Problem with OneUtilityBill.co

Kyami

Hello there, myself and my partner have had a rather large unexpected bill from OneUtilityBill, around £200 or so more than expected. We got in touch with them to ask why, and they stated the below in live chat:

"The price you were originally quoted (in May 2018) was £137.24 a month, however, I can see that you have never been charged this amount exactly on your account. I can only apologise for this - it seems that a system error has occurred that skewed your payment amount, therefore the payment of £91.41 a month has led you to underpay by £45.83 every month leading to the latest payment"

We had been sending in meter readings and were not aware of any problems as our bill has been flucuating with usage, due to this being an error on their part is there anything that we can do in this situation or are we stuck? The overpayment has caused us to fall into our overdraft.


Many thanks!

Takmon

Kyami wrote: »

Hello there, myself and my partner have had a rather large unexpected bill from OneUtilityBill, around £200 or so more than expected. We got in touch with them to ask why, and they stated the below in live chat:

"The price you were originally quoted (in May 2018) was £137.24 a month, however, I can see that you have never been charged this amount exactly on your account. I can only apologise for this - it seems that a system error has occurred that skewed your payment amount, therefore the payment of £91.41 a month has led you to underpay by £45.83 every month leading to the latest payment"

We had been sending in meter readings and were not aware of any problems as our bill has been flucuating with usage, due to this being an error on their part is there anything that we can do in this situation or are we stuck? The overpayment has caused us to fall into our overdraft.

Many thanks!

Well you have been paying less than your using so you now owe the money for the extra usage. If you had checked your bills and worked it out you would have seen that you were not paying enough to cover your usage.

The fact that you are in your overdraft is not their fault and is down to you not managing your money properly. At the very least you should have some savings as an emergency fund for unexpected bills. Spending every penny you have each month and saving nothing is likely to lead to financial ruin.
But at least you can now start to budget and get on top of your finances before its too late.

Kyami

Takmon wrote: »

Well you have been paying less than your using so you now owe the money for the extra usage. If you had checked your bills and worked it out you would have seen that you were not paying enough to cover your usage.

The fact that you are in your overdraft is not their fault and is down to you not managing your money properly. At the very least you should have some savings as an emergency fund for unexpected bills. Spending every penny you have each month and saving nothing is likely to lead to financial ruin.
But at least you can now start to budget and get on top of your finances before its too late.

I understand how budgets work, we are both young and have recently moved out from our parents so we are still working on our finances and budgeting. We don't spend every penny we have so please don't assume anything that hasn't been stated. I am just wondering if the fact that this was an error on their end would have any bearing on the fact of whether this is a fair situation.

Takmon

Kyami wrote: »

I understand how budgets work, we are both young and have recently moved out from our parents so we are still working on our finances and budgeting. We don't spend every penny we have so please don't assume anything that hasn't been stated. I am just wondering if the fact that this was an error on their end would have any bearing on the fact of whether this is a fair situation.

This is money you owe so if you don't spend every penny you have then use the money you haven't spent to pay the bill and it's all sorted.

The error was that they didn't take a large enough payment from your bank account. So that has benefited you from letting you keep the extra money and possibly earn interest from it. So it would be unfair to expect any kind of compensation from them for an error you have benefited from.

I'm saying you need to budget not to criticise but to help you focus your mind. You have been living there since at least May last year so you should know how much exactly your monthly bills are by now, if not you need to look into this asap.
It might help having a separate account just for bills then pay in a fixed amount each month/week (when your paid) to make sure this is covered and it makes seeing any problems much easier.

bonus2010

If I had been quoted £137.24 / month and found that only £91.41 had been debit from bank account, I’d be questioning the error with the supplier at that point in say June 2018.

However, given that you have been providing regular meter readings and the supplier has admitted an error with their computer system, in fairness you should expect time to pay the debt that has accumulated, which could be adding £45/month on to your current monthly payments until cleared off.

Kyami

Yeah won't be making that mistake again! Thanks will look into a possible payment plan.

JJ_Egan

As above time to pay .#
Fair to demand all the money at once no .
Fair for you to not pay a bill no .

dj1471

Do their T&Cs say anything about recovering underpayments?

If they've taken more than double your usual payment without warning then I'd agree that that's unfair and you should raise a complaint with them. Of course you owe the money but as they've made an error they should at the very least have told you about the increased payment in advance.

They might be willing to cover your overdraft charges as a goodwill gesture but as above they're not responsible for this. You lose nothing by asking though.

Kyami

Thanks Takmon, we will look into making a separate bills account, will make it easier to see if it's under/overpaying.

JJ_Egan

Now is the time to check all your other bills .
TV Water Gas Broadband Council Tax etc .