Spark Energy please advice

Misiokicio

Hi All,

I thought this place would be the best to ask for advice,

Not spoke to Spark yet,,, to afraid, in 2008 we moved over to this property, and spark was the energy provider through the letting agent,
I've set up the Direct Debit for no hassle payments, it was something like 84 pounds a month for dual elect and gas, that was an estimate, so about after i think 9 months or so I had a call from them to increase it to 90 something cause it wasn't covering enough, and i know it is my fault for not checking this up, but because it was direct debit I didn't bother to much about it,,, till NOW, I just registered online to check the account and I am -6200 pounds on my account!! :mad::mad: so every month about 100 pounds I wasn't paying enough? how is that even possible? not to get any letters, phone calls, nothing! not a single info that my account is going down deeper and deeper month after month. I cant believe that at all, is 2 bed property, with central gas heating, right now I've no idea what to do, what should I do now? increase my monthly direct debit to 220 pounds?? and still have a debt of over 6 grand


just seen this post:


Under condition 27 of the Gas Supply Licence, suppliers must:

• Set fair direct debits. They must take reasonable steps to ensure customers' direct debit levels are based on the best available information, including the quantity of gas and electricity supplied.

Could this help my case in any way?

JJ_Egan

Have you taken monthly or any meter readings ??
Meter readings when you moved in ??

Misiokicio

JJ_Egan wrote: »

Have you taken monthly or any meter readings ??
Meter readings when you moved in ??

Well, no, no monthly readings at all, every 3 months a guy comin in and taking the readings of gas and electricity, for the question about the readings when i moved in,,, that would be on the letting agreement when we moved in, i can defo get this, i can get that tomorrow,

yvonne13_2

I'm not being funny OP but from when they told me to pay over £50 a month I would;ve been monitoring everything as £84 a month is way to high for a 2 bed house.

macman

Do you seriously think that energy prices have not gone up in 6 years by more than 7% (£84 to £90)? Where have you been hiding? £84 pa is not 'way too high', the average dual fuel bill is now north of £1,350 pa. That's £112pa.
The majority of that £220 DD is not ongoing usage, but paying off the arrears.
However, you may have a case under the back billing rule, because if they have definitely read the meter every 3 months (although they're only obliged to read it ever two years (intermediate reads are down to you), then the DD should have been increased progressively over the years. The first thing you need is check your meter and submit up to date readings, and check (if you can) that the initial reads were correct. If the arrears and rebilling are correct, then you may have a case to make a complaint and invoke the back billing rule, which means that the can only back bill you for one years arrears. This will need to be done by way of a formal letter of complaint-forget about phoning or emailing them.
If the initial contract was set up by the letting agency (which you were under no obligation to accept, because the agent or LL gets a commission for this), then check what tariff you are on, because it's probably Standard (the most expensive). Spark are notorious for these deals.
If your arrears are really £6,200, then your DD would be much higher than £220, because it's unlikely that they'd give you more than 2 years to clear it, and clearing it at a rate of only £100 a month will take over 5 years.
It's doubtful that you can have built such a high debt in 6 years, as that would mean over £1,000pa, or £83pm. To do that your consumption would have to be well over twice the average. Please post your annual kWh consumption figures on each fuel (from your bill or annual statement) so we can see what's going on here. These are the figures that matter, not your monthly DD.

Former Spark Representative

Hi Misiokicio


I'm really sorry to hear that you're having problems with your Direct Debit and that a balance seems to have built up.


If you'd like some help getting things sorted out you can email me using the email address on my profile with a note of your address and account number.


If you're paying by Direct Debit you'll be on our cheapest tariff, but it definitely sounds like something's amiss with regards to your payment amount not being reviewed, and we'd be more than happy to investigate and see what we can do to help.


If you do get in touch, and you've not given readings recently, please confirm up to date readings in your email.


Kind regards


Jenny

Misiokicio

Thanks all for the replies, I am sorry I didn't reply earlier, but I am not allowed to use my mobile at work,

I'll contact Jenny, from Spark energy, incl the actual readings,

readings right now are- GAS 2632
Electricity - 14912
Electricity - 45101
and on the 14/10/2008 GAS 1104
Electricity - 11830
Electricity - 31376

This is the reading from the statement dated 23-2-2009

And i just found a letter from Spark Energy(glad my wife found this few letters) dated 30 July 2013! Thank you for choosing to pay by direct debit..... Do i need to do anything? You don't need to do anything, we will take these payments automatically.

12 dates for the direct debit with collection date from 28/08/2013 up to 28/08/2014 with the collection amount of 94.74

Nothing about the debt i am in,,, not a single note regarding the account, nothing about underpayments or overpayments

meter reading from their website dated 03/12/2013 GAS 2549
electr- 14751 and 44108

Account Balance
£-6,213.57

dogshome

This is all very strange

You are giving two Start & End Electric readings for this 65 month period, which suggests you have an ECO7 meter - (Night Rate and Day Rate charges on the bill ?) - Yet you also have Gas for heating which makes expensive Elec from an ECO7 meter entirely unnecessary

It's not uncommon for dwellings built with electric heating and ECO7 meters to be later fitted with Gas, the supplier will sometimes then just add together the two readings on the ECO7 meter to charge Standard meter prices instead of changeing the meter
BUT this is done only by a note on the account, and when the supplier changes as it did when Spark hi-jacked your supply via the Letting Agent, the meter defaulted back to it's original ECO7 status

For customers tied to Spark by their lease, Spark have two tariffs: One is for payment on receipt of Bill, which is hugely expensive, the other is for payment by D/Debit which costs less - Whilst you have paid by D/D from day one, the July 2013 letter thanking you for choosing D/D payment, raises the question that Spark had you on the wrong tariff from Day one

From the readings you have given, over the 65 months you have used:
Gas 48,132 Kwh - (8,800 a year ?)
Elec Night 3062 Kwh
Elec Day 13,725 Kwh
Spark's prices are not cheap, but I reckon the above useage should cost a total of £5,000, and even if all your D/Debit payments had been the level of £84, you would have paid them £5,460.

You have the Start Readings & End Readings - WRITE to Spark heading the letter Complaint demanding a fully itemised set of sequential bills for their entire period of supply

Former Spark Representative

Hi Misiokicio


I've got your email. I've sent you a confirmation in return, and I'll be in touch with you once I've had a look at your account.


Thanks for taking the time to get in touch, hopefully we'll have everything sorted out soon.


Kind regards


Jenny

Misiokicio

dogshome wrote: »

This is all very strange

You are giving two Start & End Electric readings for this 65 month period, which suggests you have an ECO7 meter - (Night Rate and Day Rate charges on the bill ?) - Yet you also have Gas for heating which makes expensive Elec from an ECO7 meter entirely unnecessary

It's not uncommon for dwellings built with electric heating and ECO7 meters to be later fitted with Gas, the supplier will sometimes then just add together the two readings on the ECO7 meter to charge Standard meter prices instead of changeing the meter
BUT this is done only by a note on the account, and when the supplier changes as it did when Spark hi-jacked your supply via the Letting Agent, the meter defaulted back to it's original ECO7 status

For customers tied to Spark by their lease, Spark have two tariffs: One is for payment on receipt of Bill, which is hugely expensive, the other is for payment by D/Debit which costs less - Whilst you have paid by D/D from day one, the July 2013 letter thanking you for choosing D/D payment, raises the question that Spark had you on the wrong tariff from Day one

From the readings you have given, over the 65 months you have used:
Gas 48,132 Kwh - (8,800 a year ?)
Elec Night 3062 Kwh
Elec Day 13,725 Kwh
Spark's prices are not cheap, but I reckon the above useage should cost a total of £5,000, and even if all your D/Debit payments had been the level of £84, you would have paid them £5,460.

You have the Start Readings & End Readings - WRITE to Spark heading the letter Complaint demanding a fully itemised set of sequential bills for their entire period of supply

thanks so much for your reply and for the time you've spent to help me...
No way I could've done all this calculations myself.
I am waiting for the reply from Jenny ... and a soon I get a reply back I'll post in here... I regret not checking that up last year when we managed to stop paying the letting agent and sign the lease directly with my landlord, so basically no being bonded to use one supplier... need to have some reading regarding this meters. Never been interested about it till now. And just to mention as well, is just a small two bed ground flat. All radiators where upgraded few years back and boiler too. Electric cooker 2 years old and that's it. No any power hungry devices about. Again thanks for the support. Glad there still people like you willing to help

Former Spark Representative

Hi Misiokicio


I'll be back in touch with you shortly, we're just finishing up our investigation.


Thanks for your patience.


Kind regards


Jenny