11m Households Overcharged an Average of £117 on Energy Bills

Energy suppliers have been overcharging their customers for energy they have not used, with over 11 million households owed a refund of £117 on average.

According to uSwitch, suppliers have overcharged almost 1-in10 households more than £200, with an estimated total of £1.3bn being overcharged by the energy suppliers due to estimated billing and those who pre-pay a set amount on direct debits.

Of those who have been overcharged, half of them have smart meters. There are approximately 5.87 million households that currently have a smart meter installed and the plan is to roll out these smart meters to all 26 million homes by 2020, which will cost £11 billion.

Experts have claimed that the Government’s rather expensive multi-billion-pound smart meter programme is not being addressed to solve the problem of inaccurate billing, which is what the suppliers rely on when estimating bills.

The smart meters are meant to confirm ultra-accurate billing as usage is sent to the suppliers by these smart meters automatically and at regular intervals.

Mark Todd, from energyhelpine, has said “Smart meters will put an end to sending out engineers to read your meter, or for consumers to read it themselves. But that’s it. Just because you’ve got a smart meter doesn’t mean your supplier isn’t holding on to thousands of pounds of overpayments.”

I for one will be thinking about what I will do in the near future regarding the format for paying my energy bills and may look at prepaid energy meters, what about you?