Tenant left with debts

[PavingSlabRed]

Tenant of many years has now moved on. Found that unbeknown to us, he had swapped the gas and electric meters to prepayment ones. After several weeks of sorting it out, it has become apparent that the tenant left debts of £7000 on the gas and £4000 on the electric bills. I have been told by the energy provider that we don't have to pay the tenant's debts. They have refunded us for the money we have accidentally paid off the tenant's debts when the money we were putting on the meters was being swallowed up.

My question is however, will the house be "Blacklisted" even though the tenant has moved on?

I used to work for an energy company, Op.
Basically, the debt relates to a pay monthly meter. If the customer has run up debt, the provider would remove the meters and install the prepayment meters.
Generally, in order to pay off the debt, its agreed that what ever amount you top up, a certain amount is auto deducted to clear the balance. However, a quick call to the company can sort it to let them know you live there and previous tenant no longer there

You can't run up a debt on a PPM, but they will have been installed because the tenant built up a huge debt. The company can recover the debt via the PPM - eg you load up £10, £5 goes towards the debt and you ca use £5. So OP was due back anything she loaded on the PPM that went towards the debt that wasn't hers.

Apparently companies are loathe to replace PPMs once installed. But PPM are more expensive than monthly bills.

My gas/elec bills are about £4k+ a year, hav been £5k in the past so the sums are not that surprising. It sounds like the debts were run up over say the first 5 years and then in the last year they got a pre pay meter but still had the prevous debt.

The debt does not attach to the property. However make sure you have clear written bills you print out of how things currently stand and if you are going to let it again I would set up a forwarding of post for old tenants and for you by royal mail so the new tenants are not bothered by and/or do not ignore bailiff letters addressed to the old tenants and you get in a mess. My daughter once had about £500 of parking fine because her tenants did not pass on a £100 bill to her for some reason and just left it on the side for months so it all escalated. She just paid it off in the end but having post forwarded is a good idea.

We bought a house where it had been let out and the previous tenant hadn’t paid many, of any bills and we’ve had numerous letters and a few bailiffs around. Bailiffs tends to drop a note first and you can call them and explain and send them a pdf of the current council tax bill for proof of who now lives there. In most cases they already suspect that people have moved on but they have a warrant for that address and therefore have to go through the motions of delivering the letter by hand. They have on the whole been very pleasant and helpful to deal with and not at all intimidating.

I’ve only applied for one credit card since then but that sailed through and things like broadband contracts, new mobile contracts etc have been fine too.
As long as you/new tenant keeps on top of returning Old bills or demands to sender and keep a pdf of the latest council tax Statement to hand it’s easy to handle.
Take care and don’t worry!

Sorry for delay in responding. Had to drop a DC off.

Thank you all for your advice and insights onto the situation.

Funny that some of you mentioned a cannabis farm. A few years ago, wires appeared stapled to the front of the house and tenant initially claimed he didn't know how they got there! Coupled with the fact that the curtains remained closed at all times, we wondered if they could be growing cannabis.

I don't think so though. There was a family of six living there, so no room for growing cannabis!

In answer to one PP's question, yes I was given a forwarding address by the former tenant so have passed it on to all of the Utilities companies.

We had exactly the same thing with a previous tenant. The property was being managed by an agent and the contract specifically said they couldn’t change them. The debt stays with the tenant and property is no longer blacklisted by companies- debt belongs to the individual. Was a nightmare for us to sort out because we live abroad but eventually got the meters changed back.

@Thinkle

Thank you. Your post is most helpful. I have already paid council tax so that will prove to any bailiffs calling that former tenant no longer lives in house.

@TheTeenageYears

I can't really get meters changed back as the Utility Company have said that they will make us pay £220 per month which is what they estimate consumption is likely to be. So far, I have only spent about £20 on the gas/electric combined in four weeks. It's therefore cheaper for us to keep the Prepayment.

No the house won’t be black listed. As far as I’m aware that was scrapped years ago as it wasn’t fair, particularly in situations like this.

He will however get black listed if they make the connection who he is

My dh and I have just experienced this ourselves. Tenant moved out early December and since then we have found out that this guy, whilst up to date on rent payments and council tax, owes £3000 to utility companies. We've also had a large number of threatening letters through about a £36,000 credit card debt. We have no idea (and neither does the lettings agency) where he has moved on to but he has obviously moved on as his debts were spiralling out of control and about to catch up with him.

Your property will be fine. You don't need to do anything at all about this. The person living in the property is responsible legally for informing the utility providers that they've moved in, and paying the bills. This has happened to me several times when tenants have moved out (!). You just let the company know that you've taken over and move on.

My first house had pre-payment meters. I was told that i couldnt have normal meters installed until I’d been there for six months as the house had a bad credit flag on it. True enough, once Id been in for six months, they were happy to replace the meters.

This was twenty years ago though.

Just to sort out a misunderstanding here, it is possible to accrue debt while on ppm. It would take some doing to get to the amount owed here, this has obviously been done on a credit meter and ppm fit to control and recover this.

However, on ppm you still pay a daily standing charge. So if you do not vend this does not get paid and becomes debt. This is most common on gas through the summer months, and can mount up. So you don't top up your gas meter, because its hot so you are not using heating. Standing charge (not sure how much that is at the mo, I'm guessing around 25p per day but will depend on tariff) is added to meter, but not paid. I've seen people owe a few hundred because of this.

I agree with @Thinkle - we bought a house where previous owner had run up massive debts and prepayment metres had been installed (house was a repossession so we actually bought from the mortgage company). The only issue was getting rid of npower and the prepayment metres - but even that only took a few months I recall. Bailiffs and debt collectors were no bother and no affect on credit rating etc.

*@FiremanSlam *

Exactly the same with our former tenant. Never missed a rent payment ever, but apparently didn't pay anyone else.

I am amazed that our tenant passed credit reference checks in order to get a new tenancy, but apparently they did!

sounds like there was a grow of some sort, lucky escape. As many mention, the bill is not your problem and not that of the next tenants.

I also think you said you have sorted the council tax - that's where it is your problem, councils always go after the landlord for that. Even if the tenant has legged it and the landlord has to go through eviction to prove the point.

I rented a flat with prepayment meters. When I left, the utility company said I owed them money - probably only about £50, but I refused to pay on the basis that I had put money into the meter for what I had used. They said it was an adjustment or something. Anyway I found out later that my mum paid it off so my credit wouldn't be affected / wouldn't get the bailiffs. I still don't understand how I owed them money.

*@PavingSlabRed

The think that the only people the tenant advised he had moved out were the council. They got the Council Tax bill put into my name, which saved me a job. It has now been paid, so hopefully everything is sorted on that front.

@Xenia

Thank you for your helpful advice. The tenants did get post forwarded by Royal Mail. Despite this, we are still getting quite a lot of mail addressed to them. I must admit, that I have completely lost faith in Royal Mail's efficiency when it comes to re-directing post.

I worked for an electricity company. It is impossible to wrack up that amount of debt on a prepayment meter. Your electricity will turn off if you run out of credit, unless you run out after a certain time in the evening (between 4pm and 8pm depending on your provider) or over a weekend or bank holiday. In this case, your electricity will turn off the next working day. So if your meter ran out of credit on a friday at 4, you can wrack up debt until monday at 9 and unless you have a faulty meter, theres no way that could happen. Economy 7 meters can accrue more debt as they will keep heating your water but if you have gas in, you dont have an economy 7 meter.

The only way to keep your power on with debt on the meter, would be to bypass the meter (illegal and highly dangerous) but then you wouldn't be accruing more debt as you have bypassed the meter.

Contact your utility company and ask them for a usage query to check the meter is reading correctly.

The other explanation is that they were on a billing meter, wracked up huge bills that they weren't paying so the company forced them onto a pre payment meter to clear the debt. They would have had to top up so much a week to stop their power going off, with part of the payment going to energy they were using, and a part to clear the date. If this is the case then the utility company will have much more information on them, and will be able to chase them. They possibly could have had to get a court order to get the pre payment meter installed, so they will be very easy to keep a track of, and none of this will effect the address.

And to the people saying it was a grow house, they would have bypassed the meter. Anyone who wracks up a bill that high in a short period of time throws up red flags within the utility company. They'll get investigated by the companies revenue protection department and will be referred to the police if necessary.

@Confuddledtown

Yes indeed. When we got to the bottom of it, the tenant was paying £7 per week (in addition what he paid to have electricity supply) to clear the debt. On the gas, 30% of all ongoing payments were going to clear debt. I managed to pay a fair few pounds off tenant's debt before I clocked what was happening! I think that the energy supplier was negligent in our case for not ensuring when we took over supply that the debts were cleared off the meter. They updated their own records that I had taken over supply but did not ensure that the meters themselves were sorted.

With the wires, could someone else nearby have been taking their electricity supply through your tenants' meter, so racking up bills for two properties rather than one?