My Letting Agents illegally switched my Gas Supplier, now I am dealing with Mafia SSE

pochase

You should have gotten information from Octopus that there is a switch request. That is way before a final bill. I would be very surprised if Octopus did not create a final bill for your gas account. Not necessary as a separate bill but they will have closed your gas account on one of the normal bills.

Did you not check your bills from Octopus for two years to see that you are no longer billed for gas?

I am not sure that back billing rules will apply here if SSE have billed you, but you just did not receive the bills. Back billing is about raising a bill for the first time. Also it is about bill shock, so if you never paid for your gas you can't be very shocked that you have to pay for it.

So you will have to pay for the gas that you used, and you have been offered the £200 compensation.

What needs to be done is to check at what meter reading Octopus closed your gas account and what is the opening reading at SSE. Also what is todays meter reading?

1500KWh of gas per year sounds extremely low to me. Are you not heating with gas?

As a last point, you might want to change the title of the thread or it might get deleted.  You are claiming here that SSE is a criminal organisation.

Mstty

I always find it a little annoying when people rely on the back billing rule to get out of paying for energy they have used.

In this instance the OP may have had a better price with Octopus so not as straight forward but I do believe they should pay for the last 2 years has usage with albeit the best rates possible calculated plus some goodwill gesture from SSE and that should be an end to it.

Never that simple though is it

pochase

Mstty said:

I always find it a little annoying when people rely on the back billing rule to get out of paying for energy they have used.

In this instance the OP may have had a better price with Octopus so not as straight forward but I do believe they should pay for the last 2 years has usage with albeit the best rates possible calculated plus some goodwill gesture from SSE and that should be an end to it.

Never that simple though is it

The fault is not that much with SSE in my opinion. but with the letting agent who initiated the switch.

Also the question is why did the agent do the switch. Could be that they wanted to switch a different flat and just got the meter number wrong, which would be a honest mistake. We see threads all the time where somebody receives info that they are been switched without requesting it because somebody used a wrong meter number.

And if the owner of the meter reacts to the announcement that there is a switch, the closing of the account on a bill and the fact that Octopus has not billed for gas for 2 years this could have been sorted in a timely manner.

After 2 years there is not really much possibility of undoing the switch and everything is a mess.

HLeung

Mstty said:

A couple of points.

Firstly this would have been very stressful and annoying for you and hopefully your complaint against your letting agent will be successful.

If I have read this correctly you know exactly how much gas you have used in the past 2 years since the "unwanted and illegal" switch as you had been sending readings to octopus and can obviously access the meter today for a "now" reading. What is this in cubic or kWh?

At what stage is your ombudsman service complaint at with the ombudsman? Do you have one raised against SSE detailing the illegal switch and the information you have posted above?

Back billing rules may apply and that would.be something to ask about in the complaint you hopefully have with the ombudsman service against SSE.

Hello Mstty, 

Thank you for your response. 

I am still challenging the Lettings Agent as they are still reluctant to do more, even though they claimed they tried and are very sorry. 

The Lettings Agent had forced me to use a supplier which charges much higher tariffs, and whatever SSE charges even if they use my readings, the bills will still come up much higher than I would have paid at Octopus. 

Octopus had a record of the last ACTUAL of 7521 dated 21st of May 2020 

SSE estimated START reading  was  6677 on 15th of July 2020 and as confirmed by Octopus, SSE submitted this figure as the  change of supply reading but that was automatically quarantined by Octopus system, that means it was not approved by Octopus, but SSE still went ahead with it. 

I can of course use the Actual readings I submitted to Octopus to work out the usage I had, and since I had the Actual readings on record with Octopus and they had also given me a copy of them. However, even if I provided them with the readings, SSE is reluctant to honour the back billing, hence I had to escalate to the ombudsman. 


Yes, I submitted my complaint with the energy ombudsman on the 2nd Feb, with full details and attachments of all the correspondence with SSE and they are reviewing my complaints and hopefully they will soon contact SSE. I was told I had 8 weeks from filing the complaints with SSE before I can move onto the ombudsman stage, however, I have not been able to get anywhere with SSE since my complaint with them on 24th Jan, as they clearly ignored all the points I raised and now they are just forcing me to set up a SMART meter and a payment plan, when neither of these actions would resolve the roots of the problem. Hence I did not see the point waiting for the full 8 weeks as SSE just kept repeating their same answers and ignoring my points.

I had raised my complaint with the property ombudsman on the 24th Jan about KFH's conduct, however the property ombudsman said due to volume, it might take them up to 30-35 days for them to do anything about it.

t0rt0ise said:

The only real complaint you've got that can be corrected is that SSE didn't use the correct start reading which means you'll have paid for the same gas twice. Your old gas bills from Octopus will show this and sending copies to SSE raising a formal complaint should be enough to get them to correct the bill. If SSE refuse then the ombudsman will step in. You should then accept the £200 from the letting agent, pay the final bill and change the account back to Octopus. Nobody can do anything different.

Hello t0rt0ise

Thank you for your response. Octopus did not charge me gas from July 2020 onwards, they only took my meter readings, and my fixed monthly instalments went towards paying my electricity usage, which at some point when the steep increase started at Q4 2021, and when I approached Octopus in July 2022, the actual excess was only a few hundred pounds because the fixed amount was also paying for the increase. SSE is reluctant to accept that they had used estimated readings to calculate the bill and SSE refuses to honour back billing when I received nothing from them for 24 months. I had already raised a complaint to the energy ombudsman and also with the property ombudsman. The £200 goodwill is not sufficient to compensate the difference of what SSE charges me and what Octopus would charge me had I stayed with them. After all, it was the Lettings Agent who created the problem. They have the responsibility to resolve it. 

doodling

Hi,

It sounds like letting agent changed the account into their name when the supplier was changed to SSE.

I'd have told the letting agent that it was very kind of them to decide to pay my gas bill and also told them to sort out the mess as SSE weren't my supplier, they were theirs.

mac.d

HLeung said:

Thank you for your response. Octopus did not charge me gas from July 2020 onwards, they only took my meter readings, and my fixed monthly instalments went towards paying my electricity usage, which at some point when the steep increase started at Q4 2021, and when I approached Octopus in July 2022, the actual excess was only a few hundred pounds because the fixed amount was also paying for the increase. SSE is reluctant to accept that they had used estimated readings to calculate the bill and SSE refuses to honour back billing when I received nothing from them for 24 months. I had already raised a complaint to the energy ombudsman and also with the property ombudsman. The £200 goodwill is not sufficient to compensate the difference of what SSE charges me and what Octopus would charge me had I stayed with them. After all, it was the Lettings Agent who created the problem. They have the responsibility to resolve it. 

I agree with t0rt0ise, take out all the unnecessary 'noise' from your complaint (not being dismissive of it, just simplifying it!), the bottom line is you owe SSE for the period they have been your supplier. Your compensation route is with your letting agent, and you could challenge their £200 by showing that you will have to pay that (& possibly more) just to cover the costs of the increased prices with SSE, so they should cover that, and some more for the hassle they have caused you.

In saying that, you should have noticed much sooner than you did, no one is to blame other than yourself for it going on for so long. It is your energy bill, and therefore your responsibility to check on it.

Don't see why you can't use the back-billing rule to limit it to the last year though, if SSE haven't sent any bills to your address, that's not your fault.

I'd send a copy of your last Octopus bill showing the gas readings on it, and a photo of your gas meter showing today's readings to SSE, but saying you are using the back-billing rules to only be liable for the last year, and also provide meter readings from that date. Raise it as a formal complaint, request a switch back to Octopus and take it from there.

HLeung

cannugec5 said:

Have you actually checked the meter number to verify it is indeed your meter that was erroneously switched? 

As you said it’s a ‘block’ I can imagine a bank of meters. We’re they all switched? Did the letting agency get a ton of SSE bills for the entire block and didn’t bother passing them on as they had no idea which account was which? 

It reads as if you have been communicating/ complaining by email. I hope you have also submitted a formal written letter headed ‘complaint’ and kept it concise. 

Hello, 

Yes it is my meter, I have access to the meter cupboard and I check with SSE it is the correct meter number. 
Yes they were all switched. However the other flats ( except mine and my ex-neighbour upstairs) were emptied at the time, so those tenants only moved in after KFH took over the management. In my case, I was an existing occupant so it should not apply to me. 


What I didn't mention was that my EX neighbours upstairs, who had been in the block just over a year ( 2021 to 2022), they also received an SSE bill at the same time as I did. They had been with Octopus for both Electricity and Gas, just like I did, and they were just as baffled, confused and surprised as I did. But since they had moved out soon after, I had no idea if they had tried to resolve this issue. 

I would not know if the Letting agent held the SSE bills. Mails to the residents in the block do come in and are delivered through the letter box. And I had seen SSE bills came in for other residents prior to receiving my bill, except bills to me and my ex-neighbour upstairs, which nothing arrived prior to July 2022.

Yes I had submitted an official complaint through a very detailed and concise email, with a complaint ID that was given to me by SSE on the phone, after I told them I need to raise a complaint. I also requested them to halt any payment demands during an active complaint, ( This was advised by the Citizen Advice Bureau that it is my right), however SSE continues to demand payments and with the chain of subsequent emails, SSE continues to ignore all the points I raised. 

Regards

HLeung

doodling said:

Hi,

It sounds like letting agent changed the account into their name when the supplier was changed to SSE.

I'd have told the letting agent that it was very kind of them to decide to pay my gas bill and also told them to sort out the mess as SSE weren't my supplier, they were theirs.

hello doodling

Yes,  that's the correct assumptions, but even the letting agent now claimed that they could not chase exactly what happened, but clearly someone had to go into the Help to move platform to submit the Old tenant and the New Tenant details including the Actual meter readings. And it is quite obvious that none of this were done properly. 

 Believe me I have tried, they created the problem and they should fix it. KFH told me they would revert my account back to Octopus and back to the right tariffs in October last year, but after several promises, now they said there's nothing more they can do. Hence I have to escalate further. 

HLeung

MWT said:

The obvious clue should have been the lack of any billing for gas from Octopus...

Hello MWT, 

I want to point out that I had not needed to check my bills every month as I receive a monthly email from Octopus telling me my account is in credit and that has been the case since I joined them in 2018

Also the fact that I was allowed to submit gas reading every month after the switch over with NO error messages whatsoever. 

I had spoken to Octopus and they also confirmed that their website portal did indeed allow me to input gas readings and they held a record of them, and they also acknowledged that they did not send out a final bill because I held my electricity account with them.

As I also responded to another thread, my Ex-neighbour upstairs who was with Octopus between 2019-2022 and only moved out in July 2022, also received the same unexpected bill in July 2022. Again, they were not aware of the change. Unfortunately I no longer know how they dealt with it as they moved out soon after. 

[Deleted User]

Putting to one side, the tenant/letting agent relationship, this surely is nothing more than an Erroneous Transfer (ET) of Supply which is covered in Licence Conditions - unless I have missed a key point?

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/energy-supply/problems-with-your-energy-supply/youve-been-switched-to-a-new-energy-supplier-without-your-agreement/

The principle when reversing an ET is that the consumer should be put back into the position that he/she was in had they not been the victim of an ET.