I just had an energy bill cancelled after months of them chasing me. This is what happened.

[WhenImTwitchingCurtains]

(Reposting here and I just wrongly posted this in Chat).

I just had an energy bill cancelled yesterday (after months of them chasing me), so I thought I'd share what happened:

When I moved into a new property last year I picked up the card that the previous energy supplier had posted through the door, so I got in touch and gave them gas/electricity readings. I am a loyal customer of a specific energy provider so I knew I wanted to switch which I went on to do. I then was billed by the previous provider which came to around £8, so I paid it immediately and then switched to the new provider. Several weeks later, the previous energy provider sent me a bill for 3 days' use which came to £100+! The property I am in does not have a smart meter so it was their estimated reading.

Obviously, I was furious. Since that time, the previous energy provider was chasing for payment and I wrote to them about 6 weeks ago to say that I didn't agree with their estimated £100+ bill for those 3 days. It was very hot when I moved here (there was a heat wave at the time), so the heating wasn't on, and I wasn't in much as I was eating out a lot at the time. The dryer also wasn't working and I didn't have a TV at the time so there was nothing that pointed to high energy use.

I contested the bill, raised a complaint and then the previous provider wrote back a few weeks later to say that they looked into the complaint and still believed that their final bill for me was correct and so they weren't going to budge on the £100+.

This escalated to the previous provider calling me every day (once in the morning and once in the evening!) chasing me for months. I didn't answer the phone for a while. Last week, I got very fed up and I wrote to them to explain that I don't believe their bill was correct, wasn't reflective of my use over those 3 days, and informed them that I would be making a complaint about them to the Energy Ombudsman.

This is the response I received from one of their managers yesterday:

'Although we do feel the final statement we sent to you was correct I am happy to resolve your complaint by crediting you with £xxx.xx which will close the account and take you to a £0 balance. If you would still like to take this to the ombudsman and are unhappy with my resolution please do let me know.'

So if you feel that your bill is incorrect/unfair, it is worth a try if you didn't know about this or haven't done so already.

I want to add that I am not trying to encourage people to have their energy bills cancelled. My previous post is more about how to challenge bills where you feel unfairly charged/overcharged.

Similar happened to me. In the end I had to threaten to call the police as they were harassing me with constant calls. For example...

missed call 10.00
Missed call 10.02
Missed call 10.05

And so on! It was horrendous. That was SSE and I still have the email with the apology and confirmation that I didn't owe anything. Nasty fuckers

They harassed me despite having my tenancy agreement that showed the dates of my tenancy. They wanted me to pay £500ish from 6 months beforehand.

@WhenImTwitchingCurtains Keep all your letters and emails just in case they come back and try it again in 6 months time. X

Was it Scottish Power by any chance? DD had similar issues when she moved into her first flat alone. They also responded months later, cancelling the bill and saying she owed £0.

However, beware OP... 2 years down the line the bills and phone calls started again! Unfortunately DH had thrown away our files thinking 2 years had gone by so it was all sorted. We went to the ombudsman at that point.

Omg what a cross post with @thenightsky about keeping letters and emails as they'll come back in the future.

It's awful...

SSE are dreadful they really are, you can’t understand them (in Asia that’s why why)

We had this when we moved into our current house. It was NPower, who don't exist in that name any more, as far as I know.

They were being very intimidating, threatening debt collectors and ruined credit ratings. I was in an IVA at the time and had a lot of experience of standing up to debt collectors, knowing my rights and my credit couldn't have been any worse, so it was all water off a duck's back, although it would have been very frightening to many.

I just stuck to my stance of 'send me a correct bill for the two weeks that you were my supplier and I will pay it straight away' and after a few months of going round in circles and getting OFGEM to intervene it was finally sorted, and I paid a correct bill of around £15 instead of the much larger amount that they were claiming that I owed.