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

According to the summary from the solicitors, your account wasn’t billed in January. So if you gave a reading, this reading wasn’t used to bill your account up to date.

The credit balance you would have been given included your latest payments but your account hadn’t been billed since early December, therefore you had the coldest months of the year still to be charged for, so obv £10 wouldn’t cover anything near that. This may have been further impacted if your december/previous readings were estimated.

It may also be worth asking the solicitor to get hold of any notes from that January call that are on your account, as I doubt the recording would still be available now.

Thanks, That's really helpful.
I'll give current suppliers a call today and hopefully get the necessary info from them.

I didn't give SSE my closing readings (I'm not sure where I said that but if I did it was a mistake)
The readings I gave them were in January when I was thinking about leaving at the end of the financial year.
Account was in credit at that point and I was advised that the credit should cover me until end of March (plus £10)

I was/am on a vulnerable persons register type thing with electric companies due to physical difficulties but I don't know if that would make any difference in terms of their t&c's

Due to an error on their part I didn't receive any emails but as you say I'm sure there was an option to download/print a bill so I could have done this.

I've just remembered I had a facebook messenger chat with someone from SSE, I'll see if I can find those and post them here
(I can't remember what's in them but hopefully they are still available)

This may be the problem then, The SSE rep (january) said that the account was fully up to date using the readings I had given her, That doesn't doesn't sound right then?

If you’re vulnerable in a way that you’re physically unable to take your own readings or submit them, then you should have informed SSE about this and they would have made special arrangements on your account. But it sounds like you are able to take your own readings so this may not be applicable.

Did you ever inform SSE you weren’t receiving email notifications? Is it possible they were going into your junk folder?

Also please see my other post. It doesn’t look like your account was billed in January, so any credit balance you were given wasn’t up to date.

Yes that may well be the issue. If you look through the summary from the solicitor, there is no ‘bill produced’ in january. So worth mentioning this to the solictors and ask them to contact SSE who should have a log on you account of you speaking to someone.

What was your payment method? Were you paying £130 by direct debit or another way? I think it would be difficult for the agent to change your payment from £130 to £5 a month if it was by DD. Were you just making adhoc payments onto the account?

The jump of your final bill may either be because the first reading was understimated, or because SSE didn’t get the right reading from your new supplier. If you’re able to prove you were given the wrong advice by the agent about payment/credit balance, you may be able to agree a discount on the bill due to ‘failure of service’ as a gesture of goodwill. But to be completely honest, I strongly believe you do owe at least some of this money, as you underpaid.

Payment method was using a debit card which was saved to the account (if I'm remembering correctly)

I've trawled through FB messenger and found the messages from SSE, Would you mind having a wee look at them?
Can I PM them to you?

Also meter was changed in 2019 so readings started at 0000 then which perhaps makes things easier.

Yes go for it :)

Also if you haven’t already, check whether this is impacted your credit score.

That's them all sent @MariaVT65
I can add the meter reading pic here.
(I'm not sure why he was asking if it was definitely correct as it was a photo I sent. 🤷)

Hi OP, I’m glad you’re getting some help from Maria. The way I read the figures is that you pay a monthly amount but are billed quarterly so what you’re paying each month is to pay for the forthcoming bill. Any credit isn’t overpayment it’s just sitting there waiting to be wiped out by the next bill. So by paying £10 for 2 months it wasn’t ever going to cover the next bill. Also if you gave a reading in Jan then the April bill may have only have been adjusted up until this meter reading and then estimated again for Feb and March and maybe some of April. When they got the actual closing reading the account was then adjusted again as the estimates were too low. This would explain the large bills in April and May. Although without the bills and actual meter readings / dates is very hard to tell.

@MariaVT65
This is the first bill from UW

@MariaVT65
One from last May and most recent one!

Thanks so much for all the info you’ve sent to me via DM :)

So, in summary, i’m sorry to say I think you owe the money and there have been 2 different issues here.

-The first issue, as I suspected and as confirmed in your webchat with SSE is that the agent didn’t bill the readings you gave them in January 2020, therefore the credit balance given to you wasn’t up to date.

-This has been further impacted by the fact that your latest bill before that time was estimated (in December 2019) and had likely been underestimated. The latest bill you’d had with accurate reads was September 2019.

-So by all means ask the solicitor to liaise with SSE to look at the notes on your account to see if there is a record of any call you made in January 2020. If there any clear notes that confirm an agent suggested it was ok for you to pay £5 a month, then you may argue a slight discount off the bill as a ‘gesture of goodwill’, but the reality is that you do owe the money as you underpaid for what you used.

-The meter readings used to start your UW account match the readings SSE used to close your account, which is good. However, in terms of explaining the jump in your final SSE bill between March and April 2020, i’d say this has been caused by the incorrect readings being used to close and open your accounts. However, as you have accurate readings from June 2021 that you took, that both start with 08, i’d say you’re using an average of 4000 kwh per year each for day and night. This means you because of the wrong readings used at the switch, yes you’ve had a huge bill with SSE but it’s likely you’ve then underpaid with UW for that year, so it evens out.

-You mentioned that you’ve either been liasing with the debt collectors, or had the one online chat conversation with SSE. Debt collectors don’t know the ins and outs of energy accounts. If anything like this happens again, contact SSE immediately by phone to raise a formal complaint. This will ensure the bill is investigated properly and a hold is put on the debt process. It’s quite possible at this point that SSE may not be willing to look into the failure of service issue or not grant any discount due to the amount of time that has passed and that you perhaps haven’t been proactive enough in looking to resolve the issue and pay the bill.

-Those last 2 screenshots you sent to me from UW are also all estimated. Please from now on, submit accurate readings for all your bills. If you receive an estimated bill, submit accurate ones immediately and they will send you an amended bill with the correct readings. Having bills with accurate readings is really important. I would also urge you to submit accurate readings this week so you have an accurate idea of what your current balance is.

Best of luck Op :)

@MariaVT65
Thank you so very much for all you've done, You've really helped.