EDF General incompetence & lack of care etc...

UnclePin

I am on the Protected Services Register and I pay EDF for my gas and electricity via Fuel Direct deductions from my Pension Credit. These were agreed in mid-2020 at the weekly rate of £27 for Electricity and £23 for gas, with a fixed payment of £3.70 for each account’s arrears, the total deduction being £57.40.

I have never received any formal request to agree to an increase nor have I agreed to any increase. EDF have just written to me saying that there is an arrears situation on one account of over £7900, & they are looking for payment. What can I do?

MWT

Have you been receiving bills/statements from EDF and are you able to review those bills/statements or do you have someone who can help you to do that?

UnclePin

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82026272#Comment_82026272

Yes I have been getting bills etc, most of them estimated & wildly out. I have a spreadsheet so I do look at them closely. Interestingly, & not surprisingly, their billing process & system is all over the place -

1. Quite often, the amount per unit differs from that which was advised in a "price change" letter. Also, prices are always shown differentlyy i.e. some including VAT & some excluding VAT, which made my spreadsheet very complicated, but I managed…
2. My deduction is made weekly (as stated) but they only seem able to show chunks of 4 or 5 payments toegther on bills without any rational expllanations.
3. They broke the Direct Debit Guarantee way back in the mid 2010s I had been paying a DD at the agreed rate of £200 per month (agreed with a Senior Manager) then out of the blue they told me that it would increase to £330 per month, I complained. Then my bank told me EDF had requested +/-£343 & Co-op Bank told me that it was itself cancelling the DD because the Guarantee had been broken. All through the following 2 or 3years I offered (on more that 3 or 4 occasions) to reinstate the DD at ££200 which they steadfastly ignored. At some point after that (in maybe 2018/90 they offered me Fuel Direct, which I accepted, but EDF ABJECTLY FAILED to put it in place. When they sent Debt Collection letters (& getting VERY heavy) I reminded them of their offer of FD which they initially denied. I told them to check through their phone records they did so & found I was correct. Then we set it up properly in Sept 2020 (after some extremely strong negotiation on my part to stop me being ripped off!).
4. Notwithstanding that the DWP has unilaterally been deducting the wrong amount for arrears since 2021 (a separate issue, & already the subject of a Formal Complaint to them) the general admin of the FD system wwith Energy Suppliers is disasterous to say the least.

I did a Google AI search the other day, & MSE (Martin Lewis) came up with some very precise wording which I needed to use when complaining formally to EDF & the process I should follow: Demands for accurate breakdown of account rates, charges & credits over several years, but it t kept crashing my Word doc whenever I tried to copy it across to utilise it.

The EDF letter arrived on Friday 5th June, and i am eager to get the letter of Complaint off to them by tomorrow, if possible. They have bee told many time - in no uncertain terms - that they are NOT ALLOWED to phone me as they bully & browbeat, nor are they permitted to send me emails (I'm old school "If it isn't in writing, it didnt't happen" & I have learnt from their actions over their attempted unilateral contract-breaking DD change (& Martin's advice) to "get any agrrement in writing" read just yeaterday.

I know I will get there in the end, but can assure you that after the total amount of stress historically caused to me by EDF's behaviour & incompetence over the years I shall be merciless in my demands to the Ombudsman for suitable compensation.

Ta.

elsien

I very much doubt that your agreement from six years ago to pay £54.70 a month includes that the amount you need to pay will stay the same however much utility prices change.
When you’ve been checking your bills and you’ve seen them based on estimates, have you then sent them the correct meter readings?

elsien

It wasn’t a trite put down and if that’s the tone of your replies to them, then I’m not surprised you’re not getting very far.

What is unclear is whether your payments have increased over the years to take into to account the price increases, and whether your readings corrected the estimated bills. The fact that debt collectors have been sent out would seem to imply that they haven’t so I am querying whether the mistakes leading to where you are now are all on EDF’s side given that they tried to increase your payments and you seem to have refused. Which does kind of lead you to where you are now.

Good luck with sorting it out, anyway.

WiserMiser

Just a couple of minor points.

• It's plain Citizens Advice. They dropped the Bureau suffix more than a decade ago.

• The apparent price variances because of VAT affect all companies. Quoted domestic prices include VAT but bill kWh calculations don't. That's because the VAT rates can change from time to time so it's always added on right at the end.

MWT

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82026348#Comment_82026348

Different parts of a bill and what you may see online will either include or exclude VAT, it can result in rates you see looking wrong but if you follow through the bill calculations you should be able to see where the VAT gets added.

If in doubt about a difference just add 5% (VAT rate for energy) to the lower figure and see if that is the difference…

The problem with refusing to increase the DD to a level that reflected your use is that arrears will build up, best way to avoid erroneous estimates is to provide regular (monthly) meter readings, and or have a smart meter installed.

You can certainly tell them not to email or call for marketing purposes, but the supplier is required to communicate with you for billing and contractual purposes and you cannot insist that everything has to be sent by post.

Right now I would focus on making sure they have your most recent meter readings correctly recorded.

I would also suggest that you look back through your bills and note the last date that you were billed using an accurate meter reading.

This will help to identify if there is any scope to reduce the amount outstanding based on back-billing rules.

Similarly do you recall if a meter reader has called at your house and if so did you permit them to read the meter (assuming they can't just access it from the street)?

UnclePin

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82026405#Comment_82026405

Thanks, MWT; sound advice. I have a note of each time they sent a Meter Reader and each time that they were provided with a reading by me. Mind you, I am still extremely puzzled why there are so many mismatches between the 'notified' prices after individual increases/decreases. I am also of theopinion that they are absing the time restrictions on recovering older amounts, so I will be taking that up woth them too!

Thakns again.

Robin9

@UnclePin From your own calculations how much do your think you owe Edf ?

UnclePin

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82026431#Comment_82026431

Hi Robin
I think it's around £15K for both G & E. Trouble is, though, for years they'rv always saying one thing then doing something different. Total chaos, IMHO.

lohr500

With all due respect, and not ignoring your previous replies where you indicate you have been trying to resolve this with EDF for a long time, how can it have spiralled to a £15k debt before your latest attempt to resolve it?

Whilst it has been in dispute, have you been putting aside cash ready for the day when it does get resolved?

From your comments, it sounds like you have a good record of your own meter readings and a spreadsheet to calculate usage. So I presume you must have been able to calculate what you thought the debt was likely to be. Even if you made some base assumptions on the unit costs and standing charges.