Pauline Hinton is a strong, independent 84-year-old woman who has bravely managed the day-to-day demands of living alone since her beloved husband John died four years ago.
She devotedly cared for John, to whom she was married for more than 30 years, when he was bedridden for the last six years of his life. Retired, Pauline survives well on her own, aided by a modest civil servant’s pension earned after 30 years working in London for the Treasury.
However, Pauline has faced a seemingly insurmountable challenge which she says had “defeated me and left me scared”: the “intimidating” demands of more than £6,500 from utility giant British Gas, which began to arrive via from your mailbox in October. It was a bill Pauline insisted she didn’t owe.
To add insult to injury, the energy company also continued to send letters addressed to her husband, John, a former black taxi driver, who died at age 89. This despite Pauline’s pleas for it to end.
Pauline had a monthly direct debit of £300 set up for British Gas which covered her electricity bill. But in October, British Gas said it wanted to increase it to £828.84 because it said it had an outstanding debt of at least £6,500, which it planned to recover monthly.
British Gas explained in a letter, sent to John, that it was adopting a new billing system. Pauline feared that was where the problems had started. I was terrified. “This was a bolt from the blue,” he says. “I was afraid that they would allow me to do this and I felt helpless.”
He called British Gas countless times protesting the size of the bill and begging it not to increase his direct debit. However, the energy giant took £828.84 out of its bank account in November.
Only after it threatened to cancel the direct debit entirely did British Gas agree to reduce the figure to £300 from this month, but did not cancel the outstanding debt.
Pauline said British Gas’ incessant demands for reimbursement of a huge bill she didn’t owe left her suffering sleepless nights as they were “slowly but surely breaking my spirit”.
Pauline says: ‘The stress gave me sleepless nights and I would stay awake worrying about what British Gas might do next. I can use the computer, but I still prefer to use the phone, but on calls they passed me back and forth. They were slowly but surely breaking my spirit.’
Pauline is not the only one suffering under the weight of shocking (and insurmountably large) bills from energy companies that are both unfair and almost impossible to correct. Consumer charity Citizens Advice helped more than 52,000 people with energy bill problems between January and October this year, equivalent to one person every two minutes.
Energy bill problems have been the most common topic discussed by Citizens Advice staff since March this year, with almost a quarter of bill problems involving a shock or recovery bill where you suddenly Households are charged for energy they used some time ago. The average catch-up bill in the last year was more than £2,500.
British Gas is among the worst culprits. Of the 12,568 complaints dealt with by the Energy Ombudsman between July and September this year, up to 6,758 came from British Gas customers. The most concerned billing.
Pauline and John moved from London to the rural village of Llanwrda in Carmarthenshire 22 years ago. The three-bedroom cabin sits on three acres of land and has a river right outside the front door. The couple used to raise chickens, ducks and cats over the years. Pauline now only has 17-year-old cat Taylor for company. Her two children visit her when possible, but they live two hours away, near Cardiff.
As far as Pauline was concerned, the usual £300 a month direct debit arrangement was more than enough to cover her bills. Pauline pays British Gas for her electricity and her bills are kept low because she uses an Economy 7 discount rate.
These rates charge two different rates for electricity use, depending on the time of day. Customers typically pay half the price of electricity between midnight and 7am compared to those with a standard offer. However, the daily rate can be up to a third higher than the standard rate paid by someone who is not enrolled in Economy 7. The widow uses Flogas liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) separately for her hot water and heating needs, for which she pays around £1,300 a year.
Pauline says British Gas has only had a couple of actual meter readings in the last four years, and most bills are estimates. But this year he started taking his own readings because he didn’t trust the energy giant to get the readings right.
Within hours of Money Mail contacting British Gas, the utility giant spoke to Pauline on the phone and canceled her demands for extra money.
British Gas explained to Money Mail that the reason the bill soared in the autumn was because it had previously been based on “historical estimates” and not actual usage.
He said the bill was calculated by adding up monthly payments over several years.
However, so-called retroactive billing rules applied by industry regulator Ofgem state that you cannot be charged for energy consumed more than 12 months ago if you have not had an accurate bill before, have not been previously informed about the charges and whether you had a direct debit that was too low to cover the charges.
As soon as he cleared Pauline’s bill for energy used more than 12 months ago, he left her bill in credit. British Gas said it would refund £944 based on updated calculations.
A British Gas spokesperson says: ‘Mrs Hinton’s electricity bills had been estimated for some time and direct debit payments did not match actual usage. We have applied late billing credit and your account has a credit balance that we are refunding. We have spoken to her to apologize for not resolving this sooner.
Pauline says: “British Gas also apologized for sending letters addressed to my husband and said this should no longer happen.”
If you have been sent a shock bill that you believe is incorrect, make a complaint to your energy supplier. Details on how to do this should be on the provider’s website.
If you want to write or send an email you can use the Citizen Service complaint letter model: citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/template-letters/letters/energy-letters/.
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