UP Bills reissued going back years, gone from credit to debit!

matthewharmon102

Been with Utility Point for a few years, have always found them to be the most competitive when it comes to price.

We moved in October 2019 and took UP with us as they were till the most competitive. We were paying around £107 a month for dual fuel. after a few months, my direct debit amount changed to £40.96 a month. No idea why or what caused it, but my bills were paid, and all seemed well until July of this year.

I noticed my online account was reporting £1,400 of credit. I had been periodically submitting meter readings and was concerned that I was either reading the wrong meter (there are four flats in our building and the meters are all next to each other), or I had been overpaying and was owed a significant sum of money. I called to check, and was told i was around £900 in credit, but they agreed something wasn't right, so said they would investigate it and let me know and asked me to provide a photo of the gas and electric meter. I sent this to them, but I never received a call or email to say they had completed the investigation, but when I checked my account, it said I was £5.96 in debt. I assumed they had finished their check and continued to pay £40.96 for my June-July bill.

Unexpectedly, I got a call from their debt recovery team, saying that I owed them £734. which they were looking for me to pay, in full. I explained I am unable to pay that amount and questioned how this had happened. I was told my direct debits do not cover my usage. After some back and forth, it has gone back to the billing team, who are asking for photos of the meters and meter readings again. When I checked my bills, I have seen that every single bill, all the way back to 2019, has been re-issued with different readings, different amounts owed, and a debit amount that continually grows! This applies even to the higher direct debit amounts. It's like they have changed the bills to fit the debt amount. There is now no record of me being in credit at all, and, according to these new bills, I have always been in debt!

Can they re-issue every single bill to make it look like I am in debt? I have no idea what to do now!

Brie

Do the previous bills show that as E estimated reading?  And presumably the new bills show as actual readings??

Either way if yo have been providing readings and they haven't dealt with them properly then I would suggest you lodge an official complaint for their incompetence.

QrizB

Yes, as Brie says which set of bills use the meter readings you submitted; the new set or the old ones?

matthewharmon102

Brie said:

Do the previous bills show that as E estimated reading?  And presumably the new bills show as actual readings??

Either way if yo have been providing readings and they haven't dealt with them properly then I would suggest you lodge an official complaint for their incompetence.

The bills are a mess! most bills seem to have "Estimated" and "Customer" readings on them. From what I can work out, it looks like they use their estimated readings as the baseline, then use the customer reading to work out the difference. I have some bills that only have Customer readings, some that are only estimates, some with both, some with multiple estimates. Some bills have 2 different amounts for the same period.

theoretica

If you have your actual reading from when you moved in, and your actual reading now, you have a record of the total amount of energy you owe them for.  You may have changed tariff, but can use this to work out approximately the total you should have paid them - standing charges + use. You can also add up everythign you have paid them to date. This calculation would be a useful sanity check.

Brie

matthewharmon102 said:

The bills are a mess! most bills seem to have "Estimated" and "Customer" readings on them. From what I can work out, it looks like they use their estimated readings as the baseline, then use the customer reading to work out the difference. I have some bills that only have Customer readings, some that are only estimates, some with both, some with multiple estimates. Some bills have 2 different amounts for the same period.

Yes but which have which? 

If the ones you have been receiving in the past were all estimates then the company has made a mistake by ignoring the readings you have submitted over the last few years.  As it is their mistake then they need to accept that you have a legitimate complaint and offer compensation accordingly.  Possibly half the amount the now expect you to pay.  Maybe more.

If they have used some of your submitted readings but not others then they have still made a mistake for being inconsistent and messing up your account.  Again as it is their mistake then they need to accept that you have a legitimate complaint and offer compensation accordingly.  Possibly half the amount the now expect you to pay.  Maybe more.

I would ask them to send you a letter, by post, to acknowledge your complaint and which charts all the readings you have submitted showing all their calculations to get to their current total.  (not a copy of a series of revised bills)  And then they should explain why they did not use those readings when they were submitted.  And then they should explain how they are going to resolve this so that you are not further inconvenienced.

Once you have this if it is not a resolution you agree with then you can log a complaint with the ombudsman.

[Deleted User]

Brie said:

matthewharmon102 said:

The bills are a mess! most bills seem to have "Estimated" and "Customer" readings on them. From what I can work out, it looks like they use their estimated readings as the baseline, then use the customer reading to work out the difference. I have some bills that only have Customer readings, some that are only estimates, some with both, some with multiple estimates. Some bills have 2 different amounts for the same period.

Yes but which have which? 

If the ones you have been receiving in the past were all estimates then the company has made a mistake by ignoring the readings you have submitted over the last few years.  As it is their mistake then they need to accept that you have a legitimate complaint and offer compensation accordingly.  Possibly half the amount the now expect you to pay.  Maybe more.

If they have used some of your submitted readings but not others then they have still made a mistake for being inconsistent and messing up your account.  Again as it is their mistake then they need to accept that you have a legitimate complaint and offer compensation accordingly.  Possibly half the amount the now expect you to pay.  Maybe more.

I would ask them to send you a letter, by post, to acknowledge your complaint and which charts all the readings you have submitted showing all their calculations to get to their current total.  (not a copy of a series of revised bills)  And then they should explain why they did not use those readings when they were submitted.  And then they should explain how they are going to resolve this so that you are not further inconvenienced.

Once you have this if it is not a resolution you agree with then you can log a complaint with the ombudsman.

50% off: where is the case law that supports that piece of advice? All companies have the right to revise a bill or invoice if there has been an administrative mistake. The Statute of Limitations gives them up to 6 years to recover any debt through the Courts.

For what it is worth, I believe that consumers have some responsibility for checking their energy bills. ‘Estimated’ means what is says on the tin. The fact that the online account was showing a credit balance of £1400 should have set the alarm bells ringing.

I am not saying that the OP is not entitled to some compensation for poor billing. However, before going to third-party arbitration (ie, The Energy Ombudsman) the OP needs to know how much is at stake here. The Final Decision could end up in the supplier’s failure (with little in the way of compensation). If the OP declines to accept it, then the complaint is kicked into the long grass; the full amount is payable and the supplier can use the Final Decision in support of any legal claim.

gt94sss2

Dolor said:

50% off: where is the case law that supports that piece of advice? All companies have the right to revise a bill or invoice if there has been an administrative mistake. The Statute of Limitations gives them up to 6 years to recover any debt through the Courts.

Assuming that the original poster has been supplying readings to the utility company, the incorrect bills are due to supplier error.

This is covered by Ofgem's Back Billing rules which limits how far back a supplier can rebill the customer for to a period of 12 months

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/check-energy-back-billing-rules

Reed_Richards

Surely the whole point of the back billing regulations is to prevent customers being hit by a large bill going back for more than a year?  If the customer has done their bit by providing readings as required I don't think they are required to notice that their bills are based on estimates that are at variance with their own readings.  If they are held culpable for this omission then the back billing regulations serve little purpose.    

[Deleted User]

Reed_Richards said:

Surely the whole point of the back billing regulations is to prevent customers being hit by a large bill going back for more than a year?  If the customer has done their bit by providing readings as required I don't think they are required to notice that their bills are based on estimates that are at variance with their own readings.  If they are held culpable for this omission then the back billing regulations serve little purpose.    

Don't forget that the whole rationale for back billing was to prevent customer bill shock. If the supplier was to agree to write off all charges from a point 12 months backwards from today; that is, from Aug 2020 then this is not a simple write off. The supplier is entitled use all DD payments made to date to reduce the amount of write off.

It follows that it the write off charges were, say, £1200 and payments made to date were £1000, then only £200 would be written off. This is why the OP needs to sit down with a calculator in hand and work out what the charges should be.

Reed_Richards

Doesn't the billing clock start from a year ago?  So all charges incurred and DD payments made against them prior to a year ago are discounted?  What is then left to pay is the charges incurred in the last 12 months minus the DD payments made in the last 12 months?  That's not exactly the same thing that @[Deleted User] indicates.  But I could be wrong as I have struggled to find more than an outline of the back billing rules.