Hi there

Many thanks for the information. The problem is that the bills are so hard to decipher!! The chap EDF sent round to assist was very arrogant and insisted that everything was OK and after walking around our house said we would be using approx 43 units per day!!! We gasped as we had been taking daily readings ourselves and they were between 18 and 23 per day (bearing in mind we are both out at work all day) he said that that could not be. SO, I would think maybe you are right and I will check the units whether metres or feet. I have now been paying back over £150 per month to try and get the payments back on track and I cannot change suppliers until I do not owe them any money.

I will now put my brain cells into gear and dig out all the bills and see what I can fathom out. I am 100% certain they are wrong, but if nobody helps you then what can you do!

At one point we did think we were lighting up the whole of the little lane that we live in!!

I will also check the VAT - will keep you informed - let me know if your parents get theirs sorted out!

Best wishes

Hi

My parents are going through a dispute with EDF at the moment with exactly the same circumstances ( back dated over 8 years!!). The problem is that they have a four digit imperial cubic foot meter and EDF charges by the cubic metre and assumes the readings you have been giving and they have been taking from time to time are cubic metres. There is a conversion formula applied to get from cubic feet to cubic metres. See item 11on the gas bill of the following pdf for the formula. http://www.edfenergy.com/products-services/for-your-home/documents/new_bill.pdf If you have a cubic foot metre then, as I understand it, the units used need to be multiplied by 2.83 to convert them into cubic metre units. Hence you get a nasty suprise when they tumble the fact that they have made a mistake!!

My parents is presently with the onbudsman and the hope is that they will be able to negoiate a reduction in the amount owing and agree a reasonable time scale for the money to be paid back. This process can take months but is worth pursuing because it is possible they will be awarded a reduction in the amount owing. EDF has already reduced the figure. Check also that you haven't been charged VAT twice. When they initally demanded the repayment of their money they tried to charge the VAT twice!

EDF has also employed a debt recovery company who take a very hardnosed approach to any debt and EDF didn't sign up to the ERA regs.

Hope this helps, best regards.

They are absolutely appalling! We had the same problem last year when we had paid our electricity bill by direct debit, phoned through our meter readings and had umpteen people come to read the meter.

We then got a demand for approx £1800 underpayment!! Like you we were horrified, but to keep a very long and complicated story brief we had to pay it - we too never received any apology. We asked for someone to come round to explain it to us and all he did was go round the house telling us what each individual item would use in a day and according to him we were using 45 units per day (bearing in mind we both work all day).

When we started to take daily readings for approx 6 months we were actually using 18!!!!!! We cannot explain what was going on, our friend who is an electrician was at a loss also! We just had to pay it back. We have since been advising people not to go with EDF. Once we have finished paying back what they say we owe we will change suppliers.

Anyone else had problems with EDF

Thanks.

At the very least they should let you pay over a year or two. If you accept the £890 bill as correct and asked to pay it off at, say £50 per month, I am sure that EDF would be very happy with that result.

You must check some bills against your meter to be sure that they are doing the right thing. It's also worth listening for the "clunk" and checking the time that you change from day to night rates. You will also be right to dispute any bills that do not show a clear and fair apportionment of the electricity usage between the different rates over the past years. If the bill does not show any detailed calculation or if the calculation doesn't seem fair, you should write to say that you disagree with the total, explaining why.

It's worth contacting http://www.energywatch.org.uk/ if you feel that you are not going to get anywhere worthwhile with EDF.

You should read the second to last point on this energywatch press release. There was a 2 year limit on how far back bills can be backdated (it's now 1 year) but this is only when the supplier has not sent out any bills. If you contact energywatch they will advise whether/how this applies to your situation.

http://www.energywatch.org.uk/media/news/show_release.asp?article_id=972

Having just cleared our domestic electricity bill with EDF - we were surprised to receive a phone message asking us to contact them. Well, my wife phoned them and they said they are ringing to warn us that they have made a mistake with our bills for the last 4 years where they have been charging us the day rate for the night rate and the night rate for the day rate.

They said a new bill is on it's way. We couldn't really believe it but decided to wait for the new bill. This has arrived today and they are demanding £890 to be paid by 8th October.

There is no apology, just a complete cancellation of all the bills we have paid and a new amount owing.

It's not that we have had cheap bills, they have always seemed expensive to us, so we haven't felt the need to check if we have been undercharged. After all we are talking about some of their own readings, some are estimates, and some are readings we have phoned through. Could they really have got it wrong for 4 years?

Have they really got the right to do this, they admitted on the phone it was their own fault - what about the 12 month backdate rule under ERA regulations. Also if we'd have known how much the electric was really costing us, we'd have taken further steps to reduce it. And how do they know what amounts to charge now when the rates have changed about 12 times in that period.

Has anyone any advice on how we stand in this situation - we're certainly not in any position to pay £890 in the next 2 weeks.

Many thanks