£2,000 Gas Bill (£10 Per Day) Please Help Us!

xskullx

Hello,

This is my first post and thanks to anyone in advance for the advise!

Me and my girlfriend rent a two-bedroom house in Liverpool. We pay our energy bill on time every month (usually around £140 pm) and have done since we moved in (September 2019). We had a smart meter installed by Ecotricity and suddenly the bills stopped for about 3/4 months. I had to chase Ecotricity numerous times before one was finally sent - for around £2,000! Apparently, this bill needed a sign off from a manager which caused the delay. They told us that we had been paying monthly estimated bills and the current bill was true and accurate.

We investigated this further and found out gas usage was the culprit! The letting agent had an engineer look at the boiler who in the end found that the boiler (about 20 years old) had been keeping the hot water on heat at all times 24/7 and it was deemed faulty. There has been a lot of back and forths but six weeks later we had a new boiler installed (yesterday). This should hopefully resolve the issue now with the high gas usage. 

I have raised a complaint with Ecotricity who said the bill is correct but my point is they should have alerted us sooner to identify the issue and act sooner.

The landlord hasn't taken responsibility and neither has the letting agent who is on the landlords side. They said we should have been submitting our meter readings and that would have prevented the issue - they do have a point here I think?

My question is where does the liability lay?

If we moved into a flat to rent that had a faulty boiler, should we be required to pay the full amount for the excessive gas usage?

Which Ombudsman do I approach here for an outcome? How should we appraoch this.

Please help!

Gerry1

Welcome to the forum.

I'm afraid you've used the energy and therefore you'll have to pay for it, simple as that.  Forget the ombudsman, Ecotricity haven't done anything wrong.

Why should Ecotricity's other customers or shareholders be expected to subsidise you?  Would you expect a refund from Esso because your car had a leaking fuel tank?

Sorry, but that's the way it is.

JJ_Egan

(If we moved into a flat to rent that had a faulty boiler, should we be required to pay the full amount for the excessive gas usage?)

Yes of course its not the suppliers fault  . Liability will lay with you or possible the landlord .

niktheguru

Yep, agree with the others. This is not ecotricitys fault, and you cannot claim anything from them. They were merely billing you for your usage. You would have been able to detect this if you were giving meter readings before ecotricity installed smart meters. You similarly could have checked your smart meter meter reads, or looked at the daily usage of gas on your IHD and should have seen gas usage to be high.

With regards to the high bills you should aim your efforts at the landlord who has obviously provided you with a faulty boiler. Now they could argue you werent paying attention and how did you think your water was hot 24/7, similarly you could argue that the boiler was obviously defective which is their responsibility.

In the end I suspect you will have to foot the bill.

You could pursue ecotricity about not providing you a bill for 4 months despite multiple requests, you can argue that had your known earlier you may have been able to address the high usage. You may get a minor compensation payment out of them for that, but you can forget them writing off the 2k bill, very unlikely to happen.

YellowCarBlueCar

Sorry, but I think you have to take this on the chin.

The supplier will only estimate the usage based on historical consumption (or typical usage if they don't have a history).  Prior to having the smart meter installed how were they to know that your usage had changed?.  There is no statutory requirement for them to take a reading more often than once every 2 years.

The landlord can't be expected to know about the boiler if it's not reported to them.  So long as they have an up to date gas safety certificate they have carried out their duty in making sure that the boiler was safe and functional when they last inspected it.

So it comes down to you to check their estimates against your actual meter readings, and if you'd been doing that you should have noticed a step-change in usage.

Gerry1

If it was only the hot water that was on 24/7 it won't have made much difference to the bill.  The boiler would have turned off when the tank reached the correct temperature.  The loss from a well insulated tank always kept hot is only about 2kWh per day, so less than 8p/day.

If the central heating had been on for 24 hours per day that would certainly have inflated the bill, but surely you would have noticed it?

xskullx

Thank everyone, so we just take this on the chin?
We are students and this seems so unfair! The gas meter is in another property and it is not easy to take readings.

Tallerdave

Have you checked and double checked all the meter readings on the bills - including the final read from the old meter and initial reads from smart meters. £2k is still a colossal amount of gas (65,000-70,000 kWh)

I think your only redress with the landlord would be if you weren't provided with a gas safety certificate when you moved in. 

Just because you rent you can't offload responsibility for ensuring that things are ok.

brewerdave

Having said all that -IF the boiler was running 24/7 on hot water you would have had superheated water coming out of the taps -too hot to bear - didn't notice ??

MWT

xskullx said:

Hello,

This is my first post and thanks to anyone in advance for the advise!

Me and my girlfriend rent a two-bedroom house in Liverpool. We pay our energy bill on time every month (usually around £140 pm) and have done since we moved in (September 2019).

... a small glimmer of hope for you, when exactly did the smart meter get fitted?

Your energy supplier is obliged to make sure that you receive an accurate bill at least once every 12 months and cannot simply issue a massive catch-up bill if they fail to get a meter reading for a long time...

Can you check a few details please...

Look at the bills you have received since you moved in and see if any of them have an actual meter reading or if indeed all of them are marked as estimates (E)...

Also there should be a meter reading for the meter they removed written on a label attached to the new meter or close by, does that match the reading shown on your bill?

The explanation for the problem being 'hot water on 24/7' doesn't make much sense as that alone wouldn't have caused a massive bill.

welshmoneylover

Did you not notice your bills were estimated ?