Cadent invoiced us for 6 Years of gas

House_Martin

BG will simply fit a prepayment meter and load it with the maximum £16 a week repayment. It will be probably then be billed at up to 20% higher than you could obtain from a cheaper suppliers one year fixed deal so even if you have got away with six years unbilled gas you do not want to be paying top price for the next 4 years paying off the debt
I don`t accept that you tried hard enough to locate the meter, altho if its that deeply buried someone has tried hard to make it hard to be found. Possibly the original owner had a helping hand in this as a metre down from level does not make sense in the original location of a semi concealed outside box .I shudder to think about an uncontrolled gas escape into the property with no means of switching the gas off if the control valve was in the meter box as they normally are.
Over the 20 years meter reading for BG I have had three semi concealed buried meter boxes and they were all easy to find and dig out in a few minutes once I d spotted where the gas pipe was exiting the property. As the occupier you can easily see where the incoming gas pipe enters which then tells you where the meter would be opposite this point outside.
If your property was missed as a new build by the bloke in the hard hat who`s job it was to register the meters and you knew you were receiving unregistered gas then that is illegal. You should accept that it is up to you to find the meter and register the supply yourself. It appears the original owner owes 3 years gas debt too and if he can be traced then he still owes this money.
Receiving unregistered gas is an offence .We call it a PUG (passing unregistered gas ). Suppliers never take anyone to court nowadays to recover money owed, they just go down the prepay meter route if you do not make a repayment arrangement which is satisfactory.
I have seen a prepay meter with £9000 debt on it so a mere £3200 is nt out of the ordinary and £2000 is common

C_Mababejive

If that meter has a serial number on it (it will) , did you make enquiries as to what address if any,that serial no meter was registered to ? This should be on the xoserve database.

Have you considered the possibility that that supply was never legit in the first place? Maybe some just paid some gang to lay it and it was never recorded (unlikely but it happens).

Either way, gas has been abstracted and used from the gas transportation system operated by NG who own a 40% share in Cadent.

If that cost cannot be reclaimed via a legitimate shipper (as it seems not) , then NG has a right in law to recover it.