After a woman from Leicester's smart meter mistakenly suggested she had used enough electricity to power a large business, she received a monumental £27,000 bill from Bulb energy, Leicestershire Live reports. Mother-of-two Paula Coplin, 42, was stunned when she was told her bill as she attempted to claim back credit from her account.
She had managed to pile up over £1,000 in credit on her Bulb account despite seeing her energy bills go up because of soaring gas and electricity prices. She reached out to the company in attempts to get her money back to put towards other bills.
She was told she could not get her money back because she had been billed £27,404.81, and still owed the majority of it to the company. She was told this by a member of Bulb's help centre, who informed her by an online chat and confirmed the scarring amount by sending a copy of the bill.
She then had an exchange with the company, which had been bought by Octopus energy in October 2022 following an administration period, to attempt to find out why she had received the large bill, and to get it corrected.
Paula said: "I was trying to claim back my £1,000 in credit I had with the company - getting in touch via calling and using online chat to try and get an answer. They told me they couldn't for two reasons - one was the fact that they had estimated my gas meter since the pandemic because it had broken, and the second reason was that I owed them more than £26,000.
"This was the first I'd heard of it as it wasn't loading up on my end, so the customer service staff sent me a copy of the bill to my email for me to look over, and I was stunned to see they had suggested I had used £27,000 in energy since my last bill.
"I'm a mum of two kids in a three-bed house, that energy bill would be more than what I'd pay over ten years, and it only got sorted after I raised an official complaint with Bulb. Even then, it took me weeks before they admitted they'd made a mistake and corrected it.
"I found this out in October, on the run up to Christmas, so it caused a lot of problems with our plans. Until they corrected it I was told I had to pay it, and I was told I couldn't get a payment break while I tried to sort out the error. But I did anyway, so I could actually afford Christmas.
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"Even when I got my money back, they only paid me back around £800 of the money as they used some of it to pay the corrected bill. But I've raised the whole situation with the energy ombudsman who will be looking into it."
Paula had set up her account with Bulb in 2019, but had struggles with the company, and specifically with her gas meter. "My gas meter broke during the pandemic and I made Bulb aware of it in 2020, but because of the pandemic they told me they couldn't come out and fix it.
"I told them twice after the pandemic and it's still not sorted. My gas bill has been estimated ever since because they can't get an accurate reading from it and when I first got the huge bill I initially thought it was because of my gas meter - but it was actually the electricity that was high.
"So I've had two issues, I have struggled to get my meter fixed which would have stopped me getting credit paid back out, but also the huge bill which led to all of the credit being taken out of my account.
"Even when they've paid it back in, it's a lot less than what I was expecting, with them claiming I've had a spike in electricity which led to more being added to my bill - but there's no proof of this looking over my electricity usage."
Paula was initially fraught when she got the bill, but her family and friends were quick to suspect something was wrong and urged her to fight it. The bill was only for a three-month period from the beginning of July to the beginning of October.
She said: "I panicked at first but my family and friends told me something was clearly wrong. I'm just glad that it happened to me and not an elderly person or someone really struggling that might have been tipped over the edge by the bill.
"There's a lot going on with high costs and money being tight for everyone, so how they thought a £27,000 energy bill was perfectly reasonable to add to my account and charge me for is bizarre. Surely this should have flagged up on their system and corrected before it even made it to my account?"
Paula has since switched over to Octopus Energy, who now own Bulb, and they have reassured her that this will not happen ever again and are working hard to get her concerns addressed. The spokesperson confirms that the electricity bill was caused when Bulb remotely connected to Paula's smart meter in September 2022, prior to Octopus taking over the company.
But a system error occurred during the reading, making it look like Paula had used more energy than she had - equivalent to 100,000kWh worth of electricity - an amount that a substantially large business would use in an entire year. This resulted in the £27,000 bill, an error which the spokesperson says was "quickly rectified" by Bulb once they were aware of the issue.
An Octopus Energy spokesperson told LeicestershireLive: "The incorrect electricity billing happened when Bulb remotely connected Ms Coplin’s electricity meter to the smart network in September 2022 following a period where they hadn’t received readings from her electricity meter for several months. Bulb did this so they could get regular readings from Ms Coplin’s meter and keep her bills up-to-date.
"Unfortunately, a system error occurred in which it looked like Paula had used a lot more energy than she actually had (~100,000kWh worth) and this resulted in a large incorrect bill on her account for just over £27,000. This error was quickly rectified and the incorrect estimated readings were removed by Bulb.
"Paula's bills were reissued on 7 November to reflect her accurate usage and the incorrect charges were removed. She confirmed this was all sorted back in November 2022."
The company spokesperson also confirmed that Paula's gas meter has not been fixed because it is still managed by British Gas, as it was not correctly transferred over to Bulb when she changed suppliers. This means that neither Bulb nor Octopus were never allowed to make changes to the meter, resulting in the issue not getting sorted.
But now, Octopus is working at getting the meter transferred over, and have confirmed they should have the issue sorted and meter replaced within two weeks.
The spokesperson continued: "The reason why her gas meter hasn’t been exchanged yet is because it is still managed by British Gas (the meter never correctly transferred over to Bulb from her previous supplier British Gas).
"This means Octopus or Bulb are legally not allowed to make any changes to the meter. Octopus is now in the process of getting the meter transferred over to us. Once this is done, we will arrange a gas meter exchange appointment with our engineers (the whole process should not take more than two weeks).
"We will keep in close contact with Paula about her gas meter exchange, and it’s great that customers like Paula have begun to transfer to Octopus, as it means we can sort the problems they had with their previous suppliers, and that they won’t experience any issues like this ever again."
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