Complaint to the Ombudsman re underpayment

Bladefan

Hi guys, I lodged the following complaint with the Ombudsman and am unsure on whether to accept an offer back from the supplier:

Sir/Ma’am,

I have payed for a fixed term deal of gas and electricity to xxx. The fixed price as estimated was £80 per month based on my usage of gas and electricity and having two lodgers.

As requested I was submitting meter readings for gas and electricity. And checking my account balance online which was always roughly equating to what I was paying, though I ended up in a credit of £100 after 8 months, it was at this point my lodgers moved out. xxx also decreased my payments, without my agreement, to £15 per month.

I then submitted a meter reading and noticed it hadn’t been accepted for my electricity. I contacted Xxx and it turned out none of my meter readings had been accepted for the electricity.

They had not contacted me about this and they could see that I had tried submitting meter readings before but due to technical errors on their behalf, they had not been accepted. They hadn’t even tried predicting my electricity usage and instead hadn’t charged me for any of the electricity usage. This then left me with a debt of £480, once my lodgers (whom I was splitting the bill payments with) had moved out. Xxx state that they were aware of the issue for the previous 8 months and had tried fixing it. However:

1) they didn’t make me aware of this issue and that I wasn’t being billed for the electricity
2) they didn’t even attempt to estimate my electricity usage and thus provide an even vaguely realistic balance
3) my contract was for gas and electricity and thus I was thinking I was paying for both
4) they reduced my bill payments without my authority and whilst there was an error on their end that they were aware of - that they would have known meant I would end up owing them money
5) my lodgers have now moved out and I cannot now ask for recompense from them which has left me out of pocket. I now have to foot the bill for three that would’ve been split evenly
6) they say they were working to fix it for the full 8 months, I find it coincidental that they couldn’t fix it in the 8 months they were aware of the fault but could once I had noticed the fault myself

I offered to split the balance with xxx, to split the responsibility which I felt was fair, but this was rejected.

The company has replied:

First of all I would like to apologise for the problems that you’ve had which has forced you to approach the Energy Supply Ombudsman (ESO) with a complaint.

The ESO have a process which allows us to make you an offer to resolve your complaint without a full investigation, this is called a Facilitated Complaint Resolution (FCR). The benefits of this are that we can resolve your complaint much quicker for all parties involved and our savings in providing a case file to the Ombudsman can be passed to you in an increased goodwill gesture.

I’ve attached details of your gas and electricity charges and also details of your financial history.
I am sorry that we only sent bills for gas consumption instead of both fuels. I can understand your upset when you received the dual fuel bill in August 2018 showing electricity charges since October 2018.
It’s great that you have managed your account online and provided regular readings but also with this comes a responsibility to check the bills that are issued. The bills up until August 2019 show that they were for gas usage only. However I agree that the final resolution offer of £40.00 does not taken into account that you have been presented with a large bill which you could have had help with from your loggers.

Therefore since I have had opportunity to look through your account I would like to offer:-

Offer an apology for the large back bill and the inconvenience that this has caused you;
Increase the previous goodwill offer of £40.00 to £100.00; this will applied to the account and will reduce the outstanding balance; and
Offer an extended payment arrangement to help you pay the final bill and to make this manageable for you.

I’m unsure whether to accept this offer or risk taking it to the ombudsman...I was hoping for more but at the same time £100 isn’t money I can afford to lose.

Any advice or anyone been in a similar situation?

molerat

Grab it with both hands and pay more attention to your energy accounts in the future.