Huge electricity bill after joint tenancy ended

[CheeryCat]

Morning. Can anyone please offer some advice so that I can help my 20 yo DD?

background: She lived in a flat share for 18 months with two different joint tenants, who lived there one after the other.

Both times, she had a proper joint tenancy through an agent.

They paid electricity through Split the Bills and another similar company.

I don’t think they took a meter reading when they moved out in October.

The utility company has now got hold of our home address and she is aggressively being billed for over £1000 based on estimated readings.

My questions are:
Can they legally pursue her for this amount without even taking a reading?
And if they have no readings then how do they know she underpaid while with split the bills etc?
Can they legally pursue only my DD and not flat mate A or B? (B now lives abroad…)

Obviously we plan to contact the agent and request a reading from the moving out date three months ago but what if they didn’t take one ? (DD did not have a key to the meter cupboard when she left)

Would be glad of some advice on legal aspects before contacting the utility company.

Btw DD is on minimum wage and quite vulnerable due to ADHD/ MH hence my involvement. .she’s losing sleep over this

tia

Anyone?

they will come after whoever they can find ImE

Whose name was on the utility bill? Was a meter reading EVER taken and given to the utility company or has it been estimated for ages? Has the bill been calculated on current prices, as that would bump it up (you could argue to spread the Units across the life of the tenancy and have it billed at the prevailing price).

I had a similar situation with British Gas about 20 years ago, it was my name on the bill me I made sure to take a Meter reading when I left so I was in a better position than your dd.

I actually moved in to my flat share part way through the tenancy and took over the bills as my flatmates were useless. Basically the landlord and my flat mates had NEVER properly handed the account over, across several changes in tenants; people had moved in and out and the account just kept changing names never properly closed and reopened, with estimated readings all along the way. It was a mess.

I argued very, very hard with BG that the bill couldn’t possibly be correct based on the number of months I had lived there. I asked them for a complete breakdown of all the billing charges month by month going back over the period they wanted to charge me for. They were unable to produce a proper account history.

in the end I got a cheque in the post from them for £2000 - I called up and said, “look BG your billing is bonkers - I didn’t owe you a grand, and you definitely don’t owe me 2 grand, what have you done?” They had no clue and told me to cash the cheque! I did, and saved it, and FIVE YEARS later they wrote to me and said “please can you pay our £2k back”.

in short: KEEP ARGUING, involve the landlord agency and be clear that you paid all bills presented and if no meter reading was taken then argue that was their responsibility and you will not bear any further costs.
The utility companies are a shambles so you may get away with it