We bought a property in July 2015, which we then sold in July 2016. It was refurbished in November and December and was empty the rest of the time.

A new meter was installed in March. This was because the previous meter was a pre-pay meter, and we wanted to change this to a normal meter just in case there were any issues regarding selling the house with a pre-pay meter.

We received a bill in July 2016 for £411.88, relating to March to July 2016, which was clearly incorrect as the property had been empty.

I contacted EDF immediately to explain this, and told them it had been empty. I had given them a meter reading from the day that I moved out but said that the meter must have been faulty. They said they would look at the meter to check if it was faulty, but they did not do so. By this point the new owners had moved into the property, but EDF were still the supplier.

After several phonecalls trying to get this resolved, EDF continually claimed that the bill was correct. I then got a call from someone who apologised and explained that someone at EDF had entered the meter reading incorrectly, and yes the bill was wrong. They issued me a new bill some time in July, this time for £8.97. I have a copy of this bill and EDF also have a record of this conversation. This was paid and the account was closed.

Last week I received a bill from EDF for the original amount of £411.88. I called EDF to ask what was going on. They told me that actually the person who told me the meter reading had been entered incorrectly was actually wrong, and the original bill was actually correct.

I explained the whole story again and told them the meter was faulty, to which they replied-

As we no longer supply the property, we are unable to book an appointment for an engineer to attend and check the accuracy of the meter, only the current supplier can arrange this.

If you would like this investigating, I would advise for you to contact the current occupant and see if they can contact the supplier so that this can be looked in to further as the supplier will only speak with the account holder and can not discuss anything with ourselves.

Can anyone advise me what I should do in this situation? I am certain the meter was faulty, but there is no way I am going to be chasing up the current occupants to try and get that investigated. Why should I do the job that EDF should have done in the first place? However I really do not want to risk getting any bad credit information on my credit file.

Not sure how to edit the post, but to make it clear, the bill was for March 2016 to July 2016 (approx 4 months).

I think that you should start by sending EDF and SAR in order to get all of the information that they hold about you – including all activity, discussions, memoranda, internal and external correspondence and telephone calls. Get this off on Monday and accompanied by a cheque rather than a postal order because that will make the progress of your SAR easier to follow.

You have been dealing with them on the telephone. Because you have been here since 2006, you are an old hand and so of course you knew that you had to record your calls when you dealt with them – didn't you?

OK I will do that. Are you suggesting that I do not pay the outstanding bill for the time being? I absolutely cannot risk any bad credit information being registered against me.

Wow, I was here in 2006? I wonder what I was complaining about then? Unfortunately no, I have not been recording the calls. I will do that in future.

Also, it might have to be a postal order as I am working away from home at the moment, and dont have my chequebook with me. Is that a big deal?

Please read our customer services guide and follow the advice there. It's very important.

Cheque is better but the most important thing is to send off the SAR on Monday without fail. I suggest that you take a copy of the postal order for your records and also you will have to access the post office site to check if it has been cashed. Cheque would be better.

Once you are recording the calls then I suggest that you have several phone calls with EDF – simply to see if they come up with different versions of what has happened. Make sure you get it all recorded and make sure that you store it of your phone. If there are several versions then that will add to the sense that they are in disarray – which they probably are. They are French, after all. I see that the slogan for the proposed 2024 Paris Olympics is "Made for Sharing"(in English!!). No wonder the French are so up themselves when they come up with this kind of tat.

Once you have got your information, then you can either try making a complaint to the energy ombudsman which is likely to take a lot of time and probably will be unhelpful to you because the energy ombudsman seem to be pretty limp wristed. Alternatively you could think about making a County Court claim against them for breach of contract on the basis that it is a term of the contract that they would manage your account correctly and that they have failed to do so.

I suspect that with the evidence that you will gather and in particular the contradictory correspondence, that they will eventually put their hands up after they have received the court papers.