Advice Needed: £450+ E.On Bill 10 months after leaving

Babster wrote: »

Hi All,

I would really appreciate advice on the following:

I switched from E.On to Bristol Energy in May 2017. I paid my last E.On bill in July 2017 and was told this was the last bill I would receive from them.

In March 2018 (10 months after switching) I received a bill for £451. I've complained, and they sent me the following response:

I can confirm that we only final billed you last year for your Electricity we sent your Electricity final bill in June 2017 which you made full payment for on the xxx July 2017 of £107.

We were unable to send a final gas bill at this time due to not receiving any final meter readings from your new supplier Bristol Energy, until November 2017.

After several attempts to obtain the meter reading from them and receiving the relevant information we then had issues ourselves in trying to bill your account. We eventually managed to send your final gas bill on the 23rd March 2018 of £433.09.

Also, the amount of gas they have charged me for seems really high:
994m3 = 11012 kWh in a 10 week period. Apparently, a medium sized house with 3 bedrooms has an annual gas output for 12,500Kwh. And we have a 3 bed flat...

I know there's a new back-billing ban now in force, but that's only for 12+ months, right? Technically, they billed me after 10 months. Anyway, please can someone provide some advice - what stance should I take with E.On? I don't want to pay this bill as it's not my fault it's so late, but at the same time I don't want my credit score to get affected as I want to buy a house soon.

Thanks

Sadly, life is tough. Suppliers have to use their reasonable efforts to raise a Final Bill within 6 weeks of a transfer of supply. However, they do depend on the gaining supplier to get the transfer meter readings verified. Clearly, something has gone amiss in this process. That said, you cannot expect a supplier to write off the complete bill. As harsh as this might seem, I cannot believe that you didn't know that you had not received a Final Bill for gas.

In my view, if you raise a complaint then the supplier will award you a small ex gratia amount for poor customer service and it may agree to stage re-payments. Trying to suggest the bill may be wrong will, I am afraid, get you nowhere. It is often the case that Final Bills appear high because they are what is known as a 'catch up' bill. In other words, the previous bill was based on an estimate which was below your actual meter reading.

Babster wrote: »

Hi All,

I would really appreciate advice on the following:

I switched from E.On to Bristol Energy in May 2017. I paid my last E.On bill in July 2017 and was told this was the last bill I would receive from them.

In March 2018 (10 months after switching) I received a bill for £451. I've complained, and they sent me the following response:

I can confirm that we only final billed you last year for your Electricity we sent your Electricity final bill in June 2017 which you made full payment for on the xxx July 2017 of £107.

We were unable to send a final gas bill at this time due to not receiving any final meter readings from your new supplier Bristol Energy, until November 2017.

After several attempts to obtain the meter reading from them and receiving the relevant information we then had issues ourselves in trying to bill your account. We eventually managed to send your final gas bill on the 23rd March 2018 of £433.09.

Also, the amount of gas they have charged me for seems really high:
994m3 = 11012 kWh in a 10 week period. Apparently, a medium sized house with 3 bedrooms has an annual gas output for 12,500Kwh. And we have a 3 bed flat...

I know there's a new back-billing ban now in force, but that's only for 12+ months, right? Technically, they billed me after 10 months. Anyway, please can someone provide some advice - what stance should I take with E.On? I don't want to pay this bill as it's not my fault it's so late, but at the same time I don't want my credit score to get affected as I want to buy a house soon.

Thanks

Hello Babster and already some excellent advice on here. Thanks all.

As above, with a change of supplier, it's the gaining supplier's responsibility to let the losing supplier have the meter readings they open their account to. The losing supplier uses the same readings to close their account and issue a final bill. This stops the same energy from being charged twice.

These readings go through a third party (Data Collector) who checks they're in line with past usage at the property. Sometimes a change is made and both suppliers need to use the same reading. This might cause a delay. Data Collectors for electricity and gas can be different.

From our response, it looks like we didn't receive the gas reading until quite a time after the switch went through. This was despite attempts to move this forward. As others have said, make sure our closing readings match the new supplier's opening readings. Did you make a note of the readings on the day of the switch? If you did, are these the readings used to open/close the respective accounts? If all is in line, the final bill will reflect the amount of gas used.

Were previous bills estimated? If they were, the final bill could've been a catch-up once we received the actual reading. As Hengus says, catch-ups come about following estimated bills where charges have been lower than the gas used.

I'm sorry it took so long to send the final gas bill Babster. If you talk to us, we'll be happy to look at setting up a payment arrangement to help spread the balance over a more manageable period.

Malc