Keep getting bill from previous owner

Jyana

Poppie90 said:

Sorry can’t work out how to quote people on here but just realised I should have included this in the first paragraph but was trying to be concise:

it was a 12 month bill, one month of which covered the first month of us living here. We transferred the money for this one month to the ex owner/ landlord who then paid the whole bill (which SSE actually confirmed to us on the phone.)

the other 11 months worth of the bill was before we even bought the property.

We did try to discuss with SSE but because we are not the account holder they wouldn’t give us any more information other than saying it had been paid and there’s nothing more to do. 

Are you saying that you didn't make an account with them when you moved in? Or did you swap to another company after you already registered with SSE? Just trying to work out how the bill covers both time periods, as it should be in your name from the day you moved in.

Jonboy_1984

We picked up the keys to our house on day 1. On day 2 we arrived to a form from a debt collector to the previous tenants council tax debts saying they had called and would return soon.

When they turned up, around 3 weeks later, I simply showed them the completion letter from our solicitor and they made a note in their iPad saying “new occupants xx/xx/xx” and were on their way.

Poppie90

We switched to Octopus as soon as we moved in, Octopus dealt with the switch we just provided them with our details and meter readings. We didn’t make an account with SSE 

[Deleted User]

Poppie90 said:

We switched to Octopus as soon as we moved in, Octopus dealt with the switch we just provided them with our details and meter readings. We didn’t make an account with SSE 

Then why have you paid SSE (indirectly) for a bill that included a month's worth of energy after the meter readings you gave to Octopus?

What was the opening reading on your first bill from Octopus?  Was it the same as the last reading on the bill from SSE?

Neil_Jones

Poppie90 said:

We switched to Octopus as soon as we moved in, Octopus dealt with the switch we just provided them with our details and meter readings. We didn’t make an account with SSE 

You should have done.

What you should do when you move into a house is find the meters, find the existing supplier, phone them up and say hi I've just moved into 17 Cherry Tree Lane can I have a new account please my readings are <whatever> for gas and <whatever> for electricity.

By not doing this you are effectively having to pay for the usage up to the previous bill.  Whereas if you'd phoned SSE and done the above you would have only had to pay from the day you moved in.  It also complicates the matter because as far as SSE are concerned you don't exist so you'll keep getting this sort of stuff.

Easiest solution is just scribble "name not known at this address , please return to sender" and feed it to the nearest postbox.

Poppie90

Thinking about it im not really sure why we paid, I think we just thought it was the fairest thing to do as we were living in the property not the old owner. I will have to double check the meter readings as I don’t have them to hand 

[Deleted User]

Also, are you actually paying bills to Octopus now?

Poppie90

We were under the impression we didn’t need to because Octopus says they contact the old supplier 

Poppie90

Yeah we are paying octopus bills now

[Deleted User]

So at least the switch didn't fail.

Octopus will contact the old supplier to close your account.  You hadn't actually opened one for them to close (or rather there would have been an automatic one, labelled as "the occupier").  The problem has partially come around because this automatic account didn't have an opening meter reading (because you gave that to Octopus to use as the closing reading of the account) so there will have been some sort of guess at when the old owner left and what the reading was when they did - with everything after that guess and before the Octopus switch and reading allocated to "the occupier".

But, switch has happened, you are liable for everything after the reading that you gave to Octopus and you have probably paid all that to Octopus.  Debt's not yours, as far as I can tell, so you can do whatever you want and if someone official looking turns up - you're not the person they are looking for.