Estimated Bills caused large debt

[verycatchy7939]

Ask the section manager (the manager's manager) to set the complaint to deadlock. This way it will be escalated to the Ombudsman who will most likely rule that the spirit of the Billing Code be applied

 

totally good advice

[mwacuk]

Hi Sorry about that comment i was completely inapproprate (i aint going to make up excuses). Anyway Ive worked at Npower for the last 5 years. I work with the disputes (and often complaints) department. I previously worked in backoffice billing (extreamly boring) ive also worked in the contracts department. Ive never worked in the call centre and most of my experience is either gather by myself or through colleagues. (Any trainings fairly non existent).

 

I do agree that what i said was abit blunt and probably not true in all cases. However it is abit naive to beleive that some customers don't already know they are been underestimated and therefore purposely avoiding payment. I get annoyed with colleagues who have a hardline approach to every cas regardless of the circunstances, there are genuine people who do find themselves in mess often the fault or part-fault of the supplier. It certainly annoys me the policy that suppliers hide behind the DC or MOP but then employees are often powerless to do anything different.

And actually in many cases its me arguing for a fairer deal for the customer in regards to payment plans/discounts. Managers nearly always take the hardline approach (they usually dont have to face the customer, and when they do they simply throw discounts and writeoffs left right and centre because they cant be bothered to argue.

Cheers

[verycatchy7939]

the problems with the industry will only be sorted if all the electric companies bring both the Meter operators and the Data collectors(meter readers) in to line. this is the problem in the industry no really individual billing systems.

[sfuk]

nd we wont go in to the Siemens data hole from 1995 to 1999 when they all all the prepayment meter payment are reading data was lost

 

Ah the good old days.

[Rio2London]

Hi everyone, I wanted to give you an update about the process and thank all that took time to post a message in assistance. It was great to have received help fom knowledgeable people that help out of pure generosity.

 

I am just off the phone with an e.on's manager's manager and have settled for a deal.

 

e.on said that my case would not fall back into the back-billing regulation because they claim to have sent me e-mails asking for the readings. They say they have used e-mails because it was my chosen form of communication when I 1st signed up.

 

I have never received any e-mails from e.on but they knew where to send me threatening letters with intention of court action, so I find it amazing that they would allow estimates to run for 40 months and never send me a proper letter. I am not sure why the e-mails never got to me (maybe spam filters, maybe misspelled, maybe they never sent it).

 

In answer to a comment posted: the meter was in the hallway with public access and e.on had made regular readings but chosen to ignore them because they (or someone in their behalf) have changed the meter but did not register the change in their system. For 3.5 years I was given estimates by e.on and on hindsight I should have called to ask instead of paying the bills without paying attention to what was written, but unfortunately this was not the case.

 

Despite having agreed to stop the threats of court action while we were in discussions, e.on sent my case to a debt collection services firm and I received another letter threatening court action. They claimed it to be unintentional but it felt like they were trying to buly me to pay.

 

I sent e.on an e-mail based on the arguments that I have lernt from this forum and some Internet research. In the end e.on still said that they did not feel that the billing code would apply but that they would apply the "spirit" of the billing code to the case. Their offer was for a 50% discount on the latest bill which was already recalculated with the correct prices/readings for each period. I close it with 1 payment.

 

NUMBERS:

Their initial claim was for £3,300

After several iterations they recalculated the value to: £2,300

And finally offered to close the deal at: £1,150.

 

FOR PEOPLE WITH A SIMILAR ISSUE:

During all the stages of our discussion the e.on person on the other side said that reducing the charges further would be impossible and that none of the regulations that I brought up would apply to my case. Then later or in another call they would came back with an idea to bring the charges down. They always use hard-line language despite their tone.

 

The Ombundsman post cases and I looked for examples similar to mine that would support mine, example:

Doner Report Week 25/2008

1.5

C received large bill in July 2007 backdating usage to 2003. The company had used estimate readings rather than the actual readings it had taken. C disputed the bill and the charges raised. The Company investigated and applied a goodwill credit due to the problems experienced.

The Ombudsman required the Company to only backdate charges twelve months, offer the C a payment plan and apologise in writing with a further goodwill gesture.

 

I have also quoted the Ofgem regulation about back-billing:

"Back-billing: ... From July 2007, energy suppliers should stop seeking payment for unbilled energy where a supplier has failed to bill for over 12 months and is at fault for not doing so."

 

"The measure proposed here by Ofgem seeks to mitigate one dimension of potential financial uncertainty that a customer can face in dealing with their energy supplier. This should simultaneously have the effect of increasing suppliers’ incentives to reconcile and update their customers’ accounts in a timely fashion. While suppliers should in general already have this incentive, the prospect of being obliged to write off debt in the event of failure to bill within the new permitted deadlines should further motivate suppliers to manage their billing expeditiously."

 

Only after 8 weeks of opening your complaint you can go to the Ombudsman, it is important to make sure a case number is given to the complaint and I recommend recording all calls (you have to get an ok from the other person to record it).

 

SUMMARY

I find it incredible that e.on gets away with back-billing people through cajoling them with their call-center scripts. It takes a lot of stamina to take a case to Ofgem. Their strategy was to resist and push back, then escalate to a manager for more of the same. I felt alone and intimidated by the threatening letters with capital COURT ACTION written all over.

 

But, I feel I stood up reasonably well and that we reached an agreement close to what would be fair based on the Ofgem regulation. It was important to show some knowledge of the regulations and process and the help I was given in this forum has helped me a lot.

 

Thanks to all, particualrly verycatchy and clare.

 

Regards, Rio

Edited November 19, 2008 by Rio2London

[Clare_L]

You are more than welcome. In regards to the email, may be worth requesting an SAR, that way you will know what email address they used as it could have been an error on there part, plus you will be able to see when they requested the information.

 

Well done for for getting something out of this, may not have been the result you had hoped for but with an SAR you may be able to turn this around.

[Rio2London]

e.on could probably reduce the charge further but it would cost me more time and stress, plus the risk of having my credit rate stained by e.on.

 

I am satisfied with the result and have paid the amount proposed.

 

Cheers

[verycatchy7939]

By law they must physically read a meter every 2 years. May have changed though re above thread. Definately contact energy watch though.

 

 

 

 

not law but best practise guidelines

[verycatchy7939]

glad you got a good out come carry on with the SAR though theirs debt recovery charges to reclaim

[gemgem83]

Hi - im wondering if ozzywizard is still on here and if he could help me with a problem i am having with Eon - im in a bit of a state and dont know what to do! I have seen ur advice to others and would really appreciate a moment of your time. thanks. Gemma

[Clare_L]

It may be worth sending Ozzy a pm which would notify them by email as Ozzy isnt on here that often.

[indebtstudent]

Good result here well done. One thing that came to my mind reading this if a data collector doesn't keep an appointment to read a maeter the customer gets a payment under guaranteed standards. This comes from the power company and they get it from the data collector.

 

Surely then if a meter has been changed by a local company and this info was not passed through to the relevant supplier thier should be a similar process in place???

 

Also there must be a way to set the billing system up so that if x no of meter readings get rejected the account gets flagged in some way...

 

In this scenario even if the customer had read the meter themselves this too would have been ignored and, crucially, there may have been no effort to inform the customer of this. In my opinion there is too much of a burden on the customer to sort this out, lets be real here how many ordinary people have the slightest idea that a meter has a certain lifespan and needs to be changed every so often? How many would think 'hmm I'd better check the meter serial no against the one on my bill just in case'.

 

Much room for improvement here, but good to see a positive result for the OP.

[Surfer01]

Be warned they will throw D10's (data flow) at you - that is a record of no access of the meter reader

 

I thought it was D4s which show failed visit.

[billpayer]

Hi Verycatchy7939 I wonder if you could help me.. Ive received a bill for almost £4000 from my electric bill, it came apparent when i was looking to move suppliers and I wanted to know how much electric i was using that i found all my bills were estimates. The electric company claimed to have emailed me but i really dont have any emails and i didnt realise that my meter had been read for so long. I work odd hours and so am never there when the readers have called and its one of those jobs you think you will do later but always forgot. As it my meter has not been read since 2008 I have pointed out the bill cannot be for a year and must have been over the last few years and they have knocked off a small amount and have offered to spread the bill over 3 years but this still seems very unfair. Surely they had a duty of care to make sure that i had correct bills, ive always paid my bills on time and when the amount i paid reduced i just presumed this was because i had recently become divorced and was now living on my own. Ive read much about this and it appears that most people say ofgem wont back me up as i should have provided readings can you please give me advice.

[mattlamb]

Have your bills/statements been really low since 2008 (when the meter was last read). If they weren't, I woulkd suggest that the catch-up bill for £4000 is incorrect.

 

When the last reading was taken in 2008 did you check that at the time to see if it was correct? Was it a reading obtained when you transferred to your current supplier or when you moved into your home? If so, it would be a starting reading and may be wrong. If it was too low it would mean that you have been billed for electric that you haven;t used yourself (instead the previous resident would have used this).

 

Also, has your electric meter been changed since the last reading was obtained in 2008? Does the meter serial number on your bill (a letter, followed by two numbers, then one or two letters, then several numbers - eg: S86E75321) match up with that engraved onto the meter? If it doesn;t match up, again your bill is likley to be very wrong!