4 years no electric bill now a grand bill to pay or court

[Fiscalawareness]

Morning Everyone

 

I was wondering if anyone has a simulare experience to me.

 

I was living in a house a when i moved in i contacted the electric company and they said they didnt cover the house, we tried a couple of companies and they all siad nothing to do with us.

 

So we waited for the inevitable letter saying we owed money for the electric.

 

4 years laters we recieved a letter to say they had mad a mistake and that we owed them 4 years worth of electric money.

 

They then went on to say they are only allowed to charge the last year worth of money and said it was a thousand pounds.

 

we have asked for a breakdown of how they came to that amount with no previous readings

 

Plus we have no agreement with them that i know about

 

can i do a SAR and if they dont have a agreement state the debt is unenforacable

 

im not sure how the companies set up agreements ie we never agreed with their prices etc and never recieved any corrospondants from them.

 

No invoices etc, is it the same as other credit, did it require a signiture etc

 

any thoughts would be good

 

jj

[Monty2007]

Morning Everyone

 

I was wondering if anyone has a simulare experience to me.

 

I was living in a house a when i moved in i contacted the electric company and they said they didnt cover the house, we tried a couple of companies and they all siad nothing to do with us.

 

So we waited for the inevitable letter saying we owed money for the electric.

 

4 years laters we recieved a letter to say they had mad a mistake and that we owed them 4 years worth of electric money.

 

They then went on to say they are only allowed to charge the last year worth of money and said it was a thousand pounds.

 

we have asked for a breakdown of how they came to that amount with no previous readings

 

Plus we have no agreement with them that i know about

 

can i do a Subject Access Request and if they dont have a agreement state the debt is unenforacable

 

im not sure how the companies set up agreements ie we never agreed with their prices etc and never recieved any corrospondants from them.

 

No invoices etc, is it the same as other credit, did it require a signiture etc

 

any thoughts would be good

 

jj

 

A thousand pounds for one year's electricity is steep. They should provide a detailed breakdown and you should consider a complaint to the regulators if they do not provide this. I would personally take monthly or weekly readings from now on in order to demonstrate your average spend, note of course that charges were 30% less last year so adjust any readings to allow for this.

 

They have agreed to charge you only for one year, which you seem to accept, you could just offer them a sum say of half that which would seem about right based on what we have paid this last year. I would wait though to see what they come back with.

[enamae]

The Billing Code states:

 

10. What about mistakes

by the supplier?

If your supplier is at fault, and you do not

receive a bill for more than two years, then

from July 2006 any outstanding debt that

relates to energy consumed more than two

years ago will be cancelled. From July 2007,

this will reduce to one year.

Your energy supplier will provide you with

details of how any queries about your bill can

be answered. If you have a complaint against

your supplier then they will provide you with

details of how your complaint will be handled.

If your supplier has been unable to resolve

your complaint, they will provide you with

details of how you can raise your complaint

with the independent Energy Supply

Ombudsman who offers a free service to

customers of energy supply companies.

You must try and resolve your complaint

with your supplier before you are eligible

to seek assistance from the Energy

Supply Ombudsman.

 

As you contacted them when you moved in and did not sign a contract, it appears to be an error on their part and therefore, providing they signed up to the Billing Code,they cannot charge you.

 

 

 

As a matter of interest who are the suppliers?

 

http://www.energy-retail.org.uk/documents/CodeofPracticeforAccurateBills.pdf

 

The above applies if you moved out over a year ago.If you're still living there,they may be able to charge you for the last year but I'd have thought this would be difficult if you hadn't signed a contract.You can definitely send them a Subject Access Request and see what they come back with.

Edited January 3, 2009 by enamae
Added an extra paragraph

[Fiscalawareness]

thanks for the replies, i will do the following, submit a SAR including any signed contract and metre reading to determine year bill.

 

We did everthing over phone so i will ask for phone recordings as well

 

Once i have replies i will contest bill throught the ESO

 

so far they have supplied nothing at all exceot the final bill.

 

Just to let everyone know we pay over £500 a month for the properties we own a month for gas and electric now and with the increase frackly we are being fleesed.

 

So this would be a small win for us if we got a good result

 

thanks for your help

 

JJ

[Fiscalawareness]

its scottishpower

 

just a quick question we never knew we were with them, we recieved no bills etc so do they need to have an agreement, i mean we could have swapped we never agreed tariffs etc

 

any cahnce of getting the debt written of due to no contract

 

jj

[indebtstudent]

Take at least seven days worth of readings, ideally more, to show your consumption. They must send you a bill and won't get far in terms of enforcement without one.

 

My understanding is that you ARE liable for the usage, but in practice most companies err on the side of caution when sending backdated bills because they are basically guessing. Also as you correctly state you could have shopped around at the time had you known the prevaling prices etc.

 

In any event once the billing seems sensible you are done, because its thier cock up and you made reasonable efforts to setup a contract with them they should be flexible with regard to the repayments. If not take that also to Consumer Focus of the ESO.

 

Enjoy.

[Clare_L]

Unlikely the new amount will be wiped as they have applied the billing code here. You could ask them to make sure that the account has been rebilled and spread over the 4 years at the prices at the relevant period and not billed at todays prices.

[reorete]

i have a similar problem.my electric meter broke and they came out but couldnt fix it.so they bypassed my card meter.trouble was nobody came to fix it and i couldnt buy electric on my card as it was no longer a card meter.3 years later i have a bill for 2000 pounds.cant tell you how many times i phoned askin them to replace my card meter but i was ignored.finally i got through and they didnt recall my meter being broke.anyways im 2000 pounds in debt

[Maximillion_bradt]

Hi there

 

I was wondering if anyone can offer some advice. I have been living in a house for 6years, during this time various flatmates have come and gone. During this time the property has never had an electric meter. When i moved in the other tenants informed me that there had never been a meter and that they had contacted various electric boards but no one had ever come out. I also contacted the electric board but no one came out. OUt of the blue we received a letter yesterday from an electric board which we opened by mistake, the letter was addressed to 1C where in fact there is only a number 1. we opened the letter and the letter said ...

 

'as you are aware we have not been sending bills to your property for sometime. This is due to the fact that we believed your property to be disconected. We have recently become aware that you are using the electricity and therefor will be billing you from ......' basically 7 years.

 

we dont know what to do. firstly it was sent to the wrong address, that address doesn't exist. however we do want to finally sort out the problem that we dont nor never have had a meter. Obviously we dont want to pay 7 years worth of bills + how could they charge us accurately, but we would like to know what our legal rights are? can anyone help, or has anyone had any similar scenarios? many thanks for your help

[hector-a-go-go]

as you are aware we have not been sending bills to your property for sometime. This is due to the fact that we believed your property to be disconected. We have recently become aware that you are using the electricity and therefor will be billing you from ......'

 

Hi

Not sure of the legal grounds for this, but I would suggest that you send a copy of this letter with the highlighted phrase to EDF, along with the relevant parts from the Billing Code & confirmation of who you spoke to regarding the original electricity supply.

I would argue that it was their error by believing the supply was disconnected & that the Billing Code should apply as you had made efforts to find the supplier - you will need to have some proof of this. Also, there appears to be some issues with the address, which may have caused some confusion when you were trying to find the supplier. So you should only have one years supply to pay, hopefully.

Please be aware that I am no expert, by any stretch of imagination, so I would suggest you wait for others to reply before you make a decision as to your next course of action.

Good luck

Hector

[hector-a-go-go]

Maximillion_bradt

assumed were were with EDF due to your PM to me - sorry but I don't like to reply to PM's - see post below

thanx

Hector

[Maximillion_bradt]

thanks Hector i really appreciate your advice, sorry for the PM

[indebtstudent]

"any cahnce of getting the debt written of due to no contract"

 

I doubt it, you have a deemed contract with whomever the supplier is but hey its worth a shot. The main concern at this stage is to check they have billed fairly for the period of one year.

 

Any news from the OP?