A simple meter issue should have been resolved quickly. Instead, it led to debt collection, a blocked supplier transfer, and a 3.5-year dispute that required two Ombudsman cases to resolve.
Some business energy disputes are complex. This one shouldn’t have been.
The original issue was simple: the meter had reached 999,999 and clocked back to zero. This is a known scenario in metering. It shouldn’t have caused the kind of problem that it did, but even for the smartest energy supplier, such a simple thing can prove too difficult to resolve without engaging the Ombudsman.
Instead, it confused SmartestEnergy’s billing from the outset. What should have been a straightforward fix turned into a dispute that dragged on unnecessarily.
The meter reading issue created a mismatch between opening and closing readings, which meant the account was wrong from the beginning.
The account should have been put ‘in dispute’ whilst the readings were investigated and corrected.
Instead, we spent 3.5 years (yes, you read that correctly) trying to get a basic billing issue resolved.
Communication from Smartest wasn’t just poor. At times, it was non-existent. Despite repeated attempts to engage with the supplier, the matter dragged on far longer than it ever should have.
Whilst the billing dispute was ongoing, a switch to a new supplier was blocked by Smartest because they incorrectly believed there was an outstanding debt of over £3k.
The problem? The customer’s account had been distorted by third-party debt collection agency charges that should not have been applied to the account.
As a result, the customer was left stuck on out-of-contract rates for 46 days before the switch finally completed, and only because my client settled the outstanding debt, while making it clear that the charges were disputed and would be challenged via the Ombudsman.
This is where Smartest’s failures began to cost my client financially. As happens far too often, the consequences of supplier errors fall on the customer.
The follow-on contract was cheaper than the Smartest contract (which had been agreed when energy prices were sky-high due to the war in Ukraine). Being blocked from leaving meant the business paid more than it should have, purely because of Smartest’s and Credit Style’s compounding errors.
Rather than resolving the billing issue cleanly, the account was allowed to drift into debt recovery territory.
Third-party charges were applied by Credit Style, which would never have arisen had Smartest not passed the account into collections whilst it remained in dispute. Credit Style then incorrectly applied an 8% fee on the balance, which was rightly contested by my client and deemed incorrect by the Ombudsman.
SmartestEnergy was required to remove £3,236.11 of charges; refund the resulting £1,044.97 credit balance; pay an additional £100 as a goodwill gesture; and issue an apology.
That should have been the end of it.
The second Ombudsman case dealt with the consequential loss caused by Smartest handing the account over to Credit Style, who incorrectly applied interest to the outstanding debt and had prevented the supply from transferring to a new supplier.
The Ombudsman accepted that the customer had been incorrectly held on out-of-contract rates and required SmartestEnergy to effectively price match the new contract for that 46-day period.
The difference was calculated at £1,386.11, alongside a further £100 goodwill payment and an apology.
In simple terms:
But only after years of avoidable effort.
This case highlights a common problem in business energy: a simple issue becomes a complex dispute because it isn’t dealt with properly at the start.
What should have happened:
What actually happened:
This case should never have taken 3.5 years. It should never have reached debt collection while billing was in dispute. And it should never have required two Ombudsman cases to get the customer back to where they should have been in the first place. But it did.
And that’s the reality of some business energy disputes.
If a supplier cannot handle a basic billing issue properly, the cost is rarely just the bill. It’s the time, the stress, and the disruption that follows.
