neighbour accidentally changed our energy supplier

KayleighAnne

Hi, i dont know if any one can help me, im not sure what my rights are with this Erroneous Transfer:
My energy supply was switched to another company by mistake by a neighbour putting our house number down instead of theirs. It wasn't for a while we noticed as we had just got married and was on our honeymoon out the country. Now we have been hit with a huge bill.

We received a final bill email on 19/05/17 - We was out the country on our honeymoon when we received this. Quite oblivious when reading it as we hadn't changed supplier ourselves so the 'Final Bill' part didn't quite register.

It wasn't then until October i realised we hadn't had any bills come through, so i contacted Extra energy our supplier asking why and they said we had switched supplier (which i had never approved) i contacted the supplier it had changed to (First Utitlity) and found a neighbour had put the wrong number house in. they said we will have no charges as it was not our fault.

on 11.10.17 we received an email from our supplier extra energy stating:
"We're writing to let you know that another supplier has informed us that they have transferred your dual fuel supply to them by mistake. We've agreed to bring the supply back to extra-energy shortly.
We'll let you know when your energy is back with us and keep you informed of any progress. In the meantime we can reassure you that the other supplier should not be billing you and they'll refund any payments you may have made to them.
Once the transfer is complete, we'll reopen your account and one of our friendly team will be contacting you to discuss your tariff and direct debit."

We never received an email or a phone call to discuss a tariff, we just got hit with an email a month later stating we had a new energy bill on 27/11/17 - which was £500.

I switched supplier straight away after this bill as i wanted to be on a tariff but they just put us on their standard charges without speaking to us first. I also contacted extra-energy about the bill as i was confused - they wanted to bill us for the time we was technically with the other supplier.. so why is extra energy charging me. Even in the email they stated about switching back. so how can they charge when i technically wasn't with them for that time? they dropped the bill to £300 but im still confused as to why they are billing me? charging the dates we had been wrongly switched to another company 19/05/17 - 10/08/17.

I have been searching online as this situation was not our fault, we never agreed to switch supplier. i have found on another site this "All energy suppliers have signed up to a code of conduct called the Erroneous Transfer Customer Charter, which means they are obliged to protect a customer who has been switched to a new supplier by mistake"

Is this true? We are expecting our first child in 6 weeks and could really do without this stress. does any one have any advice?

Novice_investor101

If First Utility did not bill you for the months you were with them (erroneously) ie you never paid them anything, then Extra Energy will bill you for it. It is the same gas & electric through the same pipes, just a different name on the bill.
If this had never happened, you would still have had to pay for the energy used in that period. You still have to pay it now. If you don't wish to pay Extra energy for it, then you would need to pay First Utility. The clause you mentioned above does not mean that you get free energy.
At most, you have cause for a complaint to Extra energy if they did not put you back onto the same tariff you had before the mess up, & have ended up paying higher rates than you would otherwise have.
If the £300 is less than you would have paid had nothing ever happened, then pay that & move on.
Unfortunately, you probably won't be entitled to pay nothing for the energy used during that time.

Robots

This happened to us, all you can do is put in a complaint. They may, or may not, offer you some form of compensation. It's worth a try, but not to be expected - just keep your fingers crossed!

System

Robots wrote: »

This happened to us, all you can do is put in a complaint. They may, or may not, offer you some form of compensation. It's worth a try, but not to be expected - just keep your fingers crossed!

I know that suppliers have a reputation for just being bad, but I am not sure that they can be blamed for an erroneous transfer actioned by A N Other. The bottomline under The Erroneous Transfer Charter is that the customer should only pay their existing supplier and the customer should not lose out. Any financial settlement is between the two suppliers.

Robots

Hengus wrote: »

I know that suppliers have a reputation for just being bad, but I am not sure that they can be blamed for an erroneous transfer actioned by A N Other. The bottomline under The Erroneous Transfer Charter is that the customer should only pay their existing supplier and the customer should not lose out. Any financial settlement is between the two suppliers.

As I said, not to be expected.

mac.d

KayleighAnne wrote: »

how can they charge when i technically wasn't with them for that time? they dropped the bill to £300 but im still confused as to why they are billing me? charging the dates we had been wrongly switched to another company 19/05/17 - 10/08/17.

You still have to pay for the gas and electricity you used during that time, if you didn't pay anything because you didn't notice until October that you didn't have any bills, then that's why you've now been hit with a big bill. That's not Extra Energy's fault, and there's not much else you can do but pay it, especially as you already have got them to reduce it.