Electricity back-bills

I heard a short item on the radio4 "Today" programme saying there were thousands of people who had been incorrectly back-billed for electricity and this started alarm bells ringing in my mind.

A year ago, we received a letter from our electricity supplier saying that their estimates of our electricity use were incorrect and that we owed them £3,000 going back to 2014. As you can imagine, this was a dreadful shock. We protested and they eventually agreed that we could pay in instalments over 4 years.

After hearing the radio item, I checked on-line and found that Ofgen rules, brought in at the end of May2018 say that companies cannot back-bill for more than 12 months, so I put on my tin hat and phoned my supplier.

After many long on-hold periods and being passed further and further along the line, I eventually was allowed to speak to a manager. He immediately said that I was right and would probably be due a "substantial" reduction in the bill. To be honest, he sounded as if he was saying "Whoops, we've been rumbled."

I won't get a definite answer for 2 weeks because of their complaints procedure, but thought I'd tell you now in case any of you have been back-billed incorrectly (fraudulently?) since May 2018. There doesn't appear to have been much publicity about the Ofgen ban.