A reader who saw her estimated energy bills from SSE Airtricity jump by more than 1,000 per cent as a result of a typo by one of its employees has now spent more than a year trying to extract a refund due from the company with no joy at all.
The story – which is, we’re not going to lie, a little convoluted – started at the end of September 2022. That was when Anne submitted a meter reading of 70245 to the company only for it to be mistakenly entered in the system as 72450.
“This amounts to more than ten times my average reading,” Anne says. “Prior to the mistake, my latest bill was €106.92; my first bill following the mistake was €1,133.3, and subsequent estimates were based on this.”
She says it was “manually transcribed (not even cut and paste) and obviously there were no alerts in place to monitor for this type of mistake. They also recorded it as an actual reading, which it was not.”
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She ended up overpaying for a few bill cycles and was, at one stage in credit by €2,397.74."
“In January 2023, when I noticed the mistake, I sent an email with a fresh meter reading,” she writes. “I tried phoning customer service on numerous occasions – the call was never answered and never returned.”
Eventually she got a reply to her email.
This is what it said
“It seems that when adding the read on your account on September 30th there was a typo. Apologies for that. I know it might be quite inconvenient but for us to be able to amend the reading on your account we will need a time stamped picture of your electricity meter. It needs to have your meter read serial number and some proof of date be it a receipt from a shop a newspaper or mobile phone [with the] date and time in the same picture so we are able to request with ESB networks to review the read [and] add it on the account.
“Once you send the picture please call our customer service team to advise of the e-mail reference number so we can send the picture as quickly as possible to be amended. Once it is corrected we can request a new bill to be calculated and any credit due for that can be refunded ... you will also be able to discuss compensation for this issue.”
A picture of her meter with today’s newspaper visible in the frame? Sounds to us like Airtricity were treating it like some class of hostage situation.
Anne pushed back.
“I sent a complaint to customer services, marking it for escalation, as I understood this was flagging it as a complaint. They yielded on the time-stamped photo, but demanded another fresh reading.”
In a new email, Airtricity told her that she could “either call in with a new read as we are quieter these days in the early morning or you can send in a read by e-mail as we are not too far behind in these at the moment either. Once we have the new read we can e-mail on to ESB Networks to advise on the correct read and to get this amended with them and your bill reissued. Apologies for the agent who took the reading incorrectly at the time. It is human error at the end of the day.”
Human error at the end of the day?
We don’t know if that made Anne feel better about the situation. Actually we do. It didn’t.
As it happens, when this correspondence landed, she was away from home and unable to send another fresh reading.
She had already sent in a reading when she notified them of the mistake in January. She told them that.
“I apologise for the inconvenience you have had because of this but we would need an up-to-date meter read to bill you,” came the response. “And then if there’s any overpayment[it] will be refunded to you. If you can’t give the meter read it is OK as your next bill is due on February 21st so it would be advised to submit meter read by the 15th of March for an accurate bill for quicker resolution.”
The mail added that she should consider contacting the company over the phone and she was told it would take 10 days for any refund to land in her bank account once it was logged in the Airtricity system.
“There were numerous emails back and forth, my explaining that I could not submit another reading because I was away from my home, and their replies saying they would continue to estimate until I submitted another reading.
“In March 2023 they credited my account with €30 as some form of gesture,” Anne says.
She sent a complaint to Commission for the Regulation of Utilities, but “they wouldn’t entertain me without a complaints number, and SSE Airtricity had not given one”.
“The CRU suggested I complain to SSE Airtricity Complaints! I sent a hard-copy letter of complaint to SSE Airtricity Complaints at their Leopardstown address. I got no reply. I re-sent it a couple of months later, around August 2023, and again I got no reply. Then they lost my email correspondence!”
She knows this because in another mail she was told that someone in the customer service department has “reviewed your account and unfortunately I am not able to locate any readings sent on January 30th could you please send us here your recent gas and electricity reading so we can check this for you apologies for any inconvenience caused”.
So Airtricity continued to estimate Anne’s bills “in the full knowledge that the estimate was based on an erroneous value”.
“At the end of March 2023, I returned to my home, and immediately submitted a fresh reading, and requested a refund. I got this reply,” she says.
“I have reviewed your account and updated your electricity meter reading. There is no credit to be refunded yet since your last estimated invoice is due to be processed by direct debit tomorrow, April 4th. I can see that your gas invoice was also estimated but there was no recent accurate gas reading on account either would you send us a gas meter reading in order to have both invoices corrected.”
Anne says that it “seems I didn’t send it on a date that suited them! At that stage, I gave up. I knew they were simply making a fool of me and had no intention of refunding me, and I could not face the frustration of more emails from them, bamboozling me with reasons why they couldn’t refund me, and then telling me to have a nice day!
“Since then, I have submitted numerous readings via my online account, and the meter has also been read by the official meter-reader (a human). All that happens is that the credit balance on my account is adjusted, but the overcharging is not refunded.”
She reiterates that her last bill before the typo that started the whole palaver was “€106 and this was normal for me. The first bill after the mistake was €1.133. And because subsequent estimates were based on this error (even when they knew it was a mistake!), the next bills were also overcharged. Then when they finally accepted my reading, and adjusted my account, I was in credit by over €2k, but they wouldn’t refund it. Today, I am still in credit by €822.67. There is nothing I can do, only wait for this credit to dissipate with usage over time, and then move to another provider.”
We contacted the company and received the following statement.
“While we always encourage our customers to submit actual meter reads to ensure accurate billing, an error occurred on our part when recording this customer’s read in 2022 which led to overcharging on their account.
“A time stamped actual meter read was required to accurately adjust their billing. The overcharge was then corrected and applied to the customer’s account as a credit rather than being issued as a refund. We have contacted the customer to apologise for this misunderstanding and to offer them a refund of the remaining credit on their account.
“This issue arose during a time of unprecedented call and email volumes, as we worked to support all our customers in dealing with the cost of living and energy crises, and we apologise for the misunderstanding.”
