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I’ve taken a utility company on and won!

Roy

We bought our new home last November, the electric meter didn’t work, I notified the supplier and in January a new meter was fitted. For the two months the meter wasn’t working the usage was estimated at £350 of electricity , this is bearing in mind that the house is unoccupied. The company said that they would monitor are usage for two months with the new meter and then adjust it.

I’ve been emailing and explaining that the invoice hasn’t been adjusted, it now stands at £477. The company finally emailed back and said that the invoice is too high and offered £72 off and as a good Will gesture make it up to £100. Their computer had formulated a spreadsheet and it was attached.

My instinct was the person had gone to their supervisor and been told to offer us £100. I looked at at the spreadsheet and could see it was incorrect, the pattern in the numbers wasn’t right. They had purposefully made the spreadsheet look complicated when it wasn’t.

I emailed again and explained that their calculations were incorrect, no reply. I then sent my working out of the spreadsheet and pointed out that they had the day and night readings in the wrong columns. My other point was that in the first two months we had apparently used £350 of electricity and for the two months with the new smart meter we had used £54. 
No reply for a week, a rather ‘sheepish’ reply finally came, “ We are extremely sorry and seem to have made a genuine mistake with your account. We have now calculated that we have overestimated your account by £300. Please accept our sincere apology.” I had calculated it at £298 but there had been a price increase within the period.

I have decided to gracefully accept their apology and refund, I know I’ve still used a lot of my time for nothing but I have enjoyed the ‘sweet smell of success.’ 

Parents

  • Welll done you, I've finally, just about sorted out my problems with the energy supplier. They keep on at me about getting a smart meter and I keep teeling them our house is unsuitable for one as the walls are made of mixed materials, some of which is 2 foot thick stone and the signals don't travel through the walls properly and we have boosters all over the house, we even have a seperate booster so as the thermostat for the boiler in the hall can tell the boiler when to put the heating on.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    Thank you, my house is the same, walls are 2ft of stone. The aerial on the meter seems to work as it’s near a window. An electrician is due to start rewiring the house soon, all the heating is being hard wired as the same problem with signal would occur. They are running some sort of media cable and points around the house but then I would need broadband.

    When I bought the house, the account was £2500 in debt but that’s another story. I got that wiped as well.

  • in reply to Roy

    Is having broad band such a problem? I know many people get it with thier mobile contracts, but we don't, we use BT and have sinse we moved in, there are fewer options out of cities and as they all seemed to want a BT landline connection anyway we thought we'd just go for BT and cut out any middle men. BT are aboiout as good and bad as any other provider, great when it's working awful when it's not, but when our signal got so bad their own speed test whatsit got timed out at 3am they gave us a discount.

Reply
  • in reply to Roy

    Is having broad band such a problem? I know many people get it with thier mobile contracts, but we don't, we use BT and have sinse we moved in, there are fewer options out of cities and as they all seemed to want a BT landline connection anyway we thought we'd just go for BT and cut out any middle men. BT are aboiout as good and bad as any other provider, great when it's working awful when it's not, but when our signal got so bad their own speed test whatsit got timed out at 3am they gave us a discount.

Children
  • in reply to Roy

    If you don't need it yet then theres no point in paying for it, 3mbps is pretty low I think? I think thts about what we were on but it kept dropping to about half of that.

  • in reply to TheCatWoman

    I have nothing against broadband, it’s just the house is unoccupied and I don’t see the point of spending £30 per month, plus the speed quoted is 3mbps, my phone is faster on 4G. I agree that BT is best, we had it in our last house, if there’s a fault it’s easier to report it straight to BT.