Wrong Address for Meter on Moving House

[nowty]

My daughter, son in law and grandson are currently staying at Nowty Towers because they are homeless for a week between leaving one rented flat and moving into the another one. They are homeless because their landord triggered a two month notice to quit 3 months before their contract was going to end anyway so that they could put the rent up 30% to 40% one month earlier.

They are with Octopus on a good two year fixed deal so they obviously want to stay with Octopus and so they went through the moving home process but their new flat address is not listed. I tried finding it on numerous energy websites and found that there is a gas account (with BG) for their new address but could not find the address for the leccy account.

Octopus says, its not on the national database, sorry can't help, so they can't move the account over.

OK, we got a photo of the meter with the serial number from the agent and I phoned the DNO, UK Power Networks and found that the leccy meter is registered to the wrong address (next door). They say the supply is with Eon, so you'll have to contact Eon as they are the current supplier to get them to correct the record on the national database. Then you can go back to Octopus and change the account over, and then said "Good Luck", which does not bode well.

I'll update this with progress, cos I had experience of Scottish Power, not updating the national database with an E7 meter a few years back. I could not move supplier and it went on for over 6 months before I had a resolution.

[Mr Gus]

The other question which needs addressing is how did it go on this long already & did it cause any legal problems for whoever it is registered to incorrectly, the power company & regulator need to get their sh1t together, ..curious as to how many screw ups such as this are on the books per annum & typical time to correct to those involveds satisfaction.

[nowty]

The other question which needs addressing is how did it go on this long already & did it cause any legal problems for whoever it is registered to incorrectly, the power company & regulator need to get their sh1t together, ..curious as to how many screw ups such as this are on the books per annum & typical time to correct to those involveds satisfaction.

The photo I have shows (as well as the meter), a change of meter card to a SMETS2 smart meter (cos its identical to mine) in Jan 2020 by nPower (now Eon), so that's likely when the screw up was made. As the leccy and gas for that property are currently from different suppliers, that explains why the property can have two addresses in the database, one for each meter with separate suppliers and everything still works. The gas supply with BG is correct but the leccy supply with Eon is wrong. The current tenant may well have signed up for an online account with no paper bills so may not even be aware of an incorrect address and the screw up may have occurred even after they moved in when they signed up to a smart meter.

Even if my daughter gives the wrong address, but correct for the leccy meter to Octopus, that won't match up with the gas meter as they are currently on a dual fuel fixed deal.

I even went onto the BG website and faked a quote for dual fuel for the new address, it came up with the correct address, as they currently supply the gas, but then flagged an error for the leccy meter and requested an MPAN number, as we did not have, the website then requested a meter serial number and that also failed, probably because its clearly registered at a different address.

The flats are in a large terrace London block, circa 9 flats to each house number, but the format of the addresses are not consistent with next door being a hotel with just two entries, one with the name of the hotel and the house number. And the incorrect leccy meter entry just has the house number. So another explanation why its in there and no ones noticed its wrong. All other houses in the street are a mixture of individual flat numbers plus the house number, and a single entry of the general house number which is probably the communal lighting supply.

To make matters worse my daughter had already signed up online to the correct house number without the flat number, so has probably signed up to take over the communal lighting supply.

[Moxi]

Nowty,

Start a discussion with the ombudsmen as well and then copy them in to all future correspondence so they are monitoring the situation, if nothing else it will make the companies pay more attention knowing they are under observation and if it gets to long in the tooth before a resolution the ombudsman is already on board and up to speed with the situation when you ask for an escalation.

Moxi

[nowty]

Nowty,

Start a discussion with the ombudsmen as well and then copy them in to all future correspondence so they are monitoring the situation, if nothing else it will make the companies pay more attention knowing they are under observation and if it gets to long in the tooth before a resolution the ombudsman is already on board and up to speed with the situation when you ask for an escalation.

Moxi

Its not my issue as its not me who is moving so I'm not doing that and I would want to follow the correct process which is to make a complaint, followed by escalation to ombudsman if not resolved within the relevant timeframe.

Octopus is being called today, so they will see where they stand, especially with they fixed tariff.

[nowty]

My son in law is going to call Octopus soon, he's busy working at the moment.

I've just checked the DNO UK Power Networks website to find the MPAN number for the "wrong address" as I forgot to ask the women on the phone yesterday. And I find there are two address entries worded exactly the same in the drop down list when I did a supplier/MPAN number query.

I queried on both and they have different supplier and MPAN numbers, one of which matches the supplier Eon so we now know both the serial no, the MPAN number and the wrong address entry.

[nowty]

It might be sorting itself out.

Octopus still could not move their account over until Eon changed the national database (as the DNO told me yesterday) but they will honour their two year fixed rate even if it takes some time to sort out as it is not any fault of my daughter.

Eon were called and we expected this to be difficult as my daughter is not their customer until they move in next week. But Eon found that they had the correct address on their own system so the bills went to the right address but found the national database was wrong, so they corrected it literally there and then whilst we were on the phone, but said it will take 10 days or so to show up on other suppliers systems.

So hopefully they will only be stuck on the capped tariff for a few weeks after they move in.

[Stinsy]

It might be sorting itself out.

Octopus still could not move their account over until Eon changed the national database (as the DNO told me yesterday) but they will honour their two year fixed rate even if it takes some time to sort out as it is not any fault of my daughter.

Eon were called and we expected this to be difficult as my daughter is not their customer until they move in next week. But Eon found that they had the correct address on their own system so the bills went to the right address but found the national database was wrong, so they corrected it literally there and then whilst we were on the phone, but said it will take 10 days or so to show up on other suppliers systems.

So hopefully they will only be stuck on the capped tariff for a few weeks after they move in.

Sounds like a win!

[Mr Gus]

You are one of the lucky ones.

Where damage to vehicles has occurred on our property by the affairs from Eon & the like, I simply get shut down because they refuse to discuss, ..easy shut down money saving technique from big energy *unts whereby you've got to go through courts for even the vaguest of chances of getting an answer let alone solution & recompense.

Much of the problem being the thick people employed.

[nowty]

Just talked to my son in law and this has only been half sorted out nearly 2 months later. Their gas has been moved over to Octopus on their original fixed deal but the address for the leccy meter on the national database has still not been changed and Octopus are refusing to take them on until EON correct the national database even though they have both the MPAN and meter number.

EON have said another party have rejected their request to change the address in the national database but have not said why.

Meanwhile they are on the capped rate for leccy with EON and he does not think EON will ever sort this out.