Billing

The dispute

The consumer had been with the supplier for several years and for the previous six months had been billed for electricity using estimated readings only. The supplier had not used the actual readings provided by the consumer and meter readers as they appeared out of sequence. The consumer believed that they were being overcharged as the estimates were much higher than the readings showing on the meter and raised a complaint.

The supplier acknowledged that the account was running smoothly with all meter readings falling in line with one another until around six months ago when a problem had arose. It explained that eight months earlier a meter reader had taken a reading of 34518 from the meter and three months later the consumer provided an online reading of 00056. As the meter couldn’t go backwards, the supplier assumed this reading was incorrect and had used estimated readings. It apologised that it had not had the chance to investigate further and said it was dealing with a high number of queries.

The outcome

After reviewing the bills and consumer comments, it was clear there was an issue with the estimates. We asked the consumer what the meter reference was on the meter in their home, and we found it was different to the one stated on the bill. We queried this with the supplier who checked its records further and found that the meter had been exchanged around six and a half months previously and the new meter had an installation reading of 00000. We found that there had been a delay in the supplier updating its systems and it had failed to identify the issue when the complaint had been raised.

We concluded that the supplier had let the consumer down by not looking into the unusual readings and not dealing with the complaint. We required the supplier to re-bill the account and provide an apology along with a time and trouble award to acknowledge poor account management and poor complaint handling.

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