Legal threat - over nothing

[TheGuru]

An energy company threatened to take a Manchester man to court - over an "unpaid" bill for £0.00p.

Dave Abrams, of Wythenshawe, was astonished when he received the letter from Powergen, reports The Daily Mirror.

Mr Abrams, who is in his 50s and lives alone, switched energy providers from Powergen to npower several months ago.

He heard nothing from Powergen until the legal warning notice came through the door.

The letter, dated October 19, warned Mr Abrams he owed the company £0.00 for gas and electricity and said if he did not pay up he would be visited by a debt collection agency.

It added that he could also be taken to court and, as a result, may find it difficult to obtain credit in future.

Mr Abrams said: "I was a bit nonplussed when I received the letter. I couldn't understand why they'd sent it, as I was on a pre-pay meter."

Powergen confirmed the letter had been sent out in error - but said Mr Abrams actually owed the company £502 after paying too little for his energy when the price went up.

But a spokeswoman said: "We have now withdrawn the balance because we made the mistake by not calibrating Mr Abrams' meter."

I would have not been amused

[Waldo]

There are so many horror stories relating to each of the power companies it's hard to know who to choose. To be fair we've been with npower for quite a few years now, and apart from a desire every year to put up the direct debit payment (which I refuse to do) they've been OK.

[Waldo]

There are so many horror stories relating to each and every one of the power companies it's hard to know who to choose. To be fair we've been with npower for quite a few years now, and apart from a desire every year to put up the direct debit payment (which I refuse to do) they've been OK.

[Nutty_ZA]

Your lucky you have a choice... We have one (previously state owned) Electric Company in SA (ESKOM)... And they have admitted that they cannot handle the current required capacity.. so we have frequent power outages as they "Load Shed"... which involves cutting of Power to certain areas for a couple/few of hours and rerouting it to other parts of the country... We had no electricity at home yesterday for about 5 hours, which I can handle... It's when they cut off the power to Sandton(which is now the major business district in Gauteng) during Peak Hour Traffic... it took me over 3 and a half hours to get home a couple of Fridays ago (normally takes me +- just over and hour) as all of the traffic lights were out... About 1 month ago, they failed to inform the sewerage plants that they were load shedding in their area, and cut off power to them... They ended up "spilling" over 200 million litres of raw sewerage into 3 major rivers

[TheGuru]

Originally Posted by Nutty_ZA

so we have frequent power outages as they "Load Shed"... which involves cutting of Power to certain areas for a couple/few of hours and rerouting it to other parts of the country...

Thats really bad

I bet it causes some really big problems, some of which must be life threatening

We are lucky in the UK that we can choose who we pay the bill to. However it does still come down the same grid. We could therefore also suffer load shedding should demand get too high. I dont recall it ever happening though. I do have hazy childhood memories of loss of electric power due to strikes.

Also a couple of years ago there was a worker on an electricity pylon who had a heart attack. They quite rightly turned the power off to a large area so they could rescue him. I dont think he made it though

[madcat]

We manage our account online with Scottish Power and get a nice discount for doing so... easier for them I suppose. We never get meter readers round as we do it ourselves.

We are lucky in the UK having a choice of companies, but they all spin their stories to sound better than they are, so finding the best one can be a nightmare!


MadCat

[Waldo]

Originally Posted by madcat

We manage our account online with Scottish Power and get a nice discount for doing so... easier for them I suppose. We never get meter readers round as we do it ourselves.


MadCat

I like that idea - even when we've had meter readers round they never seem to get the info back to the company in time for the bill!! What a waste.

[madcat]

Originally Posted by Waldo

I like that idea - even when we've had meter readers round they never seem to get the info back to the company in time for the bill!! What a waste.

Thats so true, when we had our meter read, the bill still came through as estimated... useless!


MadCat