Excessive energy bill price - help??

Gerry1

drummergirl95 said:

I INSISTED that we saw our meter and do the sanity test (turned all our appliances and heating on), AND WE ARE PAYING ANOTHER APARTMENTS BILLS!!! I saw it with my own eyes! Another apartments meter was flashing like crazy!!

Sounds like you got a result - but did you then switch everything off at the consumer unit and make sure the red light went off and stayed off?

Otherwise you might have just come across another apartment that happened to have high usage at that moment, e.g. if they were using an electric shower.

[Deleted User]

drummergirl95 said:

Hi everyone, I just wanted to give an update on this - I INSISTED that we saw our meter and do the sanity test (turned all our appliances and heating on), AND WE ARE PAYING ANOTHER APARTMENTS BILLS!!! I saw it with my own eyes! Another apartments meter was flashing like crazy!!

I am so happy just to have an answer for this even though it isn’t fully resolved yet, so thank you so much to everyone that helped me with this.

Buildings/flats etc have an individual MPAN. This is allocated during the build. The meter serial number is linked to this MPAN. Sadly, developers are poor at registering properties. For example, Plot 6 gets registered as No 6 when the actual postal number is 14. (yes, it has happened to me).

You need to ascertain what your correct MPAN is. You can do this by identifying your correct meter serial number with a power test. You need to pass this information on to your supplier who can then identify the correct linked MPAN, and then it can change the address attached to it. DO NOT allow the supplier to transfer just the meter serial number as this will result in chaos. If follows that if your MPAN has been mis-registered then so will at least one other - if not all of them in your building.

drummergirl95

Gerry1 said:

drummergirl95 said:

I INSISTED that we saw our meter and do the sanity test (turned all our appliances and heating on), AND WE ARE PAYING ANOTHER APARTMENTS BILLS!!! I saw it with my own eyes! Another apartments meter was flashing like crazy!!

Sounds like you got a result - but did you then switch everything off at the consumer unit and make sure the red light went off and stayed off?

Otherwise you might have just come across another apartment that happened to have high usage at that moment, e.g. if they were using an electric shower.

I did. We turned everything off and the light stopped flashing. We then repeated the test on and off one more time to double confirm it. 

[Deleted User]

Hi,

looks like the other flat is in for a shock when things are sorted out.

Astria

[Deleted User] said:

Hi,

looks like the other flat is in for a shock when things are sorted out.

"Hi, you know that electric bill you received recently for £300 ? Well, it's actually kinda more like £750."

[Deleted User]

Hi,

wonder how far they can back date it?

As said in a previous post there could be other flats cross billed.

Auntycaz

meinnit said:

Great to see everyone contribute to get to the bottom of this!

I agree, I've learnt a lot of useful advice from this thread, and its also good that the op has come back to let people know that their advice worked and was apppreciated.

markin

The ventilation unit may use up 2.6kw a day, so keep that in mind when working out your new usage. Is the meter sorted now?

drummergirl95

Hi @markin, thanks for bumping this.

The issue is just about sorted. We were able to evidence that we were being billed for the wrong meter and after a few phone calls were able to speak to somebody who corrected and backdated our bills, we got credit which managed to cover about two months worth of bills which was nice but only what was rightfully ours I suppose. 

We still have an issue where we can’t submit reads through our app, because it still registers the old reads and thinks its too different. We’ve had to call to get them to submit our reads and fix the bill which has been a hassle. Nobody has been sent out to look at our meter either.

My question now is - I have felt truly negatively impacted by this whole experience. I have been so stressed and worried, especially as this all happened just before Christmas. I am wondering if it’s worth me trying to claim some kind of compensation for this whole situation or if I would be able to?

To give props to Ecotricity, their customer service staff have been really nice and helped me quicker than I imagined, but there are still issues. Perhaps it’s worth me complaining to my building management but I’m not sure how to go about it? Any advice appreciated. 

QrizB

drummergirl95 said:
The issue is just about sorted. We were able to evidence that we were being billed for the wrong meter and after a few phone calls were able to speak to somebody who corrected and backdated our bills, we got credit which managed to cover about two months worth of bills which was nice but only what was rightfully ours I suppose. 

I'm glad you have sorted out the issue, and that you came back to tell us; lots of people vanish and we never hear from then again so we don't know the outcome.

I'm not sure who you would complain to regarding the meters being mis-registered. You could try building management (who gave you some poor info at the start of this thread) but I doubt you'd get very far.