Enstroga Ignoring Emails, Threatening Legal Action

Keep_pedalling

sflemin said:

Gerry1 said:

Welcome to the forum.

The moral of the story is that when moving to a new property, you always read the meters, send the readings to the incumbent suppliers along with your DD details, using Royal Mail if necessary.

You may be paying for the usage by the previous occupier and/or when it was empty.

Sadly, after all this time it may be better to pay up and put it down to experience, otherwise your credit rating may get trashed and that may cause problems in the future with mortgages etc.  But do insist on a fully itemised bill.

Thanks for the welcome!
I see what you're saying, but I certainly don't have a spare £1017.68 lying around at the moment, and given that their record keeping is terrible and they've gone out of business it seems like they don't have that strong a hand to play.

Going out of business does not get you off the hook, the company’s depts will be handled by their administrators.

Their customers were taken over by EON Next, who don’t appear on your list of suppliers. It looks like a switch was made to SP before you moved in so if you owe anyone it should be them.

I would write to them (get proof of posting) informing them that they were not your supplier and that you do not acknowledge the debt, and see what happens. Do not continue with any further email contact.

sflemin

EssexHebridean said:

The dual fuel thing *could* be an answer - do you have electricity AND gas? Or just electric? If not, and you were paying Enstroga then it would actually start to appear that in fact it might be they who owe YOU money - which would be an interesting development! (And is unlikely to outweigh anything you owe to SP, of course). If not a dual fuel issue then the main point here is that you cannot owe Enstroga money as they were never your supplier...

I take it that you were setting aside the money that you were expecting to pay for energy bills so you do have at least the amount you were budgeting ready to pay should it transpire that it is owed somewhere? 

That would be quite the plot twist  I've checked some old bills now and it was definitely just electric. (I haven't lived there for over a year now, hence the confusion) I have some savings, yeah. I hope it doesn't look like I was sitting there going 'free energy, yeah' during that period before the E-on switch, haha, that definitely wasn't the case, although I may have been guilty of getting fed up of it all and just expecting it to resolve itself over time.     

sflemin

Sorry in case it looks like I've ignored anyone, I've tried to post a couple extra replies and MSE is telling me my post has been caught on their suspicious post filters. The adventure continues...

Gerry1

If you're saying that the property had no gas and was heated by electricity, then the bills would have been high (e.g. storage heaters) or very high (e.g. panel heaters, convectors, electric boiler, underfloor).  Which type of heating did you have?

Without meter readings and full records you're on a rather sticky wicket, I'm afraid.  You should insist on getting a fully itemised bill, but this may be difficult for three reasons:-

1) Rightly or wrongly Enstroga may have considered it to be a bad debt and have sold it to an debt collector who won't be interested in kWh rates, standing charges and meter readings, only collecting the dosh PDQ or taking you to court;

2) Enstroga are no longer trading so extracting archive info will be difficult or impossible; and

3) Enstroga are no longer trading so you can't go to the Ombudsman.

Sorry to sound unsympathetic, but you may just have to accept the harsh reality that your lack of due diligence at the time together with today's market upheavals probably means that paying the debt collector is the lesser of the evils if you don't want future problems with mortgages, energy suppliers or even mobile phone contracts.

You also need to clarify the position with Scottish Power, otherwise it may be Groundhog Day again next year...

EssexHebridean

whoah - back the truck up! As the screenshot that the OP has posted combined with their dates of occupation (ie one year AFTER Enstroga are shown as ceasing supply) suggests that in fact it is not even them who was ever supplied by Enstroga, suggesting to them that they should just pay up for an easy life isn't the best of ideas! 

@sflemin You may want to take this over to the DebtFreeWannabe board, or at least take a look over there yourself. In the "sticky" posts at the top of the board you will find a link to the "Prove It" letter which may be relevant here. This is starting to feel as though there is a possibility that this chasing is being done in the hope that you will simply pay up, most likely by a third party debt collection company who will have bought a debt for pennies and are now hoping to recoup some of that. It is far from unheard of that these sorts of companies simply go after an easy target in the hope that the person will be intimated into thinking that they should just pay up - but if it is not your debt, that's not a good path to take!

I agree with Gerry's suggestion about needing to sort out Scottish Power though - as it appears that you genuinely might owe them some money! 

MWT

sflemin said:

... The switch eventually went through a couple of months later, and I have bills to prove E-on were supplying me at that address right up until I moved out.

When you moved to E.ON did you give them the meter reading as at the day you moved in, or did you just give them the reading at the time of the switch?

sflemin

Gerry1 said:

If you're saying that the property had no gas and was heated by electricity, then the bills would have been high (e.g. storage heaters) or very high (e.g. panel heaters, convectors, electric boiler, underfloor).  Which type of heating did you have?

Without meter readings and full records you're on a rather sticky wicket, I'm afraid.  You should insist on getting a fully itemised bill, but this may be difficult for three reasons:-

1) Rightly or wrongly Enstroga may have considered it to be a bad debt and have sold it to an debt collector who won't be interested in kWh rates, standing charges and meter readings, only collecting the dosh PDQ or taking you to court;

2) Enstroga are no longer trading so extracting archive info will be difficult or impossible; and

3) Enstroga are no longer trading so you can't go to the Ombudsman.

Sorry to sound unsympathetic, but you may just have to accept the harsh reality that your lack of due diligence at the time together with today's market upheavals probably means that paying the debt collector is the lesser of the evils if you don't want future problems with mortgages, energy suppliers or even mobile phone contracts.

You also need to clarify the position with Scottish Power, otherwise it may be Groundhog Day again next year...

I appreciate your honesty and expertise on this. I just can't see myself paying the £1017 any time soon though, the principle of it sticks in my craw, and I'm paying around £780 for a year's energy at the moment so the idea of paying more than £200 more for 7/8 months seems insane. It wasn't storage heaters by the way, just standard radiators from what I could see. I'm going to write to them this afternoon, as a few people have suggested, although given their track record of ignoring communications I do fear they won't receive and read it before five working days (which is when they've said legal action will commence) Might give them a ring this afternoon also just to see if I can make any headway.

EssexHebridean

It's rarely a good idea to engage with debt collectors on the telephone, and particularly if they are chasing a debt that it appears you don't even owe. In writing, hard copy, in the post, BUT get advice from those over o the DFW board before you do anything else regardless.

They CANNOT commence legal action against you off the back of sending correspondence by email, so if you have had nothing in writing from them, you can ignore that threat. 

You are mentioning 7/8 months energy use with them - I'm starting to wonder if I am missing something here. The screenshot you posted earlier - do you think that is incorrect as that clearly shows Enstroga ceasing to supply a fair while before you moved in? Your earlier post said you moved in during August 2018 - not 2017? 

As for what your real energy use is - you already have the knowledge of that from the period of time you paid EOn for it, no? 

Gerry1

@EssexHebridean Yes, the printout is curious.  Perhaps there was a meter mix up or whatever?  But it's very strange that Enstroga were able to block the switch if Scottish Power were the supplier.  I agree that the debt collector needs to prove their case, but the risk of losing a future property purchase if it all goes pear shaped and they're blacklisted shouldn't be under estimated.  It's the OP's call.

@sflemin Sounds like the radiators used peak rate electricity, so the bills would have been astronomical, nothing is more expensive.  OK, you don't want to be taken to the cleaners for a bill you don't owe, but both you and the debt collectors need firm evidence to make the respective cases.  Just saying 'It's too much, it's insane !' from your side won't cut the mustard, nor will 'Pay Us or Else !' from the debt collectors.  Fact, facts, facts are necessary from both sides.

sflemin

@EssexHebridean @Gerry1 Sorry for the late reply, I was out. I'm going to try and address the main points from the last three posts in one reply, if that's OK. 

TIMEFRAME: The 7/8 months is from the moment I moved in, in late August 2018 until the moment I switched to E-on, which I thought was in March 2019 but going by the screenshot was April. The screenshot has to be correct surely, as it was supplied to me by Ovo and came directly from the National Electricity Database, but clearly there's been some sort of mix-up. The fact remains that I was paying only a small amount during that period, via my direct debit to Enstroga, so it's quite possible that, as you both suggest, I in fact owe some money to Scottish Power. To be honest, I wouldn't really mind as they're a reputable company that might at least pick up the phone when I ring! I had no idea about SP involvement until I received the screenshot a month or two ago.

(By the way, It might seem strange for Enstroga to have continued claiming they were the supplier a year after they'd stopped supplying the property, but in my experience that completely tallies with all their other behaviour)

DEBT COLLECTORS: I don't get the impression debt collectors are involved, not yet at least. The emails are coming from the same Enstroga address that they were using before they collapsed and the phone number seems legit too. My guess is that although they've stopped trading they've still got some sort of skeleton operation on the go just for the purpose of reclaiming debts.

USAGE: My usage wasn't unusually high at that address from memory (I live alone). My E-on direct debit was about £50 per month, and although I built up some debt on top of that over the course of the contract I was able to pay it all off in one lump sum when I moved out the flat, it was nothing extortionate.  

Hope that helps! And thanks for the advice about Debt Free Wannabe, @EssexHebridean, I'll definitely look into it.