Off the Grid Electricity

10 replies

Nancy1906 · 09/12/2023 12:44

My close friend divorced 10 yrs ago, bought her house off her ex at the same time. Previously the house bills were in his name and he had mentioned that he felt that the bill he got was only for gas.

As she took over the bills she didn't think twice and carried on paying them. And now she feels ex's inkling was right.. she is only being charged for gas and now believes not one bit of electric has been billed since 2006.

She doesn't know what to do and is utterly panicked, when she called her utilities Co.up they said she only had gas with them.

Shes now making herself self thinking she will have to pay usage since 2006!

Has anyone got any experience of this please?

OP posts:

Diyextension · 09/12/2023 13:16

Free electricity…..mmmmm the rest of us can only dream.

NewFriendlyLadybird · 09/12/2023 14:58

No. How can this happen? Did neither friend nor ex read the bills?

GoodlifeGlow · 09/12/2023 15:04

Yes happened to me when I lived in London and a building had been split into flats. I thought I was paying gas and electricity turns out it was only gas. I tried for ages to get to the bottom of it with the electricity company and they just didn’t know what to do. Eventually i moved out to a different property and that was that. 5 years of free electricity.

johnd2 · 09/12/2023 17:46

They can only back bill you for 12 months if it's due to their mistake. Probably it's somehow been lost from the system or being paid for by someone else!
If there's a meter you might have luck with the national helpline for metering, can't remember what it's called off hand.

DingDongBella · 09/12/2023 17:49

I would keep quiet bit as pp says they can only backdate a certain amount so most will be written off if it ever comes to light.

johnd2 · 09/12/2023 19:09

This is the link to find out, you look up your area phone number on the search and then contact them directly
www.energynetworks.org/operating-the-networks/whos-my-network-operator

Original poster

Nancy1906 · 09/12/2023 19:17

Thank you all. You've been most helpful. She just doesn't want to be lumbered with a massive bill spanning back to her marriage, let's see how this works out!

OP posts:

MarieG10 · 10/12/2023 03:19

This does happen as we experienced it. We were in the middle of moving supplier and the receiving supplier when bust. Electricity had moved over so was moved again to the OFGEM supplier of choice. The gas move had commenced, and not finished so never transferred to the new supplier of choice but had left the old supplier.

Was told to wait and it would sort itself out but never did despite repeated phone calls. Old supplier wouldn't help as I wasn't their customer, new one was closed down and supplier of choice couldn't help as wasn't their customer. Was in no man's land receiving free gas but no bills. Complete farce.

In the end I threatened new supplier of choice with an OFGEM complaint which moved them and they said the only way to sort was to bring me on as a customer ( which I should have been) but they said they couldn't bill me for the long period I hadn't paid despite trying as I had no contract with them. Amounted to about £1500 at the time. Would be double that now.

rwalker · 10/12/2023 06:26

My friend had this with gas don’t know the specific ins and outs of it but they had to pay For historical usage on a payment plan

Ginmonkeyagain · 10/12/2023 09:33

They can't bill you for more than a year but ONLY if you can show you made reasonable efforts to report and fix the issue.

Ignoring it and hoping to get free electricity won't cut it.

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