Should I pay this bill?

[Barbaro]

So back story simply:

Moved into our rental house at the end of march
Got letter through saying supply for electric is with company a for the house when previous tenants had it
Decided to stay with company a and called them to get put on the account which was done

However, unknown to us, the rental agency had told company b to put the electric supply back to company b after ex tenant moved out, and then told company b to add our names to the bill without telling us.

Company b then cuts off company a's access, no one tells us anything, and in July we get a bill for almost £250.

I think the letting agency should pay this for not telling us plus its almost double what company a would have charged us.

Am I being unreasonable? We don't have the money for this and we had been told by the letting agency to sort out our own suppliers.

I think it's quite easy for a third party to change utilities. We once had a first demand for a water bill because someone had phoned up our water supplier and told them we had moved out and they had moved in. They hadn't I think they must have just got the address wrong but from that it seems that kind of thing is fairly easy to do. But if it's the electricity companies fault then that's a whole different ball game. Can you ask for the recordings of the phone call they claim you asked for electricity in?

You need to put a complaint in writing to both companies, A for not writing to you to confirm they’d stopped supplying you and B to complain they didn’t write to tell you their tariff, ask B to write off the part of the bill over and above what A would have charged you.

I work for an energy supplier and can tell you this does happen unfortunately.

As you did not agree a contract with company B they did what is call an erroneous transfer. If it is under 6 months and you are still at the property the supply can be returned to supplier A who would charge you at your contracted rates for the time that your supply was moved.

If the supply can not go back to supplier a you need to complain a lot and get supplier b to bill you to your contracted rates agreed with supplier a. They will want proof of these rates.

If supplier b refuses to do this tell then you will go the the ombudsman. You have to follow the complaint process first but most of the time in these circumstances the ombudsman agrees with the customer

You will have to pay as you did use the electric but you do not have to pay the out of contract rates supplier b is giving to you at the moment

dancingphalanges that's good to know from your side of things thank you. I think it is just an erroneous transfer and I'm conducting all contact via email now for proof. They said they had correspondence from my letting agency and I've asked for proof of this, no word back yet.