unfair gas and electricity costs

queen_alxandra

from january 2011 to january 2012 i lived at a property and had my gas and electricity supplied with british gas. as for the gas they took their own readings as they could gain access from the side of the house to the reading. but the electricity has always been estimated so when i called to set up my direct debits they set my electricity as £26.50 a month and gas to £64 a month which was fine. when i moved out it was quite sudden and it was the first time i had moved out i never even thought about ringing them to cancel, i just cancelled my direct debit. then 9 months later i had a call from "improved financial solutions ltd" (imfs) telling me i owed £360, err i think not! so i called british gas to get it sorted as i was down as living at the property up until june 2012 but they kept saying i needed a meter reading and they needed confirmation of when i moved out. so take it up to december by the time i finally got everything confirmed with them and they estimated the reading aswell as all the numerous times that they said they would call me back and so on... my confirmed final bill was £357.87 which was is only £2.13 less then what they was trying to charge me for an extra 6 months?!?! how does that work out and turns out thats only for my electric bill!! my gas was £1200! now ive got moorcroft bailiffs on to me for the money but my gas was down as still living their till june! so ive rang british gas today and its been changed to january but its still £1150!? i dont know how they can even justify it. i need a way of sorting this out because even though ive already paid £1086 to them for the year i lived their they want an extra £1500 which is ridiculous!! i feel like im about to have a breakdown!

is there anyway i can get help to sort this out??

have you had the same problem? what did you do?/

I NEED HELP!!! I know its long but I honestly do not know where i need to go from here!

Welshwoofs

So you moved out in January and didn't give them any final meter readings or cancel the account, you just cancelled your direct debit. So in effect, from their POV it's a case of a customer suddenly stopping payment. Nine months later they want payment for the final bill but they're having to estimate it because you didn't cancel/provide any meter readings at the time you actually left.

What can you do? Well I suppose the only thing you can do is provide proof of changing address back in January and see if they'll estimate your bill up to that point. They don't have any option other than to estimate though given this is 9 months down the line and you didn't give them any readings.

HappyMJ

You'll find it difficult trying to sort it out now. You should have notified them that you had moved out. Not notifying them means you are still incurring liability for the usage until someone takes over the bills. The occupants may have only done that when the supplier visited to install a prepayment meter and the occupants said they had only "just" moved in.

How to sort it now? Difficult. You basically need the new tenants to take reponsibility for the bill from the date they actually moved in. If they won't do that voluntarily then you are going to have a fight on your hands to get BG to agree that the date you moved out is actually the date you moved out and the property was either vacant or occupied by someone else. They then need to write letters to the new tenants and get them to agree on the date they moved in. They may have to provide tenancy agreements to BG...but if their tenancy agreement has a later date on it then you'll have to pay to the day before they moved in.

Do you know what your final readings were?

queen_alxandra

Theyre not making me pay till june, theyve now updated it to june but it has made no difference to the price. They apparently have accurate reading for the gas but even though I paid ALL my direct debits theyre still trying to chase me for money. As for the electric, they said that I owed £360.23 up till june but then they amended it till january and it equaled £357.87 only a couple quid less for 6 months difference. does that not seem unfair??!

And i dont have final readings for electric, all of it was estimated, from beginning to end. As for the gas they said that their staff took a reading on the 20th January.

HappyMJ

queen_alxandra wrote: »

Theyre not making me pay till june, theyve now updated it to june but it has made no difference to the price. They apparently have accurate reading for the gas but even though I paid ALL my direct debits theyre still trying to chase me for money. As for the electric, they said that I owed £360.23 up till june but then they amended it till january and it equaled £357.87 only a couple quid less for 6 months difference. does that not seem unfair??!

And i dont have final readings for electric, all of it was estimated, from beginning to end. As for the gas they said that their staff took a reading on the 20th January.

Sounds fair to me...the property was probably vacant for a period and would not have used anything so they have to go by the meter readings the next occupant has provided as you do not have readings.

Torry_Quine

If the electric was always an estimate then you could well owe them when they did read the metre.

molerat

If the gas is based on accurate readings then you owe them the money. You seem to be confusing Direct Debit payments with consumption. They should match up but until a pattern of usage is developed, usually over a period in excess of a year, they can be wildly different and need monitoring by yourself.