EDF demanding money

tomk86

Hi all,
This is my first post and I am extremely concerned.  We have been with EDF for two years now in the house we rent.  My partner and I with our two year old daughter and 11 month old son.  I have always paid my bills on time every time and can prove this with my bank statements - but I received a letter from EDF a couple of weeks ago "demanding" £2300.  People have been in and taken meter readings over the last year and I was quite shocked to to receive said "demand".  
Having finally got through to someone with a basic grasp of English - i am told that i have only been charged for Gas and not Electric as this is not on the direct debit.  I joined EDF through compare the markets website and set my direct debit up that way.  So now i owe over £2300 for electricity.  What on earth do I do?  I havent got anywhere near that sum of money behind me.  Sorry that my first post is begging advice but I am having dark thoughts here and cant cope with being in financial difficulty - especially as we are trying to sell and save everything for a small house deposit

GeordieGeorge

Are they correct with their numbers? What is shown on your bills, and what do you calculate that you should have been paying?
If you’ve not been paying for your electricity then it’s right that you have to do so, but you can ask that you do it over the course of several months if needed.
Once you’ve dealt with this, it’s a good idea to build up an emergency fund of several months’ net pay for unexpected expenses.

Hasbeen

tomk86 said:

Hi all,
This is my first post and I am extremely concerned.  We have been with EDF for two years now in the house we rent.  My partner and I with our two year old daughter and 11 month old son.  I have always paid my bills on time every time and can prove this with my bank statements - but I received a letter from EDF a couple of weeks ago "demanding" £2300.  People have been in and taken meter readings over the last year and I was quite shocked to to receive said "demand".  
Having finally got through to someone with a basic grasp of English - i am told that i have only been charged for Gas and not Electric as this is not on the direct debit.  I joined EDF through compare the markets website and set my direct debit up that way.  So now i owe over £2300 for electricity.  What on earth do I do?  I havent got anywhere near that sum of money behind me.  Sorry that my first post is begging advice but I am having dark thoughts here and cant cope with being in financial difficulty - especially as we are trying to sell and save everything for a small house deposit

What is showing on your online account regarding payments and bills for both gas and electric?

Have you actually been checking your meter readings every month and sending in readings for both?

Have you only relied on estimates and never checked your bills?

When you say you have always paid your bills on time, are you talking about a fixed Direct Debit that is put into a pot to help pay. Not to actually pay for your bills. You can either be in debit or credit.

If you actually owe this money then ask for a repayment plan to pay back over an agreed time period.

Reed_Richards

tomk86 said:

So now i owe over £2300 for electricity.  What on earth do I do?  I havent got anywhere near that sum of money behind me.  

You explain that you haven't got the money to pay this all at once and ask then for a payment plan that will let you pay this off over a time period you can manage.  Bear in mind that you'll need to pay ongoing electricity costs of about £100 a month as well as the repayments.

welshmoneylover

Have you only had one Dd going out each month for the gas or two DD to cover electricity?
how often do you check your bills to ensure payments are covering usage?

welshmoneylover

Forgot to add, how often have you been supplying meter readings?

Thrilled

Typically a £100 a month will pretty much cover the energy bill for a house, unless the useage and/or tariff is very high.  If you've been paying at that sort of level and they want another 2.3k then something is odd.

First check what you've paid, whats been used and calculate the usage cost, remember to add standing charges - at this point you should have a ballpark figure of debit/credit.  Use bills, online account, banks statements whatever.  Take an up to date meter reading.

 

Over 2 years purely estimated bills can become wildly inaccurate, an offical meter reading/smart meter installation should generate a correction of any error.  An official meter reading may not have been done for a long time if the electricity meter is indoors.

Once armed with your understanding of useage, payments etc call their customer services, and ask whats going on.  You can request a meter reading, possibly a smart meter and have a hold put on the bill whilst things get sorted.

Energy companies have complaints teams that are the step after trying customer services, using things like resolva will trigger the complaint at that level, so start with a simple chat with customer services and see how that goes.

tomk86

its sorted now - although i was on a gas and electricity fixed tariff they were only taking the gas direct debit.  Why they couldnt asnwer and as for all this online portal stuff - I just want to pay for it monthly and not worry.  We have a smart meter etc so I dont know why its come to this - I have never had a problem before.  Now im paying £204 per month for gas / electricity and to pay the outstanding off.  
Thanks to all of you for the help and advice.  

matelodave

Thanks for coming back but you really should be checking your bill againsy the meter evry month to ensure that they are using the correct meter readings and so you can see whether you are paying enough for the energy that you are using. Dont leave it to chance.
Doing it monthly means that it can only get a month or two out of step rather than a year or more.

Thrilled

Might be a good idea to get a new smart meter from them, I know that in the past old smart meters wouldn't always play nice when switching suppliers.

Reed_Richards

tomk86 said:

Now im paying £204 per month for gas / electricity and to pay the outstanding off.  
Thanks to all of you for the help and advice.  

I'm really pleased you got this sorted out but do check that arrears shown on your bill go down a bit each month.  And if EDF use estimated meter readings, check that these are not lower than your actual meter readings or the same problem could happen again.