changing energy company cost me a fortune

funkyboyscot

Changed from Scottish Gas to First Utility over 2 years ago with the promise of saving £650 a year. Was paying £190 a month to Scottish Gas.I decided to pay first Utility £200 a month to stay in credit. In the first year I was over £1000 in arrears. I am currently paying £400-£500 a month to try and catch up which is crippling me.They wont let me change supplier until I pay in full. I have sent them recorded delivery letters and contacted the ombusman about this.No one is interested. Anyone have and ideas how to move forward

matelodave

£2400 a year is an awful lot of energy, are you running a pub or hotel?

How did you manage to get over £1000 in arrears? Were you not checking your meters, bills and payments to see whether you were actually paying for what you use. Did you even check that the tariff you were transferring to was actually cheaper or did you just trust the comparison site an "go for it". Also if you've been with FU for over two years have you actively swapped tariffs in the intervening period or have you ended up being transferred onto their standard variable tariff when you original deal expired

I know FU aren't everso good but they do demand a meter reading once a month and provide statements on your account so you can check whether they are using the readings or whether they've been using estimates because you haven't been sending readings. You can also check what you've been billed for, whether you are on the tariff that you signed up for and whether they've been taking the direct debit. The statement also tells you if you are in credit or arrears (I'm with FU at the moment) It's not hard to see if something was going awry.

Likewise your bank account statements should confirm if the direct debits have been paid.

After two years it's a bit late to try and sort it all out unless you've kept your own records which it appears you haven't or you wouldn't be in this state.

It's really hard to have a lot of sympathy if you haven't kept an eye on what's been going on.

Nada666

Why do you think the problem arose?

If you were spending £2,200 with British Gas then a saving of five or six hundred pounds was viable.

Did you read your meters? Did you still pay attention to how much you were using? Did you change to a new First Utility fix when the original one ended? Was the inital reading with First Utility underestimated so you had a tranche extra to pay a few months later when a real reading was used?

Whatever the reason it is unlikely that you do not owe the money or an Ombudsman would be interested.

Consumerist

One possible reason for consistently high gas bills is that the supplier thinks you are giving them imperial meter readings (4 digits) when you are actually on a metric meter (5 digits). Consumption charges could be about 3 times higher than they should be.