British Gas says we owe £1600+ as we have not paid electricity for 2yrs and getting away with it

savingsavy

We got home from work this week and we had no electricity. After doing the normal checks, we called up British Gas who confirmed there was no fault in our area and since our electric meter had the lights on, we had power the meter is faulty. 
After a lot of faffing and being given the wrong information several times, they sent an engineer to get us electricity back within hours as we have young children, had not heating or means to cook. 
Here is the shocking part: 
The engineer turned up and said he's been sent to put a key pre-pay meter as we owe over £1500! Apparently we have not paid any electricity for the last 2yrs. The electric meter we had was a smart meter and was set to pre-pay they cut our electric because we used up whatever we topped up. According to British Gas, we have always been on a pre-pay meter. 
We have lived in this property for 2yrs and have always paid a monthly direct debit for both our Gas and Electric. Only a few months ago, we spoke to British Gas to arrange a payment plan as due to financial problems we missed a couple of DD. 
Just so we could have electricity we agreed for the meter to be swapped for a key pre-pay one, however, this is going to cost us more than paying via Direct Debit. We have the added aggravation of topping up in a shop, not even online. We also rent and the inventory clearly states the electric meter is a smart one, so we may be penalised for having it changed and lose our deposit. 
Has anyone been in this situation before?
I find it hard to believe that an electric provider would let us use 2yrs worth of electricity without paying or without even sending us a bill. We had no warnings, bills or statements. Just came home to no electricity. 
We are going to be talking to British Gas to get to the bottom of this. However, I'd really appreciate any advice or information on how to deal with this. 

Streaky_Bacon

If the original smart meter you had was actually set to pre-payment mode then it would have shut off as soon as you were out of credit, it wouldn't have allowed you to run up £1500 of debt before shutting off.

Is there a photo of the original meter in your inventory?

You say that you have been paying a DD to BG for 2 years for Gas and Electric, but have received no bills or statements. Is that correct?

Have you been submitting meter readings to BG?

Log into your online account and see if there is anything you have missed. While you are in there, download a copy of all bills/statements and take screenshots of any other information.

Look through everything and see if you can see any suggestion that you are in debt, see what the credit/debit balance is for the Gas and Electric accounts.

Once you have that information it maybe possible to provide further advice.

dogshome

This appears to be a foul-up in BG's systems

Those D/D's will be on your bank statements, go through them and compile a list of the amounts and dates, and the                   Name, Code, & Numbers of the account they went to

WRITE to BG, heading the letter COMPLAINT, enclosing a copy of the D/Debit list

matelodave

Most people dont receive an actual bill through the letterbox, mostly bills are posted on line so you do need to check ON-LINE to see your bills and statements. As said above have you been checking your bank account to see whether you've actually been paying a direct debit. Likewise have you been sending in regular meter readings or just expecting something to happen automatically.
The majority of problems encountered by people on these forums is because they haven't sent in readings, haven't checked their bills or bank accounts and are astonished when the big bill comes in.
Just putting in 10 minutes of effort once a month to send in readings and check accounts would save all this grief and hassle

savingsavy

Thank you for your suggestions and advice, they are very helpful.

Some more information:
I want to make it clear that we are happy to pay what we owe, we may need to arrange a payment plan. 
We never received a bill, reminder, warrant or anything and the complaints department confirmed that's the case and put it in the complaints notes. This is 2yrs worth of electricity that they said we never paid for. I'm surprised that they carried on supplying us for 2yrs without collecting a penny from us. 
We have smart meters which we were assured mean that we don't need to provide meter readings for when me started the account back in 2017. 
We have both gas and electric with BG and we have been making ONE monthly DD which was for both. About 8 months ago, we switched banks and BG DD was not transferred over, we missed a couple of months payment. We called up BG to arrange to pay it and set up the DD. 
We signed up to the online account last night and we have all the right details for the Gas but not electric, it says details not available. 
Also BG insist that our smart meter has always been set to pre-pay. We've lived here for 3yrs and never top up in any way. If we were on pre-pay we'd have lost electricity if we were not topping up. 

At the moment BG has put in a pre-pay key meter which means that the cost of the electricity + service charge is double what we were paying monthly on the credit meter. We believe this is unfairly penalising us and bullying us into paying more. 

At the moment I've spent 5hrs on the phone and chat with BG trying to get to the bottom of it. They've given me conflicting information and every single call and chat was terminated in the middle. I was not rude or raised my voice or anything. 
It's very stressful. I am trying to get all our bank statements together to go through them. We recently changed bank account and most of the payment history is from an account that's now closed so it may take some times. 

As always thank you for your support and advice. It is much appreciated in this stressful situation. 

Nebulous2

BG takes two separate DDs, one for gas, one for electric. Have you had two coming out of your account? 

ElephantBoy57

savingsavy said:
We never received a bill, reminder, warrant or anything
We signed up to the online account last night and we have all the right details for the Gas but not electric, it says details not available.

Most accounts these days are paperless, so you won't receive a bill in the post. You have failed to manage your account properly, by signing in to your account 2/3 years after it started.

MWT

savingsavy said:

We signed up to the online account last night and we have all the right details for the Gas but not electric, it says details not available.

Do the details for the Gas match with the direct debit you have been paying?

i.e. has the DD just been covering your gas bill... ?

Still a lot of details to go through, but it is possible that the back-billing provisions will mean that they can only bill you for the last 12 months not the full 2 years, but not clear yet if that will be the case.

Streaky_Bacon

If there are no electric bills in your online account and they haven't sent you electric bills my email or post, then they haven't sent you a bill, and the back billing rules will apply. It's not your responsibility to ensure that they are billing you correctly, it is their responsibility.

Have you taken a copy of everything online, including screenshots as I advised?

You need to be able to show that there is nothing in the account for electric. If you haven't gathered that evidence then do it now.

MWT

Streaky_Bacon said:

If there are no electric bills in your online account and they haven't sent you electric bills my email or post, then they haven't sent you a bill, and the back billing rules will apply. It's not your responsibility to ensure that they are billing you correctly, it is their responsibility.

... assuming an electricity account was set up in the first place...

That's the bit I'm not sure about and why I was hesitant in saying 100% that the back-billing rules will apply.

Hard to imagine how they could not have done that but anything that confirms that BG knew they were taking over both gas and electricty would be useful, especially if it turns out that the DD was only covering the gas bills.

badmemory

Interesting though that they have got gas meter readings & not electric meter readings when the gas meter readings actually go through the electric meter!