Is this unfair?

Furious91

This is my first time posting but I don’t know where else to go for help and advice. 

I’ve been with the same energy company for almost three years for my electric only home. When I first signed up they asked for pictures of my meter readings which I emailed to them. Due to their incompetence the readings were put in the wrong way round, I noticed last December and notified them thinking it was the right thing to do. I have had to chase them for 9 months to get it corrected, even informing the ombudsman. 

I was assured it was finally sorted and when I checked my account I was £54 in credit. I submitted readings and paid this months bill, now my account is £505 in debt. When I phoned and spoke to the company they advised me that they paused the account (even though I was still paying) from March-August this year. They said that now my bills have been sorted and they have calculated my usage I owe them £505 and they want to to pay £180 per month. 

I explained that there’s no way I can pay that and I’d like to leave when my contract was over, also why should I have to pay this debt I’m now in as they are the ones that messed up in the first place. They knocked £100 off but I still don’t feel like I should have to pay considering I am the one that flagged their mistake in the first place. 

Does anyone have any advice or if there is anyone I can contact as I have 5 working days until they close my complaint.

Thanks in advance. 

Gerry1

Welcome to the forum.

Unfortunately you need to pay them whatever you now owe, less that £100.

Using actual meter readings, just work out what you should have been billed from when you joined them to the present date.  Compare that with the total of your DD payments shown on your bank statements and that's what you owe them.

Sorry if that's not what you want to hear, but it would be unfair to expect your arrears to be paid off by other customers (some of whom will be poorer than you are) or by the company's shareholders.  In fact, you've done reasonably well to get £100 compo for the aggro; note that there's no standard that Rate 1 = Day and Rate 2 = Night, or vice versa, so it wasn't a heinous blunder by the company.

That said, ask for a payment plan that's affordable, e.g. paying off your arrears over 12 months.

Furious91

Thank you for your response but I don’t appreciate being made to feel guilty for someone else’s mistake. I have done the right thing by flagging something that is incorrect to a big energy company who has made this mistake and who is now expecting me to fork out for it when I have always paid my bills and even chased for the matter to be resolved. 

I understand there isn’t a standard rate, that isn’t my query. Why should customers have to pay out when a company has messed up? If I had said nothing and left in December like I plan to then they would be none the wiser? 

I have also had to ask them to send me my original statements as they wiped them from my account and replaced them with their new calculated ones, as soon as I have them I will be going through them with a fine tooth comb. 

Gerry1

You are not having to pay out because the company has made a mistake.  You are having to pay out for all the energy that you have used, less £100.

Did the company not ask for day and night readings when you joined them?  Similarly, when you gave monthly meter readings, were the boxes not labelled Day and Night or Normal and Low?

[Deleted User]

All companies make mistakes and this includes energy suppliers. I think that the supplier has offered a reasonable amount in the way of compensation. The only available option is to escalate a formal complaint to The Energy Ombudsman; however, The Energy Ombudsman is not known for grand gestures and it is unlikely to write off £500.

OP - had you just switched then the error would have been picked up as both suppliers have to use the same opening/closing readings. Had you given the new supplier the correct day and night the readings then the suppliers would have ended up in an Agreed Readings Dispute.

wakeupalarm

If your not happy with the £100 you can reject it and take your complaint to the Energy Ombudsman.  However, the Energy Ombudsman generally awards far lower then £100 for far more severe issues and frankly is a waste of time and energy(no pun intended).  So you may end up with a lot less than £100.

I certainly wouldn't expect them to write off the cost of the energy you have used, simply because the energy company made a mistake otherwise none of us would ever be paying for our energy.

pokora

Did you not have a direct debit or notice the energy supplier didnt take money from your account until now ?

Have you been submitting regular readings from your meter?

spiro

So it took you nearly 2 years to realise the opening read you had provided was the wrong way round.  Surely you must take some responsibility for not next checking it when the first bill/statement arrived. 

Neil_Jones

Furious91 said:

This is my first time posting but I don’t know where else to go for help and advice. 

I’ve been with the same energy company for almost three years for my electric only home. When I first signed up they asked for pictures of my meter readings which I emailed to them. Due to their incompetence the readings were put in the wrong way round, I noticed last December and notified them thinking it was the right thing to do. I have had to chase them for 9 months to get it corrected, even informing the ombudsman. 

I was assured it was finally sorted and when I checked my account I was £54 in credit. I submitted readings and paid this months bill, now my account is £505 in debt. When I phoned and spoke to the company they advised me that they paused the account (even though I was still paying) from March-August this year. They said that now my bills have been sorted and they have calculated my usage I owe them £505 and they want to to pay £180 per month. 

I explained that there’s no way I can pay that and I’d like to leave when my contract was over, also why should I have to pay this debt I’m now in as they are the ones that messed up in the first place. They knocked £100 off but I still don’t feel like I should have to pay considering I am the one that flagged their mistake in the first place. 

Does anyone have any advice or if there is anyone I can contact as I have 5 working days until they close my complaint.

Thanks in advance. 

So it took you two years to notice what caused the initial problem and that's the fault of the supplier how?

Of course you have been using energy since which will have to be paid for.  Being in an all-electric house is not cheap to run, it will never be cheap to run and you will always have high bills.

I'd question that you were even £54 in credit in the first place especially if your account was "paused", and that £500 was going to have to be paid at some point anyway.

Bigphil1474

OP, if the issue goes back to 3 years ago, then you may have an argument on the back billing rules/12 months limit. I'm not an expert on that, but worth looking into. 

Neil_Jones

Bigphil1474 said:

OP, if the issue goes back to 3 years ago, then you may have an argument on the back billing rules/12 months limit. I'm not an expert on that, but worth looking into. 

Believe back billing only applies if the supplier has been given a ton of readings from the customer, and done nothing with them.  Likewise if customer has pulled out all the stops to get a bill generated (phone calls, emails, writing, more readings) and the supplier still can't/won't generate one.

In this situation it sounds like the supplier is generating bills but its took the OP a while to notice the initial readings were the wrong way round.  So it is sort of six of one and half a dozen of the other.