Do I really have to pay all of this?

lolamia

Hello

We've been having a nightmare with our electric/gas company and looking for some advice. 

We moved into a new build in July and the builders were still hooked up to our electric to finish projects so said they would pay 1st month. 

We rang up Ecotricity to set up our new home in July explaining the builders have been connected for the past month and they were clearing that bill. They spoke to the builders and this was all verified. They didn't need a reading as it was all smart metered and done automatically. 

Fast forward January and logging into my account I realised they hadn't set us up for gas. We have a big long drawn out episode until March figuring out why the gas wasn't set up and was whacked with a £400 bill. At this point we were all told we had been overestimated electric and they gave us some money back as well as complimentary credit. 

Fast forward June, I get an email stating that they had set up the account in July when we had in fact moved in in June (remember all of this had been sorted and verified). They then asked for new meter readings and essentially have now said we owe over £600 - they stopped our DD for no reason a few months back so there is that to contend with but have now said they UNDER estimated the electric bill at the start!

This is all guess work and we no longer have the original meter readings so can't verify any of it. This is twice they have asked for massive chunks of money and we have now lost count of how much we have paid for gas and electric. We were paying at the start and the over estimated gave us the money back and have now underestimated. 

Who can we talk to about this?

Reed_Richards

The Citizens Advice Bureau, perhaps, for independent advice.  I don't have the same faith in smart meters that you do and would have made (and kept) my own meter readings.   

MWT

lolamia said:

We were paying at the start and the over estimated gave us the money back and have now underestimated. 

Re this bit at least, they are well within allowed time limits to change their minds about a refund made in error and reverse it, so no automatic protection there.

You should still have access to all the bills since the start of your account so begin there with your opening meter readings from the smart meter and look at your recent readings as well, the difference should be what you have been billed for.

Then look at how much you have paid / been refunded and compare to what you should have paid on the bais of what you have used...

bsms1147

From what date did you become responsible for the property?

Robin9

as this is a new build the meters would have read 0000.00 when installed.  As the gas can only serve your property the reading might be 0001.0  for the builder to test the boiler.  What is the reading now (watch out for the decimal point)  

Electric can be more problematic  but even so the builders use would actually be quite minimal.

[Deleted User]

If an energy supplier stopped collecting my monthly DD, I would want to know why? Smart meters can be read by the homeowner so it is a simple exercise to calculate how much energy has been used and at what cost. Take into account all payments made and then you can see whether the change to DD payments was justified. 

PS Ecotricity is a very expensive supplier.

brewerdave

Robin9 said:

as this is a new build the meters would have read 0000.00 when installed.  As the gas can only serve your property the reading might be 0001.0  for the builder to test the boiler.  What is the reading now (watch out for the decimal point)  

Not always true - the builders sometimes leave the gch on 24/7 to speed up the drying out of the house; certainly happened with my daughter's last new build but fortunately I had "educated" her to read meters on completion day