Step forward npower and E.On, whose computers seem to have minds of their own.
Last week, The Mail on Sunday invited readers to tell us about outlandish bills or correspondence they had received from their bungling energy supplier – and the result was astonishing.
We had already reported how E.On customer Julia Thomas was told at the beginning of this month that her monthly direct debit would be rising from £125 to a staggering £16,270.
And German-owned E.On told Julia, a 42-year-old administrator for the Royal College of Nursing, that her gas bill for the year ahead would be in excess of £90,000.
But Julia’s astronomical bill and projections – the result of a faulty gas meter – are a mere pittance compared with a demand Andrew Wilkins received from npower seeking payment in January this year – of a cool £643,794,111.30.
'I could have cried if it wasn’t for the fact that the bill was so ludicrous,' says Andrew, a retired accountant who lives with wife Gwenda, 74, in Witney, Oxfordshire.
'For months, I had been trying to get a final bill out of npower but to no avail,' he says. 'Then, this £694 million bill turns up. What made it even more comical was that this was only for our electricity usage. Not a dicky bird about the outstanding gas bill.' Andrew eventually sorted it all out but it took six months.
Pete Godby, who runs a casting and management agency in Bury, Greater Manchester, keeps pinned on his office wall a 'warning of debt collection' letter he received nearly five years ago from E.On, his business energy supplier.
Pete, 50, who has TV actors on his company’s books including Sam Aston (Chesney in Coronation Street), says: 'I am constantly at war with utility suppliers. But this letter beats the lot.'
Andrew and Pete received bottles of champagne from The Mail on Sunday for revealing their extraordinary experiences.
