Outrageous Utility Point! Fake bills and £876 gas bill for 1 month!!!

nkmelchy

We are pretty frugal with energy and i worked out that over the last 15 months we used about 4000kwh of gas.
Our gas bills for late 2021 were as follows:

July: £7.64 (49kwh)
August: £16.74 (346kwh)
September: minus £1.80 (-274kwh)

But then i received a 'final' statement from Utility Point (UP) claiming our gas bill for October was £876 and that we had used 21,502 kwh in that one month!!!

Furthermore they claimed that the readings they had used to generate the bill were 'actual' readings.No one came to do a meter read on the dates they claimed were actual readings and they have ignored actual readings which i submitted online.Of course the real readings were MUCH lower than their claims (and still are even 3 months later).I immediately took photos of the actual meter readings and sent them to EDF so they now have proof of the real readings.

I phoned UP and spoke to someone named Maia who agreed the bill was outrageous.In fact she could not stop laughing at how outrageous the bill was.She informed me that if i sent an email to help@utiltypoint (is that still a valid email address for them?) with a photo of the meter it would be sorted out ;very quickly'.That email was sent weeks ago and of course no one from UP has responded to it.
I suspect that this faking of statements is widespread because i own another property and UP have done exactly the same with that account.That property is awaiting modernisation and the gas and electricity have been turned off at the mains for at least 9 months.UP were informed the property was vacant and not using gas or electricity and they assured me that they made a note of this on the account.Despite submitting exactly the same readings online for the last 9 months UP still issued a 'final' statement which showed energy useage.So much for basing estimates on past useage!!!

UP are ignoring previous readings submitted online and just making up any 'reading' they like, and it is my belief that they are trying to do this to turn customer credits into customer debits.As stated earlier i have submitted photos of meter readings from both properties to EDF so they now have proof of the actual readings and are submitting meter read disputes to UP.In the meantime i cannot submit online readings to EDF because the real readings are lower than the readings they have on their system.

I have three questions if anyone can help:
Has anyone else experienced anything like this and what (if anything) did UP say.Secondly, who is responsible for fixing this and ensuring i receive correct final statements.The ombudsman won't help because UP is in administration,so who is liable to fix this?Thirdly,will UP have to pay any compensation because i have yet to receive a correct final statement or credit refund from them?

Thanks for listening.

MWT

No compensation is due unfortunately as they are now outside the protections and requirements of the energy supply licence.

The parties responsible for ensuring the meter readings at the point of transfer are correct are the UP administrators and the SoLR (EDF).

nkmelchy

MWT said:

No compensation is due unfortunately as they are now outside the protections and requirements of the energy supply licence.

The parties responsible for ensuring the meter readings at the point of transfer are correct are the UP administrators and the SoLR (EDF).

thanks for your response but what am i supposed to do when UP don't even answer my emails?

What recourse do i have?

MWT

What you do and how much time you spend fighting with this depends a few points.

What is the final meter reading that UP are using and what is your actual meter reading at the date of the transfer?

Have EDF already used the incorrect meter reading as their opening reading, or did they change it to the accurate reading which you gave to them?

Also, did you have any credit built up on your Avro account? if so, how much?

Flight3287462

Is it not a benefit to you if they don't want to correct it.  You have a huge KWh credit on your meter paid at the previous cheaper rate.

No doubt though someone will get very excited at some point.

BristolVR

nkmelchy said:

<snip>
Has anyone else experienced anything like this and what (if anything) did UP say.

Utility Point is not honest or trustworthy in my opinion. After leaving them, and before they went into administration, they were clearly liable to pay me £60 compensation for failing to refund a balance, and failing to pay the automatic compensation due, within 20 working days of them issuing the bill which they themselves had previously as 'final'.

They did pay £30 plus a few pence compensation, just after removing the two most recent bills from the online record and replacing them (with some trivial changes to some interpolated meter reading resulting in a few pence uplift in the closing balance), and then claiming that they were compliant with the Ofgem deadlines.

They also unilaterally declared my compaint to be closed, which I believe is another breach the regulations.

nkmelchy

BristolVR said:

nkmelchy said:

<snip>
Has anyone else experienced anything like this and what (if anything) did UP say.

Utility Point is not honest or trustworthy in my opinion. After leaving them, and before they went into administration, they were clearly liable to pay me £60 compensation for failing to refund a balance, and failing to pay the automatic compensation due, within 20 working days of them issuing the bill which they themselves had previously as 'final'.

They did pay £30 plus a few pence compensation, just after removing the two most recent bills from the online record and replacing them (with some trivial changes to some interpolated meter reading resulting in a few pence uplift in the closing balance), and then claiming that they were compliant with the Ofgem deadlines.

They also unilaterally declared my compaint to be closed, which I believe is another breach the regulations.

totally agree!

nkmelchy

MWT said:

What you do and how much time you spend fighting with this depends a few points.

What is the final meter reading that UP are using and what is your actual meter reading at the date of the transfer?

Have EDF already used the incorrect meter reading as their opening reading, or did they change it to the accurate reading which you gave to them?

Also, did you have any credit built up on your Avro account? if so, how much?

It was UP,not Avro,EDF have raised a meter read dispute.As for credit left on my account,like i said they faked the readings to destroy any credit.If they had used the actual readings i submitted then i would be in credit but my account actually shows that my bill was £1,200 for 1 month!!! all done by using fake readings.Quite an increase from the usual £50-60 month i usually pay!

nkmelchy

Flight3287462 said:

Is it not a benefit to you if they don't want to correct it.  You have a huge KWh credit on your meter paid at the previous cheaper rate.

No doubt though someone will get very excited at some point.

But how would this kwh credit actually work in reality since i can't even submit any readings online to EDF because it throws up an error (since they are lower than the readings given to them by UP)

Also, can you explain exactly what you mean about someone getting excited?