Powergen rant! Sorry!

Gingham_Ribbon

I'm changing supplier of lekkie from powergen to ecotricity so I wasn't surprised when someone came to the door to read the lekkie meter. No problem there. A couple of days later, a guy with a Transco ID card asked to read the gas meter. He went down to the cellar and went away no problem.

Then I get a letter from powergen saying they'd not increased my Direct Debit enough over the last couple of years and I owe them over £200 although I pay monthly. (Actually, this is my fault because I haven't been keeping an eye on it so I'm not annoyed about that, although - ouch!)

I phoned up because they'd said in the letter that they were going to increase my regular direct debit by more than 100% until the account was up to date. I wanted to find out more and got through to a call centre in (I think) India.

A painful conversation followed, where she couldn't really understand my accent and I couldn't make out a lot of what she was saying (accent and a bad line) but the long and the short of it was this. The letter was based on an estimated reading. She said Transco don't read gas meters any more and they have no record of either a gas or an electric reading taking place for several months. She said it was too late to change the direct debit as I hadn't given them enough notice! I only got their letter telling me it was going up today!!

I queried the fact that the readings had been taken, and that I'd checked their ID before letting them in. Why don't they have records and WHO read my meters? She told me I SHOULD BE MORE CAREFUL WHO I LET IN IN FUTURE!!! :mad:

So it's a mystery as to who read the gas meter, but I suspect the lekkie meter man was from ecotricity. (Don't remember what it said on his card.)
But I left the woman on the phone with no doubt that if that much money came out of my account by direct debit without my permission I'd be using the guarantee to have the bank return it and I'd change gas suppliers too!

I'm happy to pay but I won't be forced into doing it THEIR way!

As for the call centre accent difficulties...when I told my hubbie what happened he said he'd had the exact same problem today with a call centre in Scotland. And I'm Scottish, so it must have been bad! :rotfl:

April2

I have been trying to resolve my (stroke victim) neighbour's problem with Powergen since November last year and even writing to the so-called watchdog, Energywatch, doesn't help (they don't even bother replying).

This is my latest effort:

15 August 2005

Energywatch
3rd Floor, Artilery House Artilery Row
London SW1P 1RT

F.A.O. Mr. David Clarke, Customer Advisor

Dear Mr Clarke

Powergen A/C No.xxxxxxxxx

Further to your exchange of correspondence with my neighbour, Mr xxxxxx, in December 2004, January and July this year.

Following a recent telephone call from my financial advisor, Powergen have now sent me another bill. This time, they allege that I now owe an astonishing £273.65 - but that includes the totally ridiculous £182.28 bill of xx/11/04 – that Mr xxxxxxx mentioned in his 3/7/05 e-mail to you.

As you will see from the attached Excel table that Mr xxxxxxx has prepared - which shows transactions on my account from the very beginning - one (and only one) Powergen bill is the cause of the problem. The red text shows that bill – it is the one which contains bogus meter readings.

I think the table makes it easy to see that the issue is not one of great complexity. It simply arises from Powergen alleging (why, I do not know) that they installed a new meter (they did not, I can confirm that the serial number of the meter is exactly the same as it was when the builder noted it on the handover documents when I took over responsibility for the new dwelling in September 2003). Powergen then compounded the problem by inventing meter readings for that bogus new meter - and trying to charge me for the use of that electricity.

I really do not know what to do now to resolve this matter. Mr xxxxxxx has suggested that a face-to-face meeting with a senior Powergen representative (with him speaking on my behalf) may be the only way forward.

Would you be able to assist in arranging such a meeting? Would you be able to attend yourself?

I look forward to hearing from you at the earliest opportunity.

Yours sincerely

Update 11/9/05

Still no reply so it's on to the MP now (via http://www.writetothem.com/)

We'll see ...........

Update 16/9/05

MP's reply received yesterday. He has written to Powergen.

I wonder .......

Gingham_Ribbon

Wow, you sound like someone to have on side, April! I hope it gets sorted out.

Wig

Gingham_Ribbon wrote:

I'm changing supplier of lekkie from powergen to ecotricity

Is it your gas or electric that is out by 200quid?

They have a duty to read / inspect your meter once a year, if they did this they would have noticed the discrepancy and adjusted the figures.

You do have to pay the money but you do not have to pay it unreasonably (this is law) because you were not to blame for not knowing it was all wrong. If you think the DD increase is too much tell them that you will not allow the direct debits to leave your account until you have both agreed a more suitable DD monthly figure.

If they do not have records of who read your meters what are they then basing this Direct debit increase on? If it was (as you mentioned) 7 months ago when you last had your meters read, what have they been doing for 7 months? Why didn't they write to you earlier?

Short and curlies is, stop the DD if you are unhappy with it. and agree a new monthly amount with them. I wonder if you are allowed to say to your bank "don't pay them xx pay them yy" ask your bank to see if you can do this.

Try to give your meter readings to Ecotricity on the day of completion or the day before. But they might not use them anyway!

I gave up on Ecotricity, because all I saw was a supposed not for profit company that didn't publish on their website what salaries the directors and fat cats were paying themselves. They are also very aggressive with councils trying to overturn planning permission denials. Councils don't have much money and big companies rely on councils caving in and agreeing to planning consent when they are served with papers to appeal the decision.

I went with ebico recently, and they were the cheapest too which helped, but they are socially ethical.

Gingham_Ribbon

That's helpful, Wig. Thanks.

I was on holiday on the start date for ecotricity. I sent a reading but they've said it was too far in advance so I rang them with the reading when we got home. Come to think of it, you'd assume THEY'd have the reading if they'd sent someone.

Who the heck read my meters?!

noddy1_2

I'm in dispute with Powergen too. They have estimated my bill for the last 3 years! I had been keeping an eye on it and was sure I was around £70 in arrears due the DD not being quite high enough. Then they finally read it and send me a bill for over £400!(was expecting around £100 for the quarter). I've been waiting for the results if their 'investigation' into the error, but it's taking them ages.

I'm not really sure how the meter reading is suddenly so much out from the estimates - difficult as I didn;t get my last bill as they suddenly started emailing them to me, but unfortunately I it was to my previous email address. I'm really careful with the leccie - timers on dishwasher and washing machine, so they run overnight on the economy-7 rate, plus loads of low-energy bulbs etc.

good luck with yours!
Steve

Wig

Gingham_Ribbon wrote:

That's helpful, Wig. Thanks.

I was on holiday on the start date for ecotricity. I sent a reading but they've said it was too far in advance so I rang them with the reading when we got home. Come to think of it, you'd assume THEY'd have the reading if they'd sent someone.

Who the heck read my meters?!

Did they use a reasonably accurate estimate then? Have you checked this? if not make sure you do and phone them if it is too much out.

Ask Ecotricity if the change over reading was estimated or actual. You might find they used the actuals (slightly estimated) based on those meter men readings.

Gingham_Ribbon

I haven't been able to go into the cellar to check because of my asthma (pretty dusty in there) but I'll send DH down and try to sort it out at the weekend. He's not a happy bunny at the bill we've been sent and thinks we should switch gas suppliers too but I'm not touching British Gas with a barge pole after they sent me a bill months after I moved out of an old house saying I owed them money. Fortunately for me I still had the letter from them saying my account was closed and paid in full! (Only because I'm a bit messy and hadn't got round to throwing away the paperwork from my old place.) Grrr! LOL

Wig

I hate British Gas because they cold call you all the time offering you the latest marketing deal of the day, I moved Gas to Ebico because of this, and I let them know that was the primary reason for me leaving them.

After leaving I had BG cold calls asking if I would come back! Afterwards they said they would arrange to have my details removed and they would never contact me again (April 2005). Two days ago, they contacted me again cold call "a survey" they called it. I gave them hell and said I'll be reporting this to the information commissioner, and I will!

WSO

We in Feb we moved to the new house and decided we wanted to use Powergen for electricity and gas.

Electric meter looked like one of those old floppy card ones that went out of date ages ago, so we were worried we would run out as it was showing £5 odd on it. Phoned up Powergen, apparently it was a normal meter - told them it didn't look like one so was sent a prepayment card just in case... turned out it was behaving like a normal meter but it has since been replaced - electricity is no longer an issue since the scare we had in the first week.

The main problem we had was with the gas. When we moved in, it seemed that the old account was with British Gas so were told that we had to transfer our account over to them for the month it would take to give them notice... so we gave BG our first meter reading and little over a month later, got a final bill for £0.

In the meantime, Powergen told us we had now switched and we thought everything was all hunky dory - it didn't occur to us that no-one asked for a reading at change-over.

Anyway, got the first bill for Powergen gas in July and knew something was wrong when they charged £200 or so... I remember thinking, if this bill is supposed to be covering the summer months, what would we be charged at winter.

It turns out, that their start reading was estimated!!! Phoned them up and the reading was what Transco gave them (perhaps at the time we originally enquired about moving to them - i.e. before BG had the real one). Just annoyed that no-one came to read the meter at change-over day, not even a phone call or instructions to phone either Powergen or British Gas with the final/start reading!

Anyway, I couldn't give them a reading there and then but was told the account was frozen (so natural I thought they were investigating). Three weeks passed, no note to say they were investigating or nothing and they took the next payment as normal.

Phoned up to query it - "You have a DD, and that's why we took payment", "but I was told the account was frozen", "it is but you have a DD"... argh!!!

Anyway, I gave them the reading I had from the final gas bill (the inital reading from when we moved in as I had found it by then) and have just had the updated bill (about on track with payment so might reduce it to the original estimate of £30 we had which seems about right).

Moral of story - Powergen don't appear to investigate when they have overcharged and I'm pretty sure nothing would have been done about correcting the bill if I hadn't phoned with that initial meter reading...

trisontana

On the subject of Transco and gas meters. Yes , it is true that they don't read gas meters any more (that is the responsibility of the company you buy your gas from) but they do own the meter. So the guy from Transco could have been carrying out something like a safety or pressure check on the meter. I am a retired Transco employee and we did do this in the past.

The reason for the pressure check is that the amount of energy you are charged for depends on (amongst other things) the gas pressure at your meter. For normal consumers a standard figure is used, but spot checks are sometimes made on meters to ensure that this pressure is close to that is used for the calculations.

One other small gripe. This is to do with the term "BG" when referring to British Gas. There is a company called BG that has nothing to do with British Gas , which is owned by Centrica. When the old British Gas was broken up it was divided initially into two companies. BG was the name chosen for the company that operates world-wide and is concerned with gas and oil exploration, as well as owning gas pipelines abroad, but does not have a presence in the UK. I know it is a bit confusing. It is just like having two companies , one named Marks and Spencer and the other M&S but that's how it is.