Advice - electric meter bypassed

Zara01

I live in London and own a property in Burnley. My tenant moved out of the property and I asked him to drop the key to a letting agent that I use. The property was empty for a year and I paid Council tax during that time.

A year later I gave the keys to another letting agent and he refurbished it and asked for a new meter. Then I had a call from Utilita stating that the meter was bypassed and as I am the owner I am responsible. They sent me a bill for £1279.80. It is a pre-payment meter.

I will appreciate some advice.

lvf

The first thing is to clear your name. With the right documentation, this can be fairly easily done. Ask Utilita for when the charges were built up, and when they confirm to you that the majority of charges are for the period when your tenant was in the property, offer to send them a tenancy agreement if available. It will show the damage was done when the tenant was in the property, not when you took it back. Also, a long shot but if you had forwarding details for the tenant, that could help as well.

They should agree to work with you on this, and you should not be paying for something that is not your responsibility.

sinizterguy

Zara01 wrote: »

I live in London and own a property in Burnley. My tenant moved out of the property and I asked him to drop the key to a letting agent that I use. The property was empty for a year and I paid Council tax during that time.

A year later I gave the keys to another letting agent and he refurbished it and asked for a new meter. Then I had a call from Utilita stating that the meter was bypassed and as I am the owner I am responsible. They sent me a bill for £1279.80. It is a pre-payment meter.

I will appreciate some advice.

You don't really have a leg to stand on, unless you can prove this happened before you were responsible for the bills - i.e. when tenanted.

You cannot.

You were responsible for the property for a whole year after they left. The fact that you did not know is irrelevant.

[Deleted User]

If you did nt put an accurate end reading in on or around the date the tennant vacated you are struggling. As far as the supplier is concerned the occupier was nt crediting the meter, standing charges would also have built up and show as debt in screen "A". One reason landlords do this is because they dont want to be paying the standing charges on unoccupied properties and prefer to go direct from one tennant to the next with a brand new key wiping out any debts .In this case its backfired because you did nt spot the bypass link under the cover, or the missing seal protecting the cover. I think the supplier will estimate the theived energy and add it as debt to your prepay together with a cost of a new meter ( approx £250 ) This should be visable on screen "S" with a weekly repayment on one of the other screens.
Its a bit baffling why a letting agent should ask for a new meter, its not their property and they should nt have that right. Did they request a credit meter to make the property more appealing to renters ? Either way its up to an occupier to determine what meter they want. If a credit meter has been installed it should be taken out again to collect the debts of both standing charges and theived energy
You have the tennants name to pass onto the supplier and now its up to them to chase him/her for the crime. Suppliers prefer to keep these sort of blatent thefts out of the courts ( for their accountancy reasons ) and just pass on the costs for the rest of us to pay. Legally any supplier who does`nt collect back the theived energy costs must repay it to National Grid .This rule does`bt apply to theft of gas