Supplier Charging for Energy Not Consumed

wolfysmith

phillw - I should not have to have gone to the Ombudsman in the first place .. but to answer your question it did not deal with all of the issues and it 'second guessed' the behaviour versus investigating what actually happened. Although it agreed with the £20 overcharge I also wanted it to deal with the other issues. Ombudsman did not/could not deal with the other issues and so I refused to accept the findings. Consequently it was all or nothing i.e they did not instruct the Supplier to repay the £20. I then had to go back to the Supplier to obtain the refund. I am now pursuing the remaining outstanding issues.


TO EVERYONE reading this thread - The refund has been obtained. The issues raised here relate to the behaviour and the process. Lets stop talking about the read/the refund, just focus on the behaviour of the Supplier.... Supplier behaviour and process needs to be changed.

System

wolfysmith wrote: »

Come on folks..... The 'read' issue has been dealt with, the supplier paid up, it had to admit it failed and overcharged, it didn't give a damn about its Customer ........ THE ISSUE IS THE BEHAVIOUR AND THE PROCESS..... so tell me how the supplier can be stopped from doing what it did..... old lady, JAM, lost her husband, no help from Supplier, harassed, Supplier refused to refund the money on several occasions, had to get help to get her £20, Ombudsman was useless.


The process is broken.


HENGUS & ASavvyBuyer - 6m switchers per annum ...you do the maths ... it could be millions..... let OFGEM do the work to find out what's going on.


MARTIN - where are you? I'm being beaten up by the Suppliers

Just because there has been one murder in a Town does not lead to the logical conclusion that the practice of murdering people in the Town is widespread. Based on one case - true or not, I do not have enough evidence to judge - you have said that:

Quote: If circa 6m people per annum switch to the same supplier then that supplier stands to 'rip off' customers to the tune of £117m per annum….. a regulatory issue? Quote

However, you have provided no evidence to show whether your case was just a one-off c**k up or a management-driven conspiracy to fraud. If it was the latter, then people on this forum would be shouting about it from the rooftops - they are not doing so.

FWiW, there are Supply Licence Conditions in place to prevent your situation from occurring: there is also an Ofgem-approved Industry Meter Readings Disputes process, I am therefore not persuaded that more Regulation is needed. If you are saying that Ofgem needs to be more pro-active when it comes to investigating supplier non compliance, then I would agree 100%.

wolfysmith

Hengus - no offence intended here.....I am using this site to share and find out if Suppliers are taking advantage (to put it mildly) of other people and to try and get Regulators to enforce what is already in place....MSE Quote...A Guardian article once "doffed its cap" to this forum as being the one place where consumers can collect together and fight back.

Well, no-one fought for the Customer throughout the 'broken' process. It will be interesting to see other responses. All I am getting is 'pushback' from the same people today most of whom are Suppliers. The only evidence I have is what happended happended,.... Supplier knows it, Ombudsman knows it, OFGEM knows it.


To your point 'there are Supply Licence Conditions in place to prevent your situation from occurring: there is also an Ofgem-approved Industry Meter Readings Disputes process'......


The root cause is bad behaviour and a broken process i.e. the SLC didn't prevent anything.

Raxiel

wolfysmith wrote: »

All I am getting is 'pushback' from the same people today most of whom are Suppliers.

There has been only one post by a supplier in this thread, E.ON's Helena who wasn't even commenting on the OP.

OK, fair enough you are "using this site to share and find out if Suppliers are taking advantage ...of other people"

The pushback you are getting is from board regulars, who, far from being fans of the energy industry, spend free time here advising other people to deal with the industries many screw ups.

Your experience, while unpleasant, is not typical.
Spend a bit more time here and read / join in other threads and you'll see that.

wolfysmith

Raxiel, appreciate your comments.

phillw

wolfysmith wrote: »

phillw - I should not have to have gone to the Ombudsman in the first place .. but to answer your question it did not deal with all of the issues and it 'second guessed' the behaviour versus investigating what actually happened. Although it agreed with the £20 overcharge I also wanted it to deal with the other issues. Ombudsman did not/could not deal with the other issues and so I refused to accept the findings. Consequently it was all or nothing i.e they did not instruct the Supplier to repay the £20. I then had to go back to the Supplier to obtain the refund. I am now pursuing the remaining outstanding issues.


TO EVERYONE reading this thread - The refund has been obtained. The issues raised here relate to the behaviour and the process. Lets stop talking about the read/the refund, just focus on the behaviour of the Supplier.... Supplier behaviour and process needs to be changed.

Your question was: why did it take a year to refund £20.

The ombudsman is there to get your £20 back and they would have instructed them to repay the money, if you'd let them. They aren't there to investigate conspiracy theories. The idea is that if they make it really easy to complain to the ombudsman and they award in favour of the consumer when companies make these kinds of mistakes then the energy companies will make less mistakes. It doesn't really make a difference if it's done on purpose or by mistake.

The ombudsman system would fail if people demand to see heads roll on every mistake that is made.

A more pragmatic approach of getting a refund when it was first offered and then posting here asking if anyone else had the same problem would be far more effective and time efficient for you.

Robin9

OP in your first post :

"If circa 6m people per annum switch to the same supplier then that supplier stands to 'rip off' customers to the tune of £117m per annum….. a regulatory issue?"

Other than your sister's "problem" have you ever had a problem ?

I haven't and I've been involved in 5 switches - mine, my MIL, 3 commercial properties over the last 12 months.

You may be talking about a handful and not 6 million. Please keep your arguments in perspective.

wolfysmith

philw - you've dropped down into the wrong argument again .... I should not have need to go to the Ombudsman. The supplier should have admitted its wrong doing (not a mistake) and paid up in the first place. I pointed out the problem as soon as the problem occurred. The organisation deliberately withheld the money all the way up to the CEO, it never offered me any refund.


Robin9 - I have had problems in the past but not like this. The reason I came here (as I previously explained) was because no one helped (Supplier all the way up to CEO, Ombudsman, OFGEM) to try and find out the extent of the problem and to establish. So, I have no context at this point and my search for answers/comments is in perspective, I have to disagree with you. Whether its 1 or 6m customers is irrelevant, its the principle of knowingly ripping off a customer... even OFGEM agrees with this statement.


I cant believe you guys (with respect)....why are you defending the suppliers/Ombudsman like this? ... I repeat....


MSE Quote...A Guardian article once "doffed its cap" to this forum as being the one place where consumers can collect together and fight back.

wolfysmith

Any other comments?

brewerdave

Last comment from me -the fact that no others have joined in this thread to report a similar issue suggests that this sort of problem is NOT widespread.
I've switched literally dozens of times in the past 16 years -only once have experienced a problem with a final reading - and that was resolved quickly and in my financial favour.