Backbilling: How long is 12 months

James_H

This might seem like a silly question to start with, but I ask because the backbilling rules refer to 12 months. Not one year, not 365 (or 366) days.

I switched to EDF on 1 October 2018. A few electricity bills came during the year, but I received my first gas bill on 15 October 2019. The opening read is marked as an estimate and does not match the closing read from the previous supplier so I have paid for some units twice.

I will contact them to get this corrected, but I was wondering whether I could go further and ask them to write off the first half of October 2018.

This is assuming twelve and a half is not considered to be close enough for twelve months for backbilling provisions not to apply.

Cardew

If the back billing provision applies, it will be from the date when the bill was produced - not when you 'received' the bill(assuming it came by snail mail.)

However if the bill does cover twelve and a half months, and there are no other factors to be taken into account, you should get a half a month(15 days) of your bill written off.

James_H

Thanks. The bill was produced on 14 Oct, advised by email in the small hours of the 15th. A bit sneaky that in covering the period to my (asked for) read of 22 Aug, it now sits a little way down the online account activity to make it look as though it was an older bill. For whatever reason they disregarded the meter readers read from late Sep.