The backdated bills for prepayment meters
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Prepayment meters should be an ideal way of paying for electricity and gas on a budget - customers pay for their energy upfront in the same way as a pay-as-you-go mobile. That's why six million of us currently use them. But some prepayment customers are receiving a nasty surprise in the post - a bill for energy they thought they'd paid for in advance.
Samantha England has paid for her electricity by prepayment meter since 2000, but received a bill from E.on in June 2008 for £1,162. She was told that her meter hadn't been updated by engineers for price rises dating back to 2005 and that E.on wanted to bill her now for the difference.
The practice of sending backdated bills to customers is known as 'back billing' and E.on isn't the only energy company billing prepayment customers - Scottish Power and npower do it too. The problem often arises when the companies increase their prices but engineers don't manually update old-style 'token' meters. Customers unknowingly build up a debt because they're being charged at an incorrect rate. Newer key meters aren't affected.
When Watchdog rang npower to investigate a customer's sudden bill, we were told that engineers hadn't been going out to adjust the tariffs on people's prepayment meters following price increases and that hundreds of customers were affected. Npower does reduce the backdated bills it sends out to £70, but the other two companies don't.
Token mistakes
Steve McIver is a prepayment meter customer with Scottish Power. He's been landed with two debts on his meter because of mistakes by Scottish Power. It claimed in a letter that it hadn't been able to update his meter to account for six price rises since 2003. It also claimed that he'd missed an appointment he'd made with them to update his meter on 14 September 2005. But Steve would never have arranged an appointment then - he was on his honeymoon.
David Orr, chief executive of The National Housing Federation, told us he believes that back billing is outrageous when the three other big energy companies - Scottish and Southern, EDF Energy and British Gas - don't do it.
E.on has apologised to Samantha and has written off her entire balance. It says the situation wasn't solely down to price rises but was complicated because of her personal circumstances. It urged customers to tell them when those circumstances change. The company aims to replace all token meters by June 2009 and has asked E.on customers who still have the old token meters to call them to arrange to get them changed. Its number is 0115 843 4167.
Npower says that it's still finding it difficult to gain access to customers' properties to change meters and urges token meter customers to contact the company so that it can do so.
Scottish Power says that the debt on Steve's account was because of a technical fault on his meter and that the customer service advisor who told him his bill hadn't been updated since 2003 didn't provide him with the correct information. It disputes that his debts are to do with recalibration and although customer service representatives from Scottish Power told Steve and Watchdog that they hadn't been able to update his meter, they claim they were able to.
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Having been a member of the ESI Prepayment meter committee for the opening of competition in 1998, many of the issues you raised were made at the time.
1st Token meters were supposed to be going to be eliminated. Those are the ones with a cardboard card that you have to put into the meter. I still see cardboard tokens on sale in my area today.
The problem with cardboard tokens is that there's no feedback of the meter reading to the system and no way to automatically alter the meter tariff through the system.
2nd Keys - these systems allow some feedback of the meter reading, and possibly some way to program the meter, but this depends upon the system in use.
3rd Smart Cards - these allow companies to control the tariff and put new settings on the meter.
Back in 1998 the old electricity suppliers did not want to allow pre-payment meter customers to change supplier. The argument was they would have debt, but I now think the real reason was they could be charged higher prices for their electricity and interest on their debts.
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I was billed for £150 on Aug 2006 for my electricity meter from British Gas. This may not seem like much for me it was a lot, I was a single parent on benifits and had to pay it back. I think it is an outrage that i should have to pay for there mistakes.
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Back-dating payments for mistakes the customer is not responsible for is a pretty cheap trick, even by energy company standards. Mind you, these are the lovely people who charge the poorest members of our society more for their energy with their outrageous pre-payment meter charges, so it's hardly surprising that they're doing it.
P'raps next time they want to unfairly extract money from their customers, N-Power, Scottish Power and Eon should simply ride up to customers' doors on horseback wearing black masks and brandishing pistols?
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Card Meter.
When I left my old property I had a demand from Scotish Power for over £600 when I refused to recognise the debt they reduced it to £400 with the option of 50% discount for imediate payment. I still refused to recognise the bill, and refused to comunicate further with them other than via a solicitor.
In the end I received a letter from them informing me, it was an oversite on their part my meter was not updated, and the recalculated it to the effect they owed me some 11P.
Throughout the whole time I refused to recognise liability for the bill, and assumed all conversations could be recorded and worded my response to their questions accordingly.
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I have prepayment meters for both Gas and Electric. The same happened to me with Powergen. My meter hadn't been updated since 2002 and last year my yearly statement came through stating I was in debt by over £100. I checked the tarrifs and realised they were different on my meter against my statement. I contacted Powergen who stated I should have arranged for an engineer to come and adjust my meter each time the tarrifs changed. I'd been previously told by the company that my meter would be changed by the same chap that would come round and read it (which I found out was incorrect). After quite a few phone calls to them, them saying they'd call me back (but suprise suprise they didn't), they originally offered me £5 off the original bill as a goodwill gesture which I told them wouldn't even cover my phone bill. I lost count on the amount of times I called to complain. They arranged for someone to change my tarrif on my meter - they didn't turn up and I lost a day's wage. When I rang to complain about that, they knocked another £10 off the bill. After 4 months of phone calls, they finally wiped the whole debt off and changed my meter to a key one that updates each time I put money onto the key.
I would advise anyone who still has the old token meter to get it changed to a key one asap - and change supplier if their current company doesn't do them. Why should we have to put up with this just because we choose to have meters?
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Since moving into my house in 2003, our supplier was British Gas, we then changed to NPower, a few years later when we tried to change back to British Gas, they wouldn't let us set up a direct debit for our electricity meter, as they kept telling us it was a prepayment meter, eventually they set a direct debit, then a few months later we received a electricity bill for £95!!!
When we queried this with British Gas they told us that we had a prepayment meter, and although they had taken 1 direct debit payment, they had not taken any more. On further discussion my husband threatened them with OFCOM and surprise, although we had to pay the bill, we had two engineers come out to verify that the meter we had was indeed not a prepayment meter. This was about 18mths ago, and as yet we have not had another problem with this, but we watch this space.
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I had an old-style card meter with British Gas. When rates were going up someone would be there straight away to increase the tariff. When rates were falling no one called. When I queried what was probably an overpayment one call-centre advisor calculated I had over-paid by more than £400! He said he could issue a cheque for upto £400, but his supervisor would need to sign off the rest next week. I opted to have it all on one cheque, but following it up the next week I was told there had been a mistake and I actually had a perfectly-balanced account! BG would not provide the details of how this had been calculated, but assured me that their calculations had been checked and were accurate.
When I had the card meter removed and then changed to a ,then, cheaper supplier I DEMANDED that my account be investigated, despite being warned that I would probably owe BG money, and did I really want that? When I said I still wanted to pursue it I was told it couldn't be done. I asked if they had a record of when I had purchased top-up cards and details of when tariffs were due to be (and had/had not) changed on my mater. When they said yes I asked them to send me the details and I would do the simple arithmetic required. I guess they felt it would be better to do it themselves, which resulted in me receiving a refund cheque of £226 soon after! Those that can least afford it are being robbed twice by the companies and old meters, with higher unit rates and 'hidden' costs.
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I was over charged by Npower by £700 and was told that it could be reduced by £70 and that I have to pay it back. It will take until 2010 to clear the debt.
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I have been a prepayment customer for over 13 years for both gas and electricity. Because of some mix up I have had a bill for my electricity for £777.00. British Gas have put a £6 per week payment onto my meter and the letter I recieved stated 'we will put this charge onto your meter as previously arranged' I have not arranged any payment with them as I have never had a credit meter and have always paid by the pre-payment method.
I am in reciept of incapacity benefit and am now at risk of losing my house as I cannot keep up with payments and keep my eletricity supply on. I have wrote to the energy ombudsman and hoope they can sort this problem out for me as I have been in dispute with British Gas for about two years now over this. I did not put the meters in and it is certainly not my fault that I had a credit meter outside and a pre-payment meter inside. Even the engineer couldn't understand why I had ended up with both meters.???????
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my son lives in a flat in London. Pre-payment meter was installed in this first floor renovation. He was first owner (leasehold) after renovation. He moved in in June 2006. Last month he had a letter from e- on saying he owed them £300 approx. as the meter had been undercharging since he moved in! He has had no communication from e-on during all that time. Not one single letter. He phoned their customer relations dept. who reduced it to £200. When he asked to speak to a manager, the bill was reduced to £139. I believe he has agreed to pay this, but I don't think he should. Is there still an ombudsman for cases like this? He really cannot afford this money.
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It seems to me that when a customer pays for a card or pays to put value on a card which is then put in a meter there is at that point an offer by the energy company to supply the customer with energy up to the value on the card. The customer accepts that offer when he or she puts the card in the meter and starts taking the energy. It is then that the contract is made this is exactly the same as if you take an item priced at £10 to the check out in a shop and the assistant says that will be £5 and you pay it. Again the contract is made at that point and you have paid the price demanded.
So if the meter is set to give the customer energy at a price that is the price demanded and when the contract is made it is all settled and the energy company have no power to go back on that contract and demand more money.
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Back-billing pre-payment customers by Suppliers that cannot be bothered to update their meters is an outrage. Ofgem have treated the offending Suppliers with kid gloves for far too long now. They must outlaw it at once as part of a Supplier's licence and fine them accordingly. If Ofgem do not act quickly, back-billing will be a massive problem because of sharp price increases.
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We had much the same problem with a card meter, and now are in debt with E-on. We were assured the same thing would not happen with a key meter. But were not surprised when the debt kept rising. So having a key meter didn't make any difference. They have changed our rate now and we are paying about £80 a month, an increase of £30 to £40 pound a month. We cannot change our supplier because of the debt, so we feel they have us by the short and curlies!
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After watching this week's show on pre paid meters,2 days later I received an elecricity bill from Eon for my pre pay meter for £318! In aug o8 they changed my token meter to a key meter, then i receive this bill! Obviously I am unhappy about this , but not sure where to go from here...?
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I have a card meter and a bill from npower for £485. My meter is in a communal area outside my flat,therefore easily accessible to enable any changes,yet nobody has been. I am changing to British Gas who have said they will change to a key meter before the end of the year. I live in hope as I do not want this situation to re-ocur.
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I have an e-on meter and in Oct 07 i recieved a back bill to which by now i should of paid off" but i have not-On the new bill i got it says that i still owe £162...I pay £20 a week and i do not know where the money is going too? As i am very carefull with what i use as i am on a low income and thats why i wanted the meter to keep an eye on what i spend and have NO bills...The new letter stating what i have paid and what i still owe-states that prices have gone up and some one will be round to alter the meter to re-flect the new price" NO one yet has been to up-date it so is this a new debt?....So it leaves me still being in debt with e-on and me still recieveing bills" When i want to Pre-Pay for what i use!! I do not think that they are being fair to us at all and i also think that they are using this option to keep their customers! As it says on the bill- (You must clear your debt balance before you apply to change supplier otherwise we may stop the transfer)? there words!! They know that people on low incomes have meters-and can not afford to pay the debt in full)..I feel TRAPPED, because thats what they are doing to us on meters.
Why are they not changing the meters to re-flect the price change? I signed up to a PRE-PAY meter and its NOT..
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On October 8th I was informed by Southern Electric that my Electricity charges were raised as from 25th August! This is the second time they have told me after the event and it prevents me from reading the meter - so they guess how much at original price nad how much at the new 16.9% increase. This is a con I should have a months notice minimum. Any way the price of oil has halved does that mean lower prices. No chance.
[Personal details removed by Moderator]
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I couldn't believe it when i saw the programme about the energy companies charging people for electric they've already paid for, i am going through the same thing my self with scottish power billing me back from 1999. They are trying to bill me for £2000.00 for electic that ive already paid for with a payment meter and card, they have told me i must find out who my provider was and find proof, this has cost me in phone bills and worry and they say i am liable for the cost. They now have sent the debt to a debt collection agency even though i have gave them all the information i have, i think its disgusting what they think they can get away with.
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I moved out of a property in March where I was paying for electricity on a prepay meter. Prior to moving I wrote to E-On advising of my moving date and also my new address. Imagine my surprise when I received a letter last week from a debt recovery agency advising they had traced me to my new address and that I owed E-On a total of £1077.44. I called the agency the following day and they advised that this was a recalabiration charge relating to a period of Sept 1999 - April 2008 (I believe from the energy watch website that energy companies can only collect monies owing from the past 12 months, no earlier than that). I asked how this could be possible when I had been paying on a meter I was just given the same answer again. After getting nowhere for nearly 5 mins the only thing I could get the agent to agree to was to put my account on hold whilst he obtained a copy of my bill from E-On providing I put a request for this in writing to them, which I promptly did by fax. To be honest E-On can send as many bills as they like for this 'outstanding balance' I will not be paying it. As soon as I do receive a copy of this bill I will be pursuing this through Enrgy Watch, and if necessary I will fight this in court. I find this behavior absolutely disgusting, it's like buying something from a supermarket and then 6 months later getting a letter from them advising the item was mispriced and requesting the difference. The onus should be on the energy companies to ensure that their rates on meters are correct, it shouldn't be the responsibility of the customer. If they can't get it right then they should take the hit, as soon as they start to loose money they'll soon ensure the meters are correct!!
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I cant believe that from when I moved in my home 2004 ask for a pre payment meter so I didn't have no large bills and now 6 weeks ago they change my meter.
Yesterday I called e-on to say I cant find a gas debt I'm paying back on the electric pre payment meter and they said oh no that's not what your paying back yet, you have to clear your
$662.00 debt(from back billing ) because your old meter reading wasn't right ?
we would have billed you more but they are only allowed to bill me from 2005-2007
then I was told I had been giving the wrong meter again and it is being changed next week cos the one I'm on is meant to be for people with electric storage heating and it was a like for like swap of meter , and this new meter will save £177.00 a year just for changing meter this is such a disgrace
1.£662. back billing
2. wrong meter installed (when they supply the gas central heating why would they give me a meter for storage electric heating?
3.put the debt on my meter with out me even knowing
E-on have said I have to pay it no matter what can anyone advise me please !!!!
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I am a [Company details removed by Moderator]prepayment customer i put money on my metre every week but thought it was a bit odd when i topped up on friday by £15 and by wednesday this had gone, i immediatley got on to scottish power and they told me i have a debt of £73 which they have added on to my account and have decided to take £15 per week off with out telling me. I am so angry as i am the only person working in my house as my husband has just ben laid off and i definatley cannot afford £15 to come off my meter and they cant even tell me where this debt has come from. Can someone please help
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i am a prepayment meter customer for both gas and electric when i first moved into my property June 18th 07 i requested a prepayment meter for my gas it wasn't till Feb 08 my meter was put into place with a debt on it as we were not able to afford the bill that n power had sent us the first problem we had was with our electric that had been over charging us we had asked plenty of time for an engineer to come out after 6months and no one coming to fix the meter we changed electricity suppliers with a balance of 0pounds 0pence but we were not able to change our gas due to debt for any debt on a meter they take 70% of every payment you make and £5 a week towards debt then also your weekly standing charge of £3.50 so we requested a different way to pay as our debt kept rising due to outstanding standing charges they dropped the weekly repayments to £3 a week this DEC we took out a social fund loan to pay off the complete debt as trying to keep gas on our meter was getting even more difficult i have a one yr old child to keep warm so we paid 231.13 to completely clear the debt we were told we had to make 3 payments to the meter before it would clear from the meter 3 payments that take 70% each payment for a non existent debt we paid these 3 payments the debt hadn't cleared instead they had sent the wrong signal and doubled our debt they are refusing to send an engineer to clear the meter completely and told us we have to make another 6 payments taking 70% each payment to clear they re mistake from the meter since we paid our debt on the 22nd DEC 08 we have paid £37 and are now on emergency as we have lost £29 to a non existent debt were a low income family and cannot afford to keep paying credit to our meter as with every £10 paid on £7 gets removed so they are placing us back into debt as our £3.50 standing charges cant be paid.we have now also been told we owe them over £100 in debt for electricity?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
for 5 years i had a prepayment meter,and last year i had it changed to a key meter, thinking that with prepayment meters i couldnt be in credit or debt i never looked at my bills,two months ago i looked at my bill only to discover i was £1200 in CREDIT..i contacted eon who said it would take four weeks to look into my account,as a team of people had tp be set up to doit, after four weeks i contacted eon,only to find out nothing had been done about my account,( which is now £1300 in credit )..i was phoned back about 30mins later by a eon employee who informed me that it is impossible to be taht much in credit and it was a fault when the meters were changed.. but they kindly offered me £30...but if my meter (which was installed because a previous tentant was in debt ) was set at a high rate to pay off the debt was never reset then surely i could be that much in credit...i feel eon are giving me the runaround...i have heard of people being in credit with a prepayment meter ( but not by such an amount )..i just wonder what my next course of action should be
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I am a prepayment meter customer with Npower and i have had nothing but trouble for a start there is over £500 of debt that was already on my meter apparently in my name. When i disputed this and told them that it was the previous tenant they asked me to prove this with a letter from housing benefit and from the landlord, which i did they are now saying they never received these invoices but in a previous conversation with them they said they did, they not willing to come to any comprimise regarding this and i have to pay nearly £6.00 a week off of this debt which leaves me with hardly any gas and i have a four month old baby. It's like banging your head against a brick wall!
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Well it seams the same problems are occuring recently I was contacted by NPower to change my old card prepayment meter for a new token meter. My wife and I thought about this and decided that we did'nt need economy 7 or a pre payment meter and would rather an hourly meter so as we can pay be direct debit. This I informed to NPower and they assured me they could put in the new meter without economy 7, they finnally turned up on the 24th Feb after I had bought more card tokens and told me that they would send me paperwork to cash in cards. This they still have not done then it gets better a bill arrives for £359.49 like so many I am furious as I was pre paying for my electric and gas I phone up their helpline to no avail only to be told it is my mistake that I still have economy 7 and a large debt that they would reduce to £70.Then I get another bill this time from collections direct for £388.21 so it has gone up, again another phone call to NPower they say I only have to pay £70 but that is what they said before.Why should my family pay for their mistakes? and still have economy 7 I inform them I will be changing supplier and their answer to this is "that would complicate matters" Whos complicating matters?
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