New electricity meter excessive use / neighbours connected

Robin9

I don't think you'll get very far but a letter to your landlord (copied to the flat concerned) suggesting 50% of your last bill be deducted from the tenants deposit.

Jmoo

Yes I suppose 50% is about the figure I'll get. Annoying as hell though because I've been cutting back thinking I'm using too much while they've clearly not been!

[Deleted User]

Was it SSE revenue protection who came out ?. It is straight theft and the landlord is responsible if you believe the tenant. Its the same old story with this sort of thing.The landlord will blame the tenant, tenant will blame the landlord, they may even be related. I bet that the landlord has rented this particular property on a fully inclusive rental so its in his interests to fiddle the meter and find someone to wire up to who he thinks is stupid enough to pay for two bills. SSE RPU should be taking action as this sort of thing could be potentially dangerous and either landlord/tenant are thieving from one of their customers. Most suppliers I deal with a useless at stamping out theft ( BG excepted ), they just dont want to get involved, like a landlord I know with EDF who has systematically been thieving both gas and electric with his tenants flats who he lets out at higher fully inclusive rents for the last 7 years. His M.O. is also to blame the tenants, buts its him behind it. OP if you PM me I ll dig out my SSE RPU email address. I ve not had much dealings with them, they ve never got back to me on the thieving I have found with their customers so they may be just like EDF and Scot Power in stopping theft of energy..worse than useless.
If its the tenant behind it he may have a prepayment meter and the usual excuse to why they don t pay electric is that they are waiting for supplier to send a bill. Bypassing a prepayment electric meter is easy enough and would be a better option than tapping into a neighbours meter, so the L/L is favourite in my opinion

Jmoo

Well fortunately we share letting agents, so they did seem to believe everyone had their own electricity meters. Although I find it hard to believe in this amount of time no one has actually looked at them to take a reading or to check the electrics.

It's only because I escalated the case to an SSE manager did someone come out to look.

[Deleted User]

Jmoo wrote: »

Well fortunately we share letting agents, so they did seem to believe everyone had their own electricity meters. Although I find it hard to believe in this amount of time no one has actually looked at them to take a reading or to check the electrics.

It's only because I escalated the case to an SSE manager did someone come out to look.

Another distinct possibility is that the l/l has squeezed in another flat without permission from the local housing dept and is overcrowding. I ve become a big fan of Mathew Allbright in BBCs Housing Enforcers., and see this overcrowding a lot on that program.The Council have more powers than suppliers and will prosecute with this sort of thing, so I would also drop them an email.

Jmoo

It's plausible but it's always been a block of flats.

What's weird is that the flat I'm sharing with is a good three or four minute walk around the corner. As you can imagine 72 and 87 isn't that close! The only reason SSE believed me - when it wasn't recorded as ever being on the grid - was the Royal Mail database.

[Deleted User]

Jmoo wrote: »

It's plausible but it's always been a block of flats.

What's weird is that the flat I'm sharing with is a good three or four minute walk around the corner. As you can imagine 72 and 87 isn't that close! The only reason SSE believed me - when it wasn't recorded as ever being on the grid - was the Royal Mail database.

Yes, the landlords get permission to use a certain number of flats then some start knocking the buildings around to fit potentially more flats into the same space.Seems on Matt Albrights prog, "Housing Enforcers " to be very very common and the Local Housing Dept are keen to stop it and prosecute serial offenders. London area is rife with it with the super high rents.

audigex

Robin9 wrote: »

Rubbish help from SSE

Do you really expect to be only paying £15 a week in winter for a studio flat for all your heating, lighting, cooking and power. For the winter period £25/30 would be nearer the mark and falling to £10/15 in the summer months.

I had a 2 bedroom flat and was paying much less than £30 a week on a pre-paid (more expensive) meter, and am being predicted £70/month to heat/light etc my 3 bed house - I wouldn't say £60 is therefore unreasonable for a flat?

Single working people, particularly, can be surprisingly frugal on the heating+gas with one shower a day, eating out/takeaways more than most, no need for heating during the day etc.

Jmoo wrote: »

It's plausible but it's always been a block of flats.

What's weird is that the flat I'm sharing with is a good three or four minute walk around the corner. As you can imagine 72 and 87 isn't that close! The only reason SSE believed me - when it wasn't recorded as ever being on the grid - was the Royal Mail database.

Draw a map, you may find that although they're "round the corner" their kitchen backs onto yours or something... similar

This kind of thing is particularly common with studio flats, as you basically design it as a larger flat with a big room on the plan, then switch it around later.

Jmoo

Nah it's still really a distance even if we ignored that you have to go out of the building, down some stairs, walk for three minutes, and go up some more stairs. I do not have the faintest idea how we've been connected, there are about 10 flats between us internally.

As I say, this guy is using his storage heaters full blast. I've barely had my heating on, he's very much took the pee with his consumption compared to mine. It's made it all rather frustrating.

A reminder that I'm only in my flat 6pm to 7am weekdays, and I'm away all weekend. Hardly any heating used, no washing machine on etc.

brewerdave

Temporarily,if you can get to the main isolator, shut the power off at weekends??