AGL Energy Consumer bill

So, I got this AGL bill in the mail yesterday. Addressed to "Energy Consumer". Period is Oct 31 - Dec 26, 2017. I moved back from the US on Dec 21. The power was reconnected the next day, with clickenergy. The house was empty for the whole period Oct 31 - Dec 21. AGL is "estimating" (there was no actual reading) a consumption of 463 kWh for the period. This is just crazy. I was on their chat with "Amy". She told me I did not have to pay the bill. Thanks for that. But his is robbery. Should I not report this to someone?

First of all, get the invoice canceled in writing. It doesn't matter what someone in the call centre says until you have evidence that the invoice is null and void.

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Originally Posted by kungsleden

So, I got this AGL bill in the mail yesterday. Addressed to "Energy Consumer". Period is Oct 31 - Dec 26, 2017. I moved back from the US on Dec 21. The power was reconnected the next day, with clickenergy. The house was empty for the whole period Oct 31 - Dec 21. AGL is "estimating" (there was no actual reading) a consumption of 463 kWh for the period. This is just crazy. I was on their chat with "Amy". She told me I did not have to pay the bill. Thanks for that. But his is robbery. Should I not report this to someone?

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Since they appear to have backed down, I wouldn't do anything at all. IF they raise the topic again, contact your state ombudsman

(I had a nephew a couple of years ago who was being hounded by one of the electrical companies to pay the bill of a previous tenant. They even threatened him, but not in writing, with legal action. Being a young fella and not so wise to the way of the world I told him the ombudsman was who he should get in touch with. Next time the electric company called him, he said he would go to the ombudsman, they folded and ran just at the mention. In your case, though, it sounds like a simple routine bill spit out from the computer and they have acknowledged that, rather than the knowingly false threats the other company was making to my nephew.)

Regards
SWK

The comment “I will give this to the Ombudsman “has magical power
I understand that for every issue reported a charge is made to the power company which is not refundable no matter what the outcome

Is your property (and therefore meter) inside a locked gate? That may have been why they did not do a reading and estimated the usage?

Btw, my observation of ClickEnergy is that they are pretty expensive. You may do well to look at the Fed.Govt website https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/ (but I understand you may not have quite the range of retailers in your postcode)

Meter Reading...

LOL

We had not had the power or water read for a long, long time due to the cards left in the mailbox with the "Dog" box ticked...

In the past 17 years there was a corgi for the first two...

Our neighbour got the same cards

I reckon the readers drive down the road chucking the cards in the letterboxes as they cannot be fagged to get out and do their job...
I called our Water Board to let them know there was no dog the first time it happened and the call center agent thought it was a huge laugh...

I think the water got read a few weeks ago though...

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Originally Posted by david.elliott

Meter Reading...

LOL

We had not had the power or water read for a long, long time due to the cards left in the mailbox with the "Dog" box ticked...

In the past 17 years there was a corgi for the first two...

Our neighbour got the same cards

I reckon the readers drive down the road chucking the cards in the letterboxes as they cannot be fagged to get out and do their job...
I called our Water Board to let them know there was no dog the first time it happened and the call center agent thought it was a huge laugh...

I think the water got read a few weeks ago though...

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perhaps that is a bit harsh.
I recall reading a few years ago now that on average a meter reader has less than 90 seconds to read each meter. That includes the time taken to park their vehicle, walk to the first property in the street, enter the property, locate the meter, read it correctly, leave the property -- repeat to the end of the street -- and then go back to the vehicle and drive to the next street. To put 90 seconds into perspective, the average speed for a person walking is 1.2 m per second. In a typical Sydney suburb, most of the allocated 90 seconds is required just to get to and from the meter leaving little or no time to do the actual "reading" and recording.

Yeah, I guess it could read that way... however these guys are contracted as far as I know here in WA, like our local postie...which has it's advantages.

So Ian, why is that not reported to the ombudsman. Are the the companies charging, encouraging the meter readers to break the speed barrier law.

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Originally Posted by HUON

So Ian, why is that not reported to the ombudsman. Are the the companies charging, encouraging the meter readers to break the speed barrier law.

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because the meter readers work for a "contractor" who is "contracted" to the retail energy provider.

I'm using quotes because based on what I hear the meter reading "contract" exists so that the energy retailer can distance themselves from any errors made by the meter reader. I've been told that one retailer's first line of defense is "the contractor made a mistake, you will have to take the error up with the contractor."

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Originally Posted by kungsleden

So, I got this AGL bill in the mail yesterday. Addressed to "Energy Consumer". Period is Oct 31 - Dec 26, 2017. I moved back from the US on Dec 21. The power was reconnected the next day, with clickenergy. The house was empty for the whole period Oct 31 - Dec 21. AGL is "estimating" (there was no actual reading) a consumption of 463 kWh for the period. This is just crazy. I was on their chat with "Amy". She told me I did not have to pay the bill. Thanks for that. But his is robbery. Should I not report this to someone?

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I moved recently and got one of those from AGL. I don't have an account with AGL and my name is not Mr Energy Consumer. I binned it. They are just trying to recover consumption from when there was no active account. From their point of view it's worth a try. A certain percentage of people would just pay it and ask no questions.

sounding more and more like Telstra, press a button and we may or may not respond in 100 minutes. If we do please excuse the poor communication

Update.
So, since moving back to our property end of December, I have had electricity but not a single bill. clickenergy sent me an email saying they could not transfer my account to them because someone else was on it. Turns out AGL automatically created a generic account for our property (how is that possible?), although I never contacted them to provide power to our house. The account creation was not completed. And AGL told me I had to complete the account creation in order to transfer to another provider. :oo: I think the last "to the energy consumer" letter I got from AGL was advising that power may be lost of I did not do this and that.
Now I have the details of the AGL plans. The clickenergy plan is very confusing, so I have asked them (clickenergy) to give him clear numbers on rates and fees. Need some hard figures before deciding to switch or not.

My very uneducated guess is that there is a default supplier if a choice is not made, that is the only thing that makes sense. A way to check supply costs might be to choose an arbitrary amount of electricity, say 500 kw and ring all the suppliers and ask them how much they will charge you to supply that amount. I am sure they make invoices deliberately hard to read and understand on purpose.

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Originally Posted by Chris Parks

I am sure they make invoices deliberately hard to read and understand on purpose.

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you betcha