Powergen & LCA

[naughtydruid]

Hi folks,

 

In January I sent an SAR to powergen after getting a huge electricity bill for a property I lived at a few years ago. They were chasing me via LCA for £1200 or so.

 

Today I got a letter from LCA stating that i needed to pay £32.28 for consumption of electricity at the same address and for the same time period as they were chasing for the £1200. The reference numbers were all the same so it was obviously the same account.

 

I rang powergen presuming that my request for SAR had made them look at the account and the £32.28 was the new figure they had come to. But no, my account with them still stood at £1200 and the system just said it was being looked into by the meter department.

 

I rang LCA and they said the account still stood at £1200 and could not give me an answer why they had sent me a demand for £32.28. They are going to get back to me.

 

So what do I do now. I am tempted to send £32.28 with a copy of the demand back to them for full and final settlement, but then that would mean I am accepting liability for the debt, which I have not yet done as it was a shared house with loads of tenants which is why I wanted the SAR in the first place.

 

I guess they have just made a mistake with the demand for £32.28 but where does that leave me?

 

Also the SAR will be overdue in a couple of days so any advice on how to deal with non-compliance would be really appreciated.

[ozzywizard]

Regarding non compliance you would report them to the information commissioner. The revenue protection team who will be dealing with your SAR is contactable on 0115 8434571 if you wanted to contact them direct.

As you said sending payment of 32.28 could be in their favour in you making a payment is admittance of the debt.

My guess towards the small bill is this : Your account was £1200 in debt, they tried collecting it but couldn’t (for the obvious reason) they then passed the debt to their DCA which leaves the account in zero state. They then received your SAR. They will now check everything on the account and was probably working on it so whilst rebilling it they produced a bill of 32.28 in error. Before making these actions they forgot to suppress the statements from being sent out so you got it through the door. Take no action till SAR is received. Im sure you will have a good read.

[efreeti]

---

[naughtydruid]

Sounds plausible but the DCA sent out the bill for £32 not powergen themselves. When I spoke to the DCA earlier she also said something really odd which peaked my interest. Something along the lines of a payment of £10 was made against the original which then left just £32.28.

 

She seemed to be reading this out loud from a screen and then stopped herself and changed the subject before I could get to the bottom of what she was saying. Now I sent powergen a £10 cheque for the SAR and made it very clear what it was for and even rang them to check they had recieved it a few weeks ago. It seems as though something weird is going on in the background. It was about three weeks ago now that powergen confirmed on the phone they had my SAR request and would be sending out a confirmation of reciept. I still have not had anything through.

 

If they do not conform to the SAR does that leave the debt unrecoverable?

[ozzywizard]

No it doesn’t unfortunately, they are 2 separate issues. Although the debt cannot be pursued as the account is now in dispute.