Flow Energy arrears and meter read validation

mystra

First up, anyone with Flow Energy check all your statements!

So got an email from Flow to say i am not paying enough direct debit. Fair enough til i read that they think i used almost £700 gas in a month! (I'm using Flow for gas and elec)

My first panic was that we'd had work done in the front yard and the gas meter had been knocked and was giving a very wrong reading. I sent a photo of the meter for that day and apparently it's even more than their estimate :eek:

Then the detective work starts... i go through all my statements. I'll be honest i never look. It's all done via direct debit and there's never been an issue in almost 3 years. they've emailed me to increase if needed and it's been fine.

However going through every statement i have, they never show record of my gas meter reads apart from a couple of times, i do them every month! Electric statements have my reads for those, but gas seems to be almost all estimates. Now i guess that wouldn't be so bad but the estimates are very very wrong. Spread across a period of 16 months or so i used 6 units of gas for that entire period in their estimate, not per month, the whole time.

So that bill is obviously the arrears as it has all caught up.

Now i am not unreasonable, i will pay what I owe but how can they even calculate it?

They have admitted the issue was in their system with validation, my reads weren't validated and obv neither were the estimates. They have written off some of it due to it being over 12 month old.

Arrears aside, they want to increase my bill to 114 per month (the arrears is paid on top of that) as they said thats my usage, which seems a lot for a 2 bed flat with 2 people in.

their customer service is horrible, had one woman laugh at me while i was upset on the phone (i got this news right before xmas) and the only way they ever answer my questions is via Facebook messenger, rather than calling me back via the proper complaint procedure (the complaint is about their system not validating reads etc if i owe money i owe money). I can't wait to switch, but it will probably take a year to pay the arrears off.

here's to winter with the radiators off and lots of jumpers

help would be appreciated on how to tackle this, i'm not trying to get out of it as such but i don't know how they can accurately bill me if they have no valid reasons due to their system issue?

matelodave

The way to tackle it is to read you meter monthly, send in the readings ad CHECK your bills and statements to make sure that they are correct.

They should know how to bill you as they've probably still got your initial reading (assuming that you did actually send them one)

As you are getting some of it written off then their estimate will be as good as anyone elses. They can only accurately bill you if you put a bit of effort into making sure that your bills were correct in the first place

mystra

matelodave wrote: »

The way to tackle it is to read you meter monthly, send in the readings ad CHECK your bills and statements to make sure that they are correct.

They should know how to bill you as they've probably still got your initial reading (assuming that you did actually send them one)

As you are getting some of it written off then their estimate will be as good as anyone elses. They can only accurately bill you if you put a bit of effort into making sure that your bills were correct in the first place

i did provide monthly meter readings, they've admitted it was a system issue so you can cut back on the "assuming" tone thanks

i've not said i'm blameless, just looking for the best way to tackle the issue and make sure i don't get ripped off

they're looking to charge me what sounds like a lot for ongoing usage regardless of the arrears so i am looking for advice to move forwards with that too