Never Billed By Eon

doddleward

Hi Everyone, I hope you can help me. I've found myself in a very strange predicament. My (now) husband and I moved into our current home (a new build) in 2013, this was our first home and we were a bit clueless. We kept our finances separate and worked out who was going to pay each of the bills once they arrived, as we had different levels of income this was the easiest way we found to make things even. We got married a couple of years ago and decided now was the time to consolidate everything into one account, when looking into this we realised that neither of us had been paying for our gas or electricity, we had both wrongly assumed it had been allocated to the other to pay. As you can imagine, to say I freaked out would be an understatement. I imagined that we would now owe a lot of money that we could not afford to pay so I did the wrong thing, and buried my head in the sand until this past year. I have now been putting money aside every month to help towards the massive bill we are likely to get. I have around £6000 put away at the moment, and am planning to contact them when it reaches £7000 to arrange payment/payment plans, which will help me feel so much better mentally once it has been taken care of. My question is, where do I stand legally? When watching 'Rip off Britain' the other day, it was mentioned that energy companies are unable to backdate bills from over 12 months ago. Is this true in my situation? I have never received a bill or any correspondence from Eon themselves and our meters are easily accessible if they had come to check. I'm unsure where to go from here and scared of paying them a great deal of money when I have no evidence of the meters being read or the costs of previous years energy bills. It has taken me a very long time to pluck up the courage to write this as I feel so ashamed and embarrassed, so please be gentle with me. 
Thank you all in advance for your support and guidance 

dogshome

I'm afraid that the 'Back-Billing' rule is very unlikely to apply because as a new occupier of a property, you had a legal duty to inform that dwellings Energy suppliers of the date of your occupation and meter readings.

1st thing to do is establish just who this supplier is - You can do this with your search engine asking " Who supplies my Elec/Gas"

Your savings of £1000 a year are about right to meet the bill when it arrives, but best not to wait as at the moment you are on the suppliers 'Standard Tariff' which is the most expensive, but as soon as you have settled matters with the current supplier you can move to a cheaper tariff with them or another supplier

Whilst you must still pay the piper, you have been let down by the developer who should have advised you who the supplier was, and also the supplier in that they did not issue bills addressed to the 'Occupier'

brewerdave

Didn't the builder/developer give you the details of the energy supplier and changeover meter reads when you completed on the purchase? I still have the handover documents from my purchase showing the reads and my daughter had documentation when she bought a new house more recently.
 I cannot believe that nobody has been getting bills for 7 years. If the builder/developer didn't get round to closing their account on your plot I suppose it's possible, but unlikely, that they have been receiving the bills - don't suppose they went bust a short while after you bought the house? Wonder if they even registered the supplies?
I'm no expert on the back billing rules but I thought they only applied if the customer had made efforts to obtain a bill but your situation is a very strange one ,as 7 years is a hell of a long time for an energy supplier to go without being paid.
How did you find out that EON were your suppliers ?

MWT

Back billing rules will not help in this case as the customer has actively frustrated the ability of the energy company to bill them by failing to register with them in the first place and then further failing to do anything about it for the last two years even though they knew beyond any doubt that they were consuming energy they were not paying for.

Seven years on a default tariff is not going to be pretty...

You obviously know who the supplier is judging from the title of this thread and in the words of Ofgem, regarding circumstances in which the back-billing rules may not apply, behaving "...obstructively or unreasonably, preventing accurate billing..." would seem to be an accurate description of what has happened here.

I'd suggest you make the call and ask for mercy.

Robin9

doddleward said:

..................... I have around £6000 put away at the moment, and am planning to contact them when it reaches £7000 to arrange payment/payment plans, which will help me feel so much better mentally once it has been taken care of..................

Don't delay any more    ............ as others have said you will be paying on a standard tariff perhaps 20p for elec whereas you could be paying 12p.      

Your meters will have been reading 000000 when you moved in - what are they now (watch out for the decimal point and ignore figures after the decimal point)

brewerdave

Robin9 said:

doddleward said:

..................... I have around £6000 put away at the moment, and am planning to contact them when it reaches £7000 to arrange payment/payment plans, which will help me feel so much better mentally once it has been taken care of..................    

Your meters will have been reading 000000 when you moved in - what are they now (watch out for the decimal point and ignore figures after the decimal point)

Not necessarily true; for example in my daughter's new home, the supply had been used whilst they were drying out plaster etc and to power lights and tools, so the readings were not zero on any of the utility meters (including water)

brewerdave

MWT said:

Back billing rules will not help in this case as the customer has actively frustrated the ability of the energy company to bill them by failing to register with them in the first place and then further failing to do anything about it for the last two years even though they knew beyond any doubt that they were consuming energy they were not paying for.

Seven years on a default tariff is not going to be pretty...

You obviously know who the supplier is judging from the title of this thread and in the words of Ofgem, regarding circumstances in which the back-billing rules may not apply, behaving "...obstructively or unreasonably, preventing accurate billing..." would seem to be an accurate description of what has happened here.

I'd suggest you make the call and ask for mercy.

Just find it very odd that in 7 years ,they have never received a bill marked "for the Occupier" - surely somebody has been billed.
Further thought - many new build sites refer to a plot number rather than a Royal Mail address - wonder if there has been some sort of crossover ??

doddleward

To answer a few questions;
I found out that our supplier was Eon by speaking to the neighbours, the developer did go bust after our homes were all completed, we have never received any correspondence from Eon.

I think I’ll follow all your advice and will contact them straight away. 

MWT

brewerdave said:

Just find it very odd that in 7 years ,they have never received a bill marked "for the Occupier" - surely somebody has been billed.
Further thought - many new build sites refer to a plot number rather than a Royal Mail address - wonder if there has been some sort of crossover ??

The OP knows who the supplier is though and we have been assuming that they never registered with E.ON, perhaps that is wrong, did they register but it got messed up at E.ON's end?

If so that would be a very different situation, so perhaps the OP can confirm how they discovered it was E.ON and if they in fact did register with them when they moved in?

Your plot number comment is the most likely explanation for the lack of contact I'd guess if the OP never registered.

doddleward

I thought we had registered, but we were sorting a lot of things when we moved in and it was 7 years ago, so I can’t be 100% 

Robin9

brewerdave said:

Robin9 said:

Your meters will have been reading 000000 when you moved in - what are they now (watch out for the decimal point and ignore figures after the decimal point)

Not necessarily true; for example in my daughter's new home, the supply had been used whilst they were drying out plaster etc and to power lights and tools, so the readings were not zero on any of the utility meters (including water)

Accepted but even if the electric was reading 000100 that is small fry compared with the 018000 that is will be reading today.

doddleward - are you getting water bills, council tax ?