New house owner - utilities

leoroberts

My daughter has just bought a house (hooray) and is moving in bit by bit.

She joined the MSE energy club and opted for a dual fuel deal offered by E-On. The property has an electric meter - but the gas meter is prepaid.

The day after she took ownership, the previous occupiers received a bill from utilitywarehouse.com saying that they needed to settle the account. My daughter wrote to utilitywarehouse.com saying that she was the new owner of the property and giving them the vendors' solicitor address for them to get in contact.

Today she received an email saying:

"Thanks for your email. Please give your mobile number so we can call you next time you have a query.

We need to set up an account in your name before we can allow you to switch suppliers. The request you have made has been rejected because of the outstanding on the property because of the previous occupier.

Please send us a copy of your completion or any purchase documents you have received with the date you became the owner so that we can set up an account for you. If you took any meter readings then, please give these to us as well.

The requested document can be sent to (text removed by MSE Forum Team)

I'm sorry that we can not allow the switch to happen, and we look forward to hearing from you soon so that we can unblock the transfer."

Is this right? Does my daughter have to set up an account with a supplier she doesn't want in order to change to a supplier she DOES want? She is surely not responsible for any previous balance (the meter currently reads a credit balance of £10)

Any advice would be welcome!

leoroberts

footyguy

leoroberts wrote: »

...
Is this right? Does my daughter have to set up an account with a supplier she doesn't want in order to change to a supplier she DOES want? She is surely not responsible for any previous balance (the meter currently reads a credit balance of £10)

Any advice would be welcome!

leoroberts

Yes that's right.

Your daughter can't switch supplier until she has a supplier.

She will be responsible to the existing supplier for any energy used since she has moved in until such times as a change of supplier actually occurs.
(any energy used by the previous occupants will be due to be paid by them... which is presumably why they were sent a final bill)

D_M_E

Yes, that is correct - she has to give the current suppliers the meter readings when she took ownership of the property - she DID read the meters, yes? - and have them as suppliers then, when an account has been set up she can then switch/change suppliers.

EDIT - footyguy beat me to it.

leoroberts

Oh, righty-ho!

Thanks for your super quick responses!

[Deleted User]

The gas prepay meter will hold your daughter back with their high tariffs.They are all on standard variable tariffs, usually the dearest.They are inconvenient as well always watching the credit on the meter. Eon are a good supplier for a possible free meter exchange, so are EDF and BG.Scot Power can charge as much as £200 to exchange

leoroberts

Yup, Eon have said they'll change the meter at no charge when the switch gets made.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Morning leoroberts and welcome to the forums

Brilliant info and advice, so thank you guys.

As soon as your daughter has her account set up, she can request to change supplier. Once the supply is with us we can arrange to change the pre-payment meter.

As you know we'll do this for free, we'll just have to a credit check and she may have to pay via a Direct Debit.

If you need us though, we're here!

Helena