Back-billed for electricity over a long year period!

SmokedSalmonAddict

Hi, I'm going to cut a long story short. I will provide more detail if necessary...

Can an energy company (Scottish Power) pursue you for historic energy bills after 2 years in any circumstances if:

• They never sent you a bill; only letters addressed to "The Occupier"
• You were paying your energy bill to another company for years before it came to light Scottish Power still had the meter
• The electricity meter was never associated with the property despite efforts to rectify this.

I was under the understanding that energy companies cannot back-bill you for energy used more than 12 months ago if:

• you have not had an accurate bill for it before, even if you asked for one.
• you had not been informed about any charges due via a statement of account before.
• your Direct Debit amount was previously set too low to cover any charges due.

I know there is an exception to this if you were "stealing energy", but in this case, the occupier was paying another company, Green Star Energy, for their gas and electricity. It was only when Shell took over that the fact that it had never properly been switched came to light.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

SmokedSalmonAddict

EDIT: "over a long period". I was going to state the number of years, but didn't want to identify the person in question.

Qyburn

Did you make contact with the supplier to open an account? Normally you'd only see bills to "the occupier" if the previous occupier moved out and they don't have details of the new.

How or why were you paying the wrong supplier?

Personally i can't see back billing rules applying since they have been sending bills.

SmokedSalmonAddict

It turned out the meter had not been correctly transferred. I had supplied the meter serial/ID, etc and Green Star Energy did not inform me that it was wrong. Here's a rough timeline:

• The block of 6 flats was built and completed late 2012. All for sale as Shared Ownership properties.
• Most were sold, but for some reason - most likely the persistent leaking roof from the veranda above amongst numerous other problems - mine remained empty until June 2015, when I moved in.
• Green Star Energy was "suggested" to me at the time before mortgage completion, so I initiated the transfer when I moved in and began paying a direct debit from June 2015.
• Shell Energy took over at some point, when I was advised that they were only charging me for gas. I was not aware of this and was then told it was still with Scottish Power, from whom I had been receiving letters addressed to "The Occupier". I had always assumed these to be marketing material until this revelation. I don't think they ever knew about the meter at the flat.
• I supplied them with the meter serial number, only to be told it was not correct. I can't remember the sequence of events exactly as this was several years ago, but I remember giving up at some point as the property went on the market and I was barely living there by this point.
• I never received a bill from Scottish Power, but had continued to pay Green Star for some time. I was able to receive a refund from Shell Energy at some point as I had been incorrectly billed for electricity up to that point, but I only received around £900.

I should add that at the time, I had become self-employed and money was tight, so I didn't want to get myself into a predicament such as the ones frequently seen on here. I looked up the back-billing rules, but have thought no more of it until the letter dropped through the letterbox at my current address only this weekend.

Also noteworthy is that the company addressed the letter exactly 10 days before it arrived, and expected me to respond within 14 days.

I hope this clears things up somewhat.

I appreciate that for around 18 months or so, I was aware that I was not paying for electricity, but I had attempted to resolve the problem and nobody had sorted it. There was a multitude of issues with that flat but I think the root cause of the meter issue was that the original address of the block was going to be on the street around the corner, then it changed so that it was actually on the main road. This meant it was "Plot X, One Road", when it should have been "Plot X, Two Road", if that makes sense. I did explain all of this at some point, but nobody succeeded in resolving it.

Now they want me to stump up £3,000 for 7 years' worth of billing, when I was only there 6.

Qyburn

SmokedSalmonAddict said:

Now they want me to stump up £3,000 for 7 years' worth of billing, when I was only there 6.

Clearly you shouldn't be charged for usage before you took ownership (or tenancy). Do you have an opening reading, meter reading when you became responsible? If so them you can work out roughly what the correct figure should be. I say "roughly" because unless you also recorded monthly or quarterly readings you will know the total for the six years but will have to estimate the splits around tariff changes.