Returning home after doing a food shop, Libby Graham was shocked to find a sign on her door telling her that her locks had been changed due to a prepayment meter being installed in her home.
To add to her confusion, the energy firm that left the notice in 2019, along with a number for a locksmith to contact for her new keys, was EDF – but she and her brother had been signed up with British Gas ever since they had moved into the flat in 2017.
“It was a horrible shock to return home to find someone had been into my home, changed my locks and installed a prepayment meter,” said Libby, 36, who lives in a two-bedroom flat in Islington, north London.
“When I called my brother, he was particularly confused as he said we had never been customers of EDF, so it didn’t make any sense. I rang EDF and explained what had happened. The woman on the phone sounded completely confused and had to go and do some investigation.
“She came back and said she didn’t have our name on the account. But she couldn’t tell us why it had been transferred, whose name was on the account, or why the mistake had happened as it would breach privacy laws.
“As far as we were concerned, our direct debits were going out to British Gas and we had never missed a payment. We can only assume there must have been some debt on a previous owner’s account. But they would not confirm or deny that.”
It was just the start of the ordeal. The notice left by EDF gave a number for the independent locksmith the company hired to change the locks, and said he would get her new keys. However, when she rang the locksmith, he had finished for the day and was on his way to the airport so could not hand over the keys.
Libby ended up calling another locksmith to change her locks to get back into her home: “I ended up sitting on the doorstep for hours with my bags of shopping. It was awful.”
Last week, British Gas agreed to pay £20m into a redress fund and compensate customers if they had had a prepayment meter forcibly installed. It follows an investigation by regulator Ofgem. The complete settlement package will cost the company up to £112m in payments, compensation and writing off customers’ debt.
Suppliers including EDF, E.On and Scottish Power have already agreed to pay compensation.
The i Paper previously ran a campaign highlighting the national scandal over prepayment meters, exposing how debt agents acting for energy firms were using court warrants to break into people’s homes and forcibly fit them.
Prepayment meters make users pay for their gas and electricity in advance. They often lead to higher energy costs because people pay for energy as they go, rather than spreading costs evenly across the year. They also miss out on cheaper fixed-rate deals usually reserved for direct debit customers.
During its investigation, The i Paper discovered it took one magistrates court just three minutes to issue 496 warrants allowing energy firms to force entry into homes and install the meters.
Ofgem launched an investigation, and energy suppliers are now permanently banned from forcing prepayment meters on the most vulnerable households.
Libby, an NHS project manager who now lives with a lodger, said she was stuck with the prepayment meter for more than four years and spent hours trying to resolve it. “EDF acknowledged we had never had an account with them and said they would transfer it back to British Gas.
“I live in a converted terraced house which has three flats in it. Because of the way our building is wired up, the man from British Gas wasn’t able to install a normal meter back because it would mean he would have to turn off the power supply to the rest of the flats in the building.
“Due to the fact that someone could be on something like a life support machine for example, there is a procedure to obtain permission from everyone in the flats.
“The man actually said whoever had fitted the meter had done it in a dangerous and illegal way.”
Libby said she did not know who to follow her complaint up with, as no one took responsibility, and she spent more than 20 hours making phone calls to UK Power Networks (which manages the electricity distribution network), EDF and British Gas. She also had to get the local council – which owned the building – involved, as well as her neighbours.
She eventually managed to get the prepayment meter removed a couple of years ago, but has never received any compensation.
“I felt really violated to think that someone had forced entry into my home and installed a prepayment meter. It shouldn’t happen to anyone, but it was particularly terrible when we had always paid our energy bills and never missed a payment,” said Libby.
“After breaking in, they had installed a prepayment meter for the electricity. However, because of the way we built our kitchen, the gas meter was built into a kitchen cupboard so fortunately they hadn’t been able to do it for the gas as well. But they would have done it for both if they had been able to.
“Electricity costs more on a prepayment meter than a normal meter, so we will have ended up paying more. But it is not just the financial side of things, it is all the stress we endured, the violation of privacy and the inconvenience.”
Libby added: “When I spoke to the complaints teams at EDF and British Gas, no one seemed to care. I even took it to the Ombudsman, but they said that EDF had apparently acted based on the intelligence they had.
“By this time, I was so tired of the whole thing and had spent so much of my time and energy on it that I just gave up. It is absolutely correct that people who had a prepayment meter forcibly fitted in their home should be compensated.”
When The i Paper contacted EDF while the prepayment meter was still in Libby’s home, it would not respond to questions asking why the EDF account had been set up for her and her brother, or whether the reason for the forced entry was a previous owner’s debt.
However, a spokesperson said at the time: “EDF would never switch a customer’s method of payment without any sustained period of proactive communication, which would include a visit to the customer’s home to try and find a solution, as well as identifying any potential vulnerabilities.”
British Gas did not respond at the time to questions about whether the prepayment meter would be removed, but said it would get in touch with Libby to discuss the issue and help her.
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