Remember I said that I only paid £5/month on electricity?
Yeah, that was a lie.
It turns out that Scottish Power or our landlord (neither will admit who did it – Scottish Power blame nPower, who got the meter number from Scottish Power so there’s no way it’s their fault and as for the landlord, he’s a bloody idiot) put the wrong meter number down on the account.
So we were paying our neighbours electricity for over a year.
Except we don’t have neighbours.
So we’ve been paying nPower (we swapped from Scottish Power) for a flat that hasn’t really been using any electricity.
And we owe Scottish Power over £1300
Well, there goes my emergency fund (not all of it, thankfully)
It makes me feel so stupid, but it took them over a year to alert us to the fact we were paying the wrong account.
It makes me feel like a stupid failure because I didn’t ever think to check the meter numbers when £5/month seemed too good to be true.
The woman on the phone from Scottish Power when I explained never said sorry for the mistake – just straight away, shifted the blame to nPower and when I asked about what happens next she just said “well what do you expect us to do?” – uh, tell me what payment options there are – I’m willing to pay, but you waited a year to tell us we owed you any money.
So financial lesson learned:
Always have an emergency fund and if you think something is too good to be true, it probably is
You know how I know you’re a personal finance blogger? Because you have an emergency fund! This is a great lesson in why we all need one, but I’m so sorry you had to go through this. Maybe you feel a bit dumb but hindsight is a wonderful thing, and we al make mistakes. Imagine the mess you’d have been in if you hadn’t have a substantial emergency fund though? So, you’re still pretty smart in my book.
Ash @ Sterling Effort recently posted..Infographic: What to do when debt collectors call
Haha, thanks Ash! It seems “Emergency Fund” is a very Personal Finance Blogger term, isn’t it? Most people say “savings” (to me, that’s for like, things I want to buy, like, a house, not to pay my electric company). Thanks for your comment – made me feel better and less like a twat!
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