Octopus "Reversed Account Charge"

worksurvivor

I've just had an email from Octopus charging me for electricity apparently used in 2003 as a "reversed account charge". 

There are about half a dozen "revised" charges from 2023 which result in my account balance going about £400 into minus.

Is an energy provider allowed to trawl back several years to change bills and make retrospective charges?

Or is there a 12-month limit on this type of practice?

Can I counter their revision — regardless of its accuracy or otherwise — simply on the grounds of it being out-of-time?

la531983

What have they actually done? Increased your unit rate/standing charge (or both), or billed you for full days/weeks/months for period they claim they didnt bill for?

MattMattMattUK

Can you supply a bit more detail?

worksurvivor

MattMattMattUK said:

Can you supply a bit more detail?

They've charged me for usage in June 2023 (>£20); another charge for usage from July 2023 (~£150); again in September 2023 (also about £150); and again for usage in November 2023 (about £300).

I don't want to post the bill or the exact details because that would allow Octopus to identify the account from the data. 

QrizB

How do those bills compare at the ones they provided you with at the time? What specifically has changed?

worksurvivor

la531983 said:

What have they actually done? Increased your unit rate/standing charge (or both), or billed you for full days/weeks/months for period they claim they didnt bill for?

They have "recalculated" some electricity charges from 2023, which has had the effect of putting my account balance at minus £400.

I want to know if they are legally able to trawl back through old bills to revise charges, or if there are regulations (or even just industry guidelines) to either prevent energy providers from doing this, or else to limit the amount of time they can go fishing through old bills (e.g. so that charges settled more than 12 months ago can no longer be revised or recalculated so there is some protection for the customer, like a "statute of limitations" on charges).

MWT

worksurvivor said:

I want to know if they are legally able to trawl back through old bills to revise charges, or if there are regulations (or even just industry guidelines) to either prevent energy providers from doing this, or else to limit the amount of time they can go fishing through old bills (e.g. so that charges settled more than 12 months ago can no longer be revised or recalculated so there is some protection for the customer, like a "statute of limitations" on charges).

On that specific question, no, there are no rules that would limit them to only the past 12 months.

They can certainly make corrections to inaccurate billing in 2023, and they can reapply DD payments made at the time which may result in a current negative balance, and they can also reverse refunds of an accumulated balance if there were any refunds.

The back-billing rules may offer some help but Octopus are usually pretty good at correctly applying those rules.

You would have to go back over the impact of the changes they have made and look at your running balance to figure out is there is a trigger for the back-billing provisions more than 12 months ago...

worksurvivor

QrizB said:

How do those bills compare at the ones they provided you with at the time? What specifically has changed?

For one of the revised billing periods they had originally charged me about £50; that has now been recalculated as about £150. 

For another revised billing period they did not apply a charge for electricity use (they only applied a few pence credit, for "export"); the electricity usage for that period has now been recalculated as about £300

worksurvivor

MWT said:

The back-billing rules may offer some help but Octopus are usually pretty good at correctly applying those rules.

You would have to go back over the impact of the changes they have made and look at your running balance to figure out is there is a trigger for the back-billing provisions more than 12 months ago...

Do you mean my current usage may be significantly higher or significantly lower than it was two years ago, so they are now trawling historic usage to see if they should retrospectively modify my bills? That seems odd.

What are "the back billing rules"? Do they provide customers with any protection from this revisionism? 

If I'd eaten a few restaurant meals and paid the bills, I wouldn't expect the waiter to pursue me for apparently incorrectly calculated bills two years later! 

MWT

worksurvivor said:

Do you mean my current usage may be significantly higher or significantly lower than it was two years ago, so they are now trawling historic usage to see if they should retrospectively modify my bills? That seems odd.

What are "the back billing rules"? Do they provide customers with any protection from this revisionism? 

If I'd eaten a few restaurant meals and paid the bills, I wouldn't expect the waiter to pursue me for apparently incorrectly calculated bills two years later! 

In general any mistake in an invoice over the previous 6 years can be corrected, and that works both ways as the customer can also raise errors for correction in the same way.

This has nothing to do with current vs historic use, and as I said earlier, nothing in the back-billing rules draws a line under an incorrect invoice preventing it from bring corrected.

The aim of the back-billing rules is to prevent bill-shock caused by billing for previously un-billed energy use over 12 months ago, but the exception is that if the correction is just using your previously paid account balance then there is no bill-shock...

So you need to go back and look at what the changes are that have been made and see the origin of the changes and first determine if the change is correct, then look at the affect on your running account balance.

EssexHebridean

If it helps OP, you can post bills by obscuring your identifying information - so in this case obviously name and address, but also meter number and account number.