their part to highlight where they have failed to resolve the issue hence are to blame.