Spark Energy customers - please check your bills

wifeathome

I've just transferred to E.on as part of the collective switch and I have been trying to get my final bill from Spark Energy. They provided this, stating that I owed them £997.65. Turns out they had used the wrong meter reading for my gas, and with a quick phone call to E.on who were fantastic(!) this was quickly resolved. However, according to Spark I still owed them more than £600!

This didn't make sense to me and is complicated by the bizarre accounting system that Spark Energy adopt, whereby when they reissue a bill, they credit every single bill that has been raised since I joined them, and reissue them all over again. The new bills were much higher. This is a long story but after much detective work, it turns out that they were calculating the old bills incorrectly. For example, a bill for the 14 March 2013 to 30 June 2013 was for a period of 108 days - but on the bill I had been charged standing charges for gas and electricity for 923 days! ALL of the bills showed incorrect standing charges.

All of the staff I have dealt with at Spark have been lovely, but I don't believe their accounting systems are fit for purpose (I am a Chartered Accountant). It has taken me an enormous amount of time to resolve but my account is finally correct – and a refund is on its way, of £917.40.

So Spark Energy had tried to overcharge me by £1,915.05!

I'm just relieved to be getting my money back and to be returning to E.on. But I'm so upset that other less suspecting customers might just assume that their bills have been calculated correctly. So if you have bills for previous periods reissued by Spark, please do check that you have been charged for the correct number of days for your standing charges.