Energy company got us in debt

Laurab01x

Our energy supplier has just informed us that we are £700.00 in arrears and have been advised that we have been under paying for our usage the entire time. Even though when we switched over from our previous supplier, who we paid more too, said that we were in fact over paying based on our usage.  We haven’t received a single call to inform us that our payments aren’t covering our usage over the two year period. We would of been more than happy to pay more had we known. They are now requesting the money paid on credit in full  or hiking up our monthly instalment to something that we cannot afford. 

We feel that this is complete neglect on their part, we are unaware of our usage and it hasn’t changed from two years ago.

What can we do in this situation? 

Robin9

There is no reason for you to be unaware of your usage - have you been reading your meter every month ?

More details please - when did you switch , what is your annual consumption (in kWh) , h.
You need to take some responsibility in this - have you been looking at your online accounts, paper bills - has the supplier actually been taking your DD'S ?

Laurab01x

Yes our supplier has been taking our DD each month. I personally do not deal with the account, my partner does and all of the correspondence was going into his junk mail, when I was with British Gas, if they didn’t receive a meter reading they would call to chase it up. We assumed that since we hadn’t received anything nothing had changed. But they still should of told us that we were underpaying at the beginning and then saying that we’ve under paid the whole time. Our usage hasn’t really changed as my partner checked our statements. 

Laurab01x

We also checked our meter and it said that we were in credit, which I thought was really odd. 

tim_p

Neglect on their part?? Are you sure?

Robin9

Laurab01x said:

We also checked our meter and it said that we were in credit, which I thought was really odd. 

By meter - do you mean the In House Display (IHD) that sits in your kitchen ? The meter will be in your garage or an outside meter box that's what you should be reading.   

So know you know their correspondence is in your partner's email - unspam and look at the correspondence you have received.
As above please as my earlier post - more details.

Laurab01x

Hi Tim,  it seems wrong to quote someone lower than they were paying before to then tell them they were underpaying the entire time? I would of been happy to pay more and surely this should of been reviewed and we should of been contacted but we weren’t, nothing in the spam folder either. To let us build up this amount of debt seems wrong and we should
of been called at the very least to let us know. 

Laurab01x

 Hi Robin, the meter is outside our front door. I’ve copied the link to my partner who can provide you with all the information you required. 

Talldave

What about the bills?  Didn't they show an increasing negative balance? 

The_Fat_Controller

You have managed to get yourself in debt by not keeping track of the actual amount of energy you have been using, not checking and/or sending meter readings and assuming, as many do, that your supplier's estimate of usage and the level the DD is set at actually covers what you are using.
A sobering lesson to learn.

Laurab01x

We switched in 2018 and the only correspondence we have received is requests for meter readings and monthly bill which went into the spam, but end of year bill went into inbox. Our usage from 1st Aug 2018- 1st Aug 2019 was 4965 kWh estimated £847.62 and then it said our projection for this year was £529.65, seems like quite a bit difference