Moved House, Cleared Bill, now Bulb chasing a debt they hadn't told us about.

mwkitching

We moved house last September. Cleared our bill with Bulb and online it shows as account closed and up to date.

Now six months later I received a text from their debt collection team demanding payment for £66.00 within 7 days before it is passed on to a debt collection agency. No communications received before this point in six months, which Bulb have accepted on the phone.

They say it is because although we moved out in September, they closed the account on 1st October and they automatically credited the government support payment to it, but as we weren't there in October we weren't entitled to it. If we have received a payment we should not have had, that is fair enough, but it does seem unreasonable to suddenly alert us to a debt with 7 days notice of it being passed to debt collection - especially when our online account shows a 0 balance, six months after the event. The first person I spoke to there just put the phone down on me when I explained it, the second said she would raise a complaint but if we don't pay up it will be a further £15 on the 1st April. Do I have any rights to dispute the process here, it seems remarkably unfair?

Stubod

..while their attitude is not good, the bill sounds reasonable to me so I would just pay it rather than incur any extra cost...

brewerdave

Did you actually receive the first Govt. payment ? Either as a bill credit or a payment to your bank account ? If you did then you have to pay up.

Alnat1

Did you also get £66 from your new supplier in October? If so, you really should pay Bulb back that money as you've had it twice.

mwkitching

We have checked in our bank account and on our statement, there was no £66.00 payment received from Bulb or mentioned on our online statement. There was a lot of large numbers credited and debited as they did mess up our bill a couple of times.

moneysaver

mwkitching said:

We have checked in our bank account and on our statement, there was no £66.00 payment received from Bulb or mentioned on our online statement. There was a lot of large numbers credited and debited as they did mess up our bill a couple of times.

If the £66 payment was not received  you have no problem then. Call them & let them know it was not received. It means you have missed out on it though.

You will need to find out who should have paid it to you & chase it up. Did you receive a payment when you moved?

I was with Bulb before the takeover & it was a credit on my energy account. I have now been put onto Octopus & they also credit to my energy account.

Moneysaver

[Deleted User]

Bulb has no reputation to protect and I suspect that The Special Administrator is under pressure to resolve all outstanding billing issues ASAP. 

mwkitching

moneysaver said:

mwkitching said:

We have checked in our bank account and on our statement, there was no £66.00 payment received from Bulb or mentioned on our online statement. There was a lot of large numbers credited and debited as they did mess up our bill a couple of times.

If the £66 payment was not received  you have no problem then. Call them & let them know it was not received. It means you have missed out on it though.

You will need to find out who should have paid it to you & chase it up. Did you receive a payment when you moved?

I was with Bulb before the takeover & it was a credit on my energy account. I have now been put onto Octopus & they also credit to my energy account.

Moneysaver

Yes, we did receive the payment from our new supplier, directly into the bank.

Bulb now saying they are sending us a revised bill, I await with interest!