Beware: Bill delays could hide price increase

electric_ant

I currently owe Powergen £387 despite paying £39 per month to cover my gas and electricity since switching to them in January 2006.

I received my first electricity statement from them in May 2007 (yes that's right, nearly 16 months later). The statement said I was £228 in credit which I thought was really odd until I saw they had used a reading from March 2006 (a reading that I had given them over the phone). I rang in with the current readings for my electricity and gas and asked them where the gas statement was.
I have since got a revised electricity statement saying I'm £117 in credit but still no gas statement. Two more calls and I'm now told that the balance is a £387 debit which has hit me for six.

Two things that are really annoying me are if I'd had received a bill earlier I would have realised that the £39 a month was woefully inadequate (I should have been paying an extra £24 on top of that) plus I had been paying £50 a month with my previous provider, but Uswitch lead me to believe I'd be better off switch to Powergen. Obviously not.
What's worse is I've even made an extra effort in the last year to cut down on bills by turning heating down, taking everything off standby etc.

This may be a bit parnoid but I'm now wondering if this is a deliberate ploy by the power companies. If they don't take an actual reading and give you an underestimated bill and you don't check the reading yourself, you get a false sense of what you actually owe. As I haven't been sent any bills in the last 16 months and there have been a couple of price increases (which I don't remember being aware of), I also wonder how they could possibly know what my electricity and gas consumption was before the price hike. In which case they would have had to guess at it and I'm pretty sure whatever method they use to do it, it's not going to be in my favour.
At the moment I'm stuck, as I can't switch to someone else as I will have to settle the bill with Powergen before I can go elsewhere. I don't want to pay up until I see the gas statement as I have no idea how they got to this figure. I'm supposedly getting a call back from them tomorrow to try to sort out the billing problems and a new gas bill is supposedly in the post. I'm not going to hold my breath. I'd be grateful if anyone had any advice on what I should do.

The moral of this story is always make sure you get billed regularly and that it is always based on an actual reading.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

The culprits in your saga are Uswitch. They are driven purely by the need to maximise their commission. They will fix the level of your DD at whatever it takes to get you to change companies and hence get their commission.

In defence of the utility companies, they have no way of knowing your consumption so will accept what Uswitch tell them. They are also prepared to stand the loss of a little interest on the money you owe to gain a new customer. Also the Untility companies all employ agents to read meters. It is not as if BG read their customer's meters and Powergen read theirs etc.

I think the lack of meter reading is down to c0ck up rater than conspiracy.

Wait until you get your bill and check if it corresponds with your meter readings.

electric_ant

Thanks for your reply.

After a lovely holiday (me gusta mucho...) I came home to find the gas bill on my mat at last though and the readings are unfortunately all correct. The bill shows the price has changed four times for gas and couple of times for the electrcity since I switched them both to Powergen. If I had been billed earlier I would have figured out my monthly payments were not enough. Plus if they don't read the meter how do they work out how much I have consumed in between each price hike?

Weirdly enough Powergen have not suggested that I increase my monthly payment nor asked me to pay off any of the current £387 debit. I'm going to look at switching again not sure if I have to settle in full with Powergen before I'm allowed to move elsewhere.

Any suggestions??

Cardew

Yes you will normally have to settle with PowerGen before swopping.

This achieves the objective of 'locking in' those who can't afford to pay off their debt.

Crystaltipps_2

From your post on another thread -

Without seeing the reasons why Powergen took so long to bill you, I can't confirm whether you would be covered by the Billing code or not. Definitely not for the Billing element of it, as the sent you an acurate bill within the 2 years (it makes no difference whether you speak to them now or in July about them - they sent the bill before July). You may be covered by the payment adequacy element if they don't review it by July - but I couldn't guarantee that. For instance, if they have contacted you to get readings in order to create a bill, and you didn't respond they may say that you weren't covered.

If they do not withdraw some of the debt, they will definitely agree to spread the balance over the time it has taken to sort things out - which seems to be around 15 months from your opening reading to the correct bill being produced. Ofgem / Energywatch won't be able to persuade them to do any more than that.