Former Extra Energy customer shocked at new £4,000 bill
Money Box
BBC
4.2 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 7 September 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Money Box reporter Dan Whitworth investigates why a failed energy company is still sending bills to customers. Extra Energy ceased trading ten months ago. Last month former customer Diane received a letter demanding over £4,000 for supplying gas to her 2 bedroom home. Guest: Ellen Fraser, Energy Analyst at Baringa.
A savings account that pays a 50p bonus for every pound you save. Just imagine that. Well actually you don't have to because it exists. It's called a Help to Save Account, is backed by the government and was launched last year to encourage people on low incomes who claim certain benefits to save. The Treasury estimates that around 3.5million people could be eligible for the scheme, recent statistics from HMRC reveal only 132,000 accounts have been opened. Guest: Kelly Sizer, Senior Technical Manager, the Low Incomes Tax Reform Group.
Cara explains how she balances running her international online business with being a 14-year-old schoolgirl. Guest: Julian Hall, the founder of Ultra Education which teaches entrepreneurship in schools to 7 to 18 year-olds.
Presenter: Paul Lewis Producer: Charmaine Cozier Editor: Emma Rippon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy. |
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| 0:34.9 | check out BBC Sounds. This is the BBC. |
| 0:40.5 | Hello, well this week, another small energy supplier went bust. |
| 0:44.5 | Eversmart Energy had 29,000 domestic customers who must now wait to see who their new supplier will be, |
| 0:50.7 | and hope that moving their accounts will be easier than it's been for some customers |
| 0:55.0 | of another small firm, Extra Energy, which collapsed last November. |
| 0:59.7 | Ten months on, thousands of customers still have not got their final bills, and some who'd |
| 1:04.8 | have think it is wrong. |
| 1:07.0 | Moneybox listener Diane Frost got her bill nine months after the firm went bust, and it wasn't a normal bill for tens of pounds, nor even hundreds. It demanded thousands. |
| 1:16.9 | Dan Whitworth's been looking into what happened. You described it down to me as opening a can of worms. |
| 1:21.8 | Yes, very much so on this one, Paul. Now, Diane was a customer of extra energy. Now that's, as you know, one of 10 energy companies that went bust within the space of a year. |
| 1:30.7 | It collapsed into administration in November. |
| 1:33.0 | The industry watchdog, off-Gempt, stepped in, switched all of its 130,000 customers to Scottish power, and that was that. |
| 1:40.0 | Or at least so, Diane thought. |
| 1:41.7 | Now, fast forward nine months to August, and Diane got a bill |
| 1:45.2 | through the post from Extra Energy sent on behalf of the customer company's administrators, |
| 1:49.3 | PWC. Now this wasn't her standard 30, 40 or even 50 pound bill, as you say. It was for 4,4131 |
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