Back billing - but in credit so Energy Ombudsman found in favour of supplier

Tries_to_help

It seems Octopus chose the autumn months to add debt to customers accounts. I am currently helping a relative to deal with similar situation. Difference is she does not pay by DD but monthly payments following issuing of bills. She does have smart meter which is supposed to record her use of electricity and gas in 2 bedroom flat. Has been customer of Octopus for 15 + years. Initially asked for smart meter for electricity use but then had Gas Central heating fitted by landlord about 10 years ago. Pays for use on accounts issued made . In February 24 new gas meter fitted. Inaccessible to my relative due to her severe disability. Hence happy to have smart meter providing readings of use.

In November - when she was £90+ in credit due to paying her September bill twice - because of 'harassing reminders' she received bill for £500.00 for gas use THAT MONTH. When I became involved realised every bill since 02/24 was of estimated gas use. Smart meter had no gas readings, gas meter had no record of reading of old ( 'broken") meter removed in 02/24 or of starting reading of new meter. Fitted in 02/24.

Following visit from meter reader was given alleged gas meter reading on that date. Subsequent bills _ Nov/ Dec , Dec -Jan. are again estimates.

From comments above seems individuals are supposed to spend hours checking Octopus accounts. - My relative received similar ' amended' bills for 2 year period as Chezzam_2 . We have spent hours trying to understand how this happened and fail to see why we should be expected to do so. There is no evidence any of the 'estimated' readings are accurate. Letters to Octopus do not receive acknowledgement /response - neither do requests for phone records of contacts. The promotion of SMART meters that do not work, Direct debits that give company free reign to keep money, the wasted time on so called helplines is appalling. 'Compensation' of £100 - £200. does not reflect the time spent either in phone calls, letters or calculations. If these firms had to pay decent compensation they might realise that paying meter reader to visit to get accurate readings is realistic.

Sorry to hijack your questions.

MWT

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81879423#Comment_81879423

It seems Octopus chose the autumn months to add debt to customers accounts. I am currently helping a relative to deal with similar situation. Difference is she does not pay by DD but monthly payments following issuing of bills.

If your relative is paying on receipt of bills and dealing with a faulty smart meter it is an entirely different situation to the OP.

There is nothing special about the autumn though, with millions of customers this is a year-round process so some will be happening every month.

For your relative, if you have not already done so, escalate it as a complaint which should get you to a dedicated CS agent to handle the matter from there.

MattMattMattUK

In addition to MWT's comments if they are unable to check their own meters because of disability you should also make sure they are on the PSR (Priority Services Register).

Qyburn

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81879423#Comment_81879423

From comments above seems individuals are supposed to spend hours checking Octopus accounts. -

We're talking about one period in 2023 that had not been billed at all. Even a cursory check would have shown this, it certainly wouldn't have taken hours of checking. The customer needs to take some responsibility.

However referring back to my comment on fairness some of this discussions start to imply that the customer is expected to be more diligent than the supplier.

chezzam_2

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81879423#Comment_81879423

So sorry you and your relative are going through this. My partner has written to our MP, the energy minister and ofgem because the licence conditions and their open letter in December 2020, as far as we feel, do not reference that an energy supplier is allowed to seek recovery action from a credit balance, or to seek recovery for uncharged energy over 12 months ago, when it is the suppliers error.

MattMattMattUK

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81879693#Comment_81879693

I understand you are frustrated with your situation, but you seem to keep refusing to understand the back billing rules because it is not what you want to hear.

Legislation (the Limitation Act 1980) sets out a standard six year timeframe for businesses to be able to recover the debt. The Ofgem guidelines tied to supplier licenses apply the "back billing" rules, designed to prevent "bill shock", where consumers have to find additional sums of money for energy consumption mor than a year in the past, but also allowing for that to cost to be paid from credit balances, they just cannot ask for more money to cover historical back billed costs, which have been explained to you multiple times. Octopus have correctly applied the back billing rules, which has also been confirmed by the Ombudsman.

Why are you so intent on flogging this dead horse?

chezzam_2

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81879651#Comment_81879651

We receive a bill every month. We pay a bill every month.

We have day and night units for electricity and also gas units on a bill.

We provided meter readings in good faith.

Octopus used an estimated reading for said period, even though we had provided them with a meter reading. They acknowledged their mistake and applied the customer meter reading and issued a new bill with the customer meter reading provided and quoted on the bill. They confirmed in writing in an email that our account was correct and up to date.

We continued to provide meter readings and receive bills and pay our account.

The problem arose, as it now transpires, that Octopus, did not use the closing read that they had accepted on the previous bill for the opening read, they used a higher read - so that next period started off incorrectly.

The problem occurred across two separate bills.

Octopus kept giving different reasons as to what the debit was for and changed their reasoning approx 4 times, and provided pages and pages of a recalculated bill that made no sense at all and they tried to camouflage that they had credited the debit back to us. ie debited the amount, credited the amount back as part of the recalculation and debited another amount and so forth, until the difference in the original debit amount was £5. The ombudsman did get confused by this and wrote as much. For you to say we should have spotted it is rather unfair. Given we were given so many different reasons we didn't know what the true reason was. Octopus were unable to tell us where the specific error was or what they had done. We provided meter readings in good faith and received confirmation in writing (by email) that our reading had been applied to our account and our account was up to date and accurate. The next bill we received showed our meter reading. However, for some reason they missed off this bill the day units for the next period, but billed us for the night units and then the next bill period they included the previous bill period for the day units but the period in question was in essence "1 day". Instead of them using our closing meter read to open the next period they used a random estimate meter reading, but used the correct customer meter reading for the closing read.

EssexHebridean

OP - what action did you take to sort out the missing billing when it occurred back in 2023 - did you flag it up, or ensure that you set aside the relevant rough amount to pay it when needed? Or did the bill not show any use unbilled at the time - in which case you ned to supply a copy of that bill, and the new one to Octopus with a demand for an explanation for being billed twice. Similarly, do you have records of attempts made to sort out the estimated readings when actual readings had been given?

NewbyForthwith

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81879777#Comment_81879777

I am not sure I agree with this. The limitation act is in essence over ridden by the Energy License regulations so is pretty limited relevance in back billing situations like this one.

I fully understand why the OP is confused - the wording Ofgem “open letter*” in December 2020 (which was intended to clarify the regulations but seems to have failed to do so) clearly states a charge recovery action can be the simple act of sending a bill. By that wording the act of sending a bill alone for energy used over 12 months prior is sufficient to be in scope of back billing regardless of what actions are demanded as a result of that bill. It does not state a credit balance is excluded from the regulations.

There does seem to be a legal grey area here. Suppliers in essence can time the correction of errors to a point in time when consumers have built up a credit and thus exempt themselves from back billing regulations. It in essence this penalises consumers who are responsibly trying to control their outgoings. The net effect is the same - the consumer ends up unexpectedly paying more than they expected through no fault of their own.

I hope Ofgem are aware of this (and if not is anyone at MSE able to highlight the lack of clarity to Ofgem and Government so that there can be absolute clarity. A lot of the posts on this thread refer to interpretation and intent, but if it is not written in plain language what is in scope ( and almost more importantly what is not in scope) then there remains grounds for consumer confusion and reasonable grounds for unfairness.

I do really feel for the OP here as my read of their situation does not appear to make their case exempt in either the Ofgem licence conditions around back billing or the open letter guidance.

*Please search for “Ofgem Open letter December 2020” if you wish to see the letter for yourself it may change your perspective on interpretation and intent of the regulations.

MWT

Not helpful perhaps, but the stance I always take with energy suppliers is that as long as the meters are working, there is only one correct answer to how much I should pay for any specific period as the meter register reading combined with tariff data does not yield more than one right answer.

I will keep going until we get to the right answer, and when I spot problems in what has been billed I will document it and report it to them so these problems do not come back to bite later.

These days it does seem that suppliers using the Kraken billing system do have the tools to audit accounts to spot un-billed periods and they will try to fix them which can result in a lot of re-billing, so I'd always advise to not let even small errors go past without resolution.

I also aim to keep my account balance as low as possible at all times, just in case…