Not long ago, we carried a story about a reader who saw her domestic energy bills issued by SSE Airtricity jump by more than 1,000 per cent after an erroneous meter reading was attached to her account by an employee.
The mistake obviously saw her estimated bills soar, and after trying to have the issue resolved over an extended period of time, she was left with a fairly hefty amount of credit on her account. It was, however, credit that she could not seem to turn into the cash she actually wanted.
Her story struck a chord with quite a few other readers, who got in touch with us to express concern about how their energy bills had been managed by the provider.
First up is Donal, who says he was “shocked” by the article – not least because he had had a “very similar experience with Airtricity”.
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‘My mother (80s) is paying €2,200 on her health insurance. Could she get a cheaper plan?’
Donal and his wife signed up to the company after being convinced by a young person who called to their door.
“To be honest we had no problems at all, the meter was read initially and we got the account, which we paid,” he writes. “Then they ceased to use a meter reader, so we began to phone Airtricity with our readings. The bill was sent to us and we paid it without fail.
He says that recently the account “went a bit out of order, with large bills appearing”.
[ Consumers to face more pain as SSE Airtricity raises gas and electricity pricesOpens in new window ]
He says he tried to sort it out and was given conflicting advice by those in the company whom he contacted. He was told to always pay before a certain date, and then told not to pay the amount that the bill sought as “it was plainly out of order”.
His wife lives with dementia in a nursing home, so he enlisted the help of his daughter to see whether they could resolve the issue together.
She takes up the story.
“This has been going on since last September,” she explains. “Each month I’m assured it’s going to be rectified, and it’s not. I’m his carer and he is at his wits’ end. He’s living in the dark and cold, afraid to use light or heat for fear of the bill.”
The idea that a man in his late 70s would be afraid to turn on the lights over irregularities in his energy bill is appalling, so we contacted the company.
In response, Airtricity said it was “sorry to hear of the situation [our reader is in]. We have spoken to [Donal’s daughter] to attempt to resolve an issue where above-normal meter readings have been submitted on several occasions due to an extra digit being added to the reading. This generated an inflated bill, which did not represent the usage.”
Next up was Norman, who says he recently received a gas bill from SSE Airtricity and was shocked to see that the Gas Conversion Factor they used had risen from 11 to 16.
No, we had no idea what that number was either.
He says this “abstruse number is used to convert from cubic metres (which is what is measured by the gas meter) to kilowatt-hours, which is the basis of charging. The change from 11.0 to 16.0 means that the unit price of my gas has increased by nearly 50 per cent. SSE Airtricity never mentioned a 50 per cent price rise, nobody in the media noticed. I was wondering if anyone else had written in to you about this. How can this happen? It seems very arbitrary and high-handed.”
In response to that query, Airtricity said conversion factors are determined by the Distribution Network Operator (DNO). The conversion factor will alter depending on how much energy is released during the process of burning the gas, also known as the calorific value. Colder temperatures and increases in pressure, for example where a building is more than one level above ground, can increase the calorific value and conversion factor."
I sent a more forceful email threatening a report to the Data Protection Commission, and miraculously, Airtricity discovered they could change meter readings ‘on their end’
— Reader Ewan
And then there was Ewan. He left an apartment where he had been living in October 2023 and didn’t submit an electricity meter reading before leaving.
“When the next tenant moved in, they switched supplier, and I believe entered their meter readings correctly, except that they entered the day and night readings the wrong way around,” he says.
“This led to Airtricity issuing me with a bill of €4,300, up from an average of about €150. The day reading on my bill was ‘actual’, while the night reading was estimated,” he explains.
“The new day reading was exactly what my night reading should have been. If I’m right in assuming the new tenant entered the numbers the wrong way around, then this means that my night reading should have gone down massively, but instead they had billed me for an estimated, higher, night read.”
Fortunately for Ewan the apartment’s meter was on the outside of the block, so he was able to go back to take a video, including the time on the meter and the day/night reads.
“When I submitted this to Airtricity by email, they informed me that they cannot change meter readings ‘on their end’, and that I would need to somehow contact the new tenant to reach out to their provider and ask them to correct the reading.
“When I asked on the phone what would happen if I failed to do this, having already proved that the bill issued was incorrect, I was told that the debt would be sold to a debt collection agency and could be brought to court. I’ll be honest, I did laugh at that, and pointed out the difficulty they’d have getting a judgment for money they knew wasn’t owed.
“After a few days of back-and-forth, I had the idea of submitting my request to their GDPR complaints email, invoking my right to rectification of incorrect data. While this was initially declined, I sent a more forceful email threatening a report to the Data Protection Commission, and miraculously, Airtricity discovered they could change meter readings ‘on their end’,” Ewan says.
He says the reason he was prompted to share the story with us was because he is “concerned about the people who lack the skills to argue and force their case as I did. With this kind of practice of refusing to correct what is seemingly policy, it’s difficult to imagine that there are no vulnerable consumers who have been overcharged and threatened with court action over mere ‘human error’.
In response, Airtricity said it understood the “frustration” our reader had in attempting to correct the meter readings.
“We spoke to [Ewan] in late 2023 to advise him that we could not correct the readings on the account since we no longer supplied the property. We advised him to contact the new occupier to correct the readings with their new supplier. We subsequently received notification of the correct readings from the new supplier and issued an updated bill in December 2023.”
