Anyone that's good at deciphering electricity bills (or just a bit more clever than I am)

[McQueensMuse]

I'm possibly being thick here but I cannot make head nor tail of this.

I changed suppliers in March/April of 2020.

I had called previous supplier to give readings and was in credit.
I paid what I'd estimated would cover until the changeover and heard nothing until I received a debt collection letter in November 2021 saying I owed £1200

Its been ongoing and ended up in court and I had a sheriffs officer at my door (am in Scotland)

They were very nice and advised me to get in touch with the solicitors who were dealing with it.

I did and their response is below.
It's as clear as mud to me and I don't know where to grow from here to be honest!

Dear McQueensMuse

Firstly, I apologise for the delayed response, I refer to the above matter and further to your telephone conversation with our office 15 June.

Our clients have confirmed that the principal debt is mostly a catch up bill from December 2019, as this was estimated meter reads and when meter reads were given in March 2020, these were significantly higher which did result in the catch up bill being produced. On this basis court action was raised on the correct balance. I detail the following breakdown below on how the balance was calculated.

16/5/19 Account has credit transferred on to it £185.72
11/6/19 Bill produced £93.03
Account in £92.69 credit
30/8/19 payment £10.56
Account in £103.25 credit
11/9/19 Bill produced £227.27
Account in debt £124.02
01/10/19 Payment received £130.00
30/10/10 Payment received £130.00
2/12/19 Payment received £130.00
Account in credit £265.98
5/12/19 Bill produced £229.97
Account in credit £36.01
31/12/19 Payment received £130.00
30/01/20 Payment received £5.00
3/03/20 Payment received £5.00
Account in credit £176.01
1/04/20 Bill received £624.26
Account in debt £448.25
Final Bill 01/05/20 £509.99
Account in debt £958.24

We trust this assists and look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards
SOLICITORS

Do you have any meter readings from this time period?

You are completely up to date with your new (current) suppliers, is that right?

The response looks like to me that your payments into the account haven't met your usage needs, so at the end of that period you owe them £1k. Assuming the extra £200 is the collection fees! Did you move house? Have you had zero contact from them about this? Odd they wouldn't attempt to get payment before sending it to collections.

Do you have meter readings? Standing charges and rates?

I've got no meter readings whatsoever now.
I'm completely up to date with current supplier.

How could it jump from £448 owed (1st April) to £958 owed (1st May) when in one month? When I left them in March/April?

Do you have the bills prior to the final bill? That would show meter readings or if it was an estimate.

It looks to me as though you have not been giving the old supplier up to date meter readings, while you were with them.

So they were estimating your gas and electric usage but when they eventually got up to date meter readings, there was much more usage than what they had estimated.
Therefore, I’m sorry but you owe them the money, as far as I can tell.

I wonder if the final bill includes the £448.25 you already owed and has been double counted. This would mean the electricity consumed in April was £61.74. It seems almost unbelievable that such a mistake would get as far as a court case without getting picked up but it does read like that.

The problem is that it’s all just numbers on paper. You need actual evidence from the company concerned. Like a first bill, which should have the same start meter reading figure as the last bill from your previous supplier. That’s your starting point.

If you got estimated readings for a year/years plural, and only just got a bill that was based on an actual meter reading at the end, then this could definitely explain why you are in debt.

If you have a meter reading at the end you can see how much you’ve used between starting and ending with the company.

Unit prices went up A LOT so it could be that this has also had an impact.

It looks like they were just using estimated readings to produce the bills and when you left you produced an actual reading which generated a final bill. You’d used much more than they had been estimating. In all likelihood you owe the money.

The massive jump from £176 in credit to £448 in debt could very well be due to estimates versus readings, I could accept that (although I did give them readings in January or February, I forget now it's been so long)

But the April to May jump has me stumped when I had left them at the end of March.

You need to get a copy of all your bills, and meter readings. It seems like they had been going on estimates and recalculated based on your final reading but you need the data to show it.

Ovo recently applied a £1500 debit to my bill because they had been applying estimated readings. However we'd only been with them six weeks at that point, so I'm pretty certain it's wrong, but 2 years and an ombudsman investigation later we are still fighting with them over it, so don't assume they've not fucked up somewhere.

Did they send you these bills? Or when you say 'heard nothing' do you mean that the bills were not sent?

I received no bills at all as everything was online.
I daresay I could have downloaded them when I was with them but what I was paying seemed about right so I didn't access the bills side of it.
I cant access my account now.

I can ask the solicitors dealing with it if they can request the bills.

I've asked current suppliers to give me summaries of my usage 20/21 21/22 and ask solicitors to get OVO to compare them to their data for 19/20
Surely there will be a discrepancy there.

I assume the April bill was still an estimate and the May bill was generated using the actual meter reading from your disconnection date. So actual usage from December to the disconnection date was £958, which might seem high BUT if you've always been paying based on an estimate that you probably won't have been starting from £0 in the December

I would request copies of all the bills as this will show you whether they are all estimated readings until you submitted your actual final reading, and you'll see the periods covered by each bill

You may need to check this but I’m pretty sure that any debt over a year old cannot be chased on gas / electric , particularly when they did not tell them you owed money when you left them. It is their fault for not giving you an accurate final bill upon leaving. I would contest this and not pay it.

If you'd not received a bill within 12 months of it being due, and assuming you've not changed address and have received no correspondence regarding owing money in 12 months, they're talking out of their arse. It's their problem. Check with CAB.

You can contact your previous supplier and ask for copies of all your bills to be sent to you

without that information it’s really hard to know

If April bill was an estimate, would it not be more in line with the previous estimates though?

I can accept that possibly the final bill could include catching up on underestimates of previous months using actual readings but that doesn't explain the two massive bills.
I promise I didn't grow weed for a month 😁

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/information-consumers/energy-advice-households/check-energy-back-billing-rules#:~:text=You%20should%20only%20be%20charged,ask%20for%20the%20full%20amount.

Sorry about the size of the link!
It's comes down to when you last received a bill from them.

The April bill is for winter months though, so they'll have estimated you've used more energy than during the summer months

They absolutely must give you the actual bills though so you can see your usage and charges

If it went to court you must have copies of the documents and the bills

My apologies in advance if I sound thick, But if April is the actual readings bill for over the winter (which I'm assuming it is, it must be as they had been given my final readings in March)
How can there be a further £510 charged for April to May?

First you forget utility bills went sky high last year so no your estimates would have been totally wrong. Second your totally in the wrong you did have bills in an online account and chose to ignore them. Third you didn't put in proper meter readings just kept it estimated this always making it higher. Tbh it's all on you and yes you do owe them from what I see. Burying your head in the sand hasn't worked.

@Ladyj84 I'm aware they went sky high last year.
What's that got to do with 2019/2020 bills which is what I have posted about?

@Ladyj84 also I did give them meter readings in January of 2020 and when I left in March.
Prior to that they sent someone out to read the meter quarterly.

Depending on when you gave the readings in March, the bill for 1st April might have already been generated so its only been processed for the 1st May bill.

If the 1st May bill said it was for usage between 1st April and 1st May then that's obviously a problem, not least because you werent using the supply.