Back billing, deadlocked dispute, and recovery action.

Newcad

Related but not really this dispute.

Whilst going through this with the ombudsman I also looked at my seperate gas account for my ex-property.
My 'Final bill' from British Gas, sent to my new address, showed an 'estimated' credit of just over £22.

TBH I had a pre-payment card meter for gas, and it was showing £10.64 credit when I moved out, (of course I took photographs of everything when I left) so I'm not sure where they got £22 from.
So I made an enquiry about that with BG - they agreed straight off and their cheque is in the post - I am expecting it to have at least £30 added for not refunding the credit at the time.

Newcad

MWT said:

It has been quite a while since this set of circumstances last came up, but I do seem to recall the Ombudsman supporting the view that the 12 months should be back-dated from the end of contract date

Interesting because that is not what the legislation says at all.

The legislation refers to "charge recovery action” which means billing or other recovery action, and not any contract end date.

Part of why the ofgem principle existed, and was later incorporated into the legislation, was to prevent suppliers billing months or even years after a customer had left them.

Which is exactly what has happened here, excacerbated by the fact that they hadn't been billing at all for a number of years.

MWT

The aim of these conditions in the licence conditions is mainly to avoid bill-shock.

This is why for example that nothing in the back-billing rules prevent the supplier from using any payments made during the period even if there had been no accurate billing, this included DD payments.

So if you have been making any regular DD payments during the period you are disputing the supplier gets to apply those to the bill no matter how late it is produced.

In any event, let's wait and see which way the Ombudsman goes on this one this time...

Newcad

I wasn't making any payments at all, because depite me telling them over a couple of year that they were not billing the only response was ' Yes we can see that, we will sort it out, wait for your next bill'.

Eventually I took them at their word and just waited for billing that never appeared.

It was 10 months after I had left them that they finally produced billing for the previous 5 years that I had been with them and they hadn't been billing.
I complained and they retracted that and came up with an inflated bill for the last 12 months that I was with them.
All their replies have been a justification of that inflated billing. My dispute is that they were not even entitled to bill for that period so the inflated amount is irrelevant. They have provided no reply to my assertion.

As said, it will be interesting to see just what the ombudsman says.

Newcad

No decision from the Ombudsnam yet on the electricity dispute,

But remember this from a couple of weeks ago about my British Gas final bill from the same housemove:

Newcad said:

Related but not really this dispute.

Whilst going through this with the ombudsman I also looked at my seperate gas account for my ex-property.
My 'Final bill' from British Gas, sent to my new address, showed an 'estimated' credit of just over £22.

TBH I had a pre-payment card meter for gas, and it was showing £10.64 credit when I moved out, (of course I took photographs of everything when I left) so I'm not sure where they got £22 from.
So I made an enquiry about that with BG - they agreed straight off and their cheque is in the post - I am expecting it to have at least £30 added for not refunding the credit at the time.

This morning a letter arrived from British Gas, ahh I thought that cheque she promissed on the phone.

Nope, it's 'Your replacement bill' it still says 'Your final bill is estimated' and it's now showing that I owed them £2.53.
Statement date 4 May 2023, Covering 6 Feb 2021 to 2 Jun 2021.
"This is an estimation based on when your account was closed".

OK I never expected anything from them in the first place, but why say they agree and will send a cheque and then go back on their word?
I don't know if I can be bothered to make a complaint, who can prove what was said on the phone unless you recorded it?
I certainly won't be sending them £2.53.

wild666

If I ever speak on the phone to any company with a complaint or query  I use my mobile phone and put it on speaker with a Dictaphone recording the full conversation. I used to have loads of records but the external HDD with all the recordings on it gave up in 2018, it was 14 years old and only 80GB. I haven't had to complain to any company since 2017 but the HDD was working daily attached to the desktop. 
Sometimes companies used to ask for landline numbers when I first started making complaints but I just used to tell them I didn't have a landline, I suspected this was a way to stop people using a mobile on speaker and recording the conversations.
My last complaint was with OFTM back in 2018/19 and they took 8 months to produce a final bill using excuses like your final reading isn't what we have even though I gave them the reading only 15 minutes before I moved from them.   

[Deleted User]

wild666 said:

If I ever speak on the phone to any company with a complaint or query  I use my mobile phone and put it on speaker with a Dictaphone recording the full conversation. I used to have loads of records but the external HDD with all the recordings on it gave up in 2018, it was 14 years old and only 80GB. I haven't had to complain to any company since 2017 but the HDD was working daily attached to the desktop. 
Sometimes companies used to ask for landline numbers when I first started making complaints but I just used to tell them I didn't have a landline, I suspected this was a way to stop people using a mobile on speaker and recording the conversations.
My last complaint was with OFTM back in 2018/19 and they took 8 months to produce a final bill using excuses like your final reading isn't what we have even though I gave them the reading only 15 minutes before I moved from them.   

My understanding is that although recording a call without the caller's consent is legal if you only use it for your own personal use (e.g. to remind yourself what was discussed) sharing that recording with a 3rd party (for example the ombudsman in the event of a dispute) without the caller's consent is illegal.

An alternative is to use online chat and keep a transcript, which is then treated like other written communication - emails, letters, etc.

Newcad

It's up to the Ombudsman, or the judge in a court case, whether to accept evidence in the form of a recording or transcript.

Personally I usually always insist that communication about complaints is in writing (email or SMS text being in writing).

In this particular instance though it wasn't a complaint just an enquiry and BG had phoned me.

It's not important, it's just a sideshow to my main complaint against the electricity company which is now awaiting the Ombudsman decision.

Newcad

This mornings post has brought a cheque from British Gas for £22.50 refund of my final account with them.

Talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
But at least it shows that it was worth asking about.

I'm not going to bother asking for the compensation for late repayment.
But I might now send them back a cheque for the £2.53 that they billed yesterday; or will that just confuse them even more.

Newcad

OMBUDSMAN DECISION.

Outcome: Upheld.

I'll now state that the supplier that I am in dispute with is Scottish Power.

The Ombudsman agrees with my contention that Scottish Power have incorrectly applied the back-billing principle.

Where the back-billing principle does apply then the supplier is only permitted to back-bill from 12 months before that back-billing is produced.
(Not as Scottish Power were insisting for the 12 months before the supply ended and the account closed).

They also find that some of the billing evidence provided by Scottish Power to the Ombudsman as being billing from previous years was in fact never issued.
(An excel document from Scottish Power themselves, that I have been unable to open/view here, apparently shows that for some reason SP seem to have created billing on 3 occasions in those previous years but had then cancelled them the same day and never issued them).

Remedies: Scottish Power must now-

1. Send an apology.
2. Recalculate and apply back billing* for the period dates from 22 August 2017 to 24 March 2021.
3. Remove all late fees, collection charges, warrant charges and remove all negative late marking from consumers credit file that are in relation to the electricity energy account for supply between 22 August 2017 to 02 June 2021
4. Provide a payment of £30.00 to the electricity account for guaranteed standards payment as final bill not produced within 6 weeks from moving out of property.

*2 means that they must correctly apply the back billing principle, ie. They are unable to charge for those dates. (See below regarding why the recalculation of a period that they can't bill for anyway).

Scottish Power have 28 days to comply, or to appeal against the decision.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Ombudsman has directed that Scottish Power must now recalculate their back-billing from 22 August 2017 to 24 March 2021.
25th March 2021 being the date that I contended, and the Ombudsman agrees, they were/are allowed to bill from.
A correct billing for the period before that date must now be recalculated to ensure that supply/charges from that period before 25th March 2021 are not carried over into the 2 month period that they were allowed to bill for on 24th March 2022.**
(The Ombudsman had noted what I had said about inbalance in the 5 years billing finally produced, with a strong weighting of 5 years worth of usage 'bunched' into the last 2 years. They obviously agree this was biased and so have directed the recalculation).

That is basically all that I have been asking of Scottish Power all along since they first issued the billing on 24th March 2022.

Simply that they amend their final billing and correctly apply the back-billing principle.

I had hoped (and requested) that because of the time now taken by Scottish Power's erroneous actions the Ombudsman may have also decided that they were now to late to validly bill for any amount at all.

The Ombudsman has not done that (I believe it is probably beyond their legal power- for this particular complaint**).

Once a new final billing has been recalculated and provided correctly then if I still consider it to be in error, or to have been calculated wrongly, then that would be a new complaint.

**EDIT- TBH I am not entirely sure that Scottish Power are now allowed to bill for that 2-month period.

Having incorrectly billed in March 2022 they may be out of time now to bill correctly.
The Ombudsman decision doesn't specifically mention billing now for those 2-months.
The decision just says that on 24th March 2022 they were not allowed to bill for before 25th March 2021, it says nothing about billing for after 25th March 2021.
I'll have to have another read of the back billing principle with regard to invalid billing.