Having more than €4,000 unexpectedly taken from an account to cover a bill that – in the normal course of events – should cost no more than a couple of hundred euro is something that might push many readers close to the edge of both reason and financial security.
Spending months trying to retrieve the cash without any success is something that would most likely tip us all over that edge.
“I’m reaching out following a recommendation from my colleague regarding an issue my 67-year-old father is having with SSE Airtricity,” begins a mail from a reader called Ben.
“On April 17th, SSE debited €4,041.52 from his bank account. This charge resulted from an incorrect meter reading he submitted when switching from Prepay Power to SSE, which led to him being billed for over 17,000 units of electricity.”
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The account was opened last September, under a budget plan of €40 a month for the first four months, and the huge charge in question relates to the billing period of January 26th-April 2nd.
“It wasn’t until SSE debited the account that the issue became apparent, at which point my father contacted the company immediately. Despite numerous follow-up calls and repeated assurances of action, no meaningful resolution has been provided,” Ben says.
“SSE has asked us for a timestamped photographs of the meter from when the account opened, which we understandably do not have,” he continues.
Do you have such a thing? Does anyone?
“Most recently, we’ve been told the matter is out of SSE’s hands and must be resolved with ESB Networks. However, ESB has clearly stated this is an internal SSE matter,” Ben says.
He and his father have also repeatedly requested that SSE calculate an average based on historic consumption, but this request has not been acted on. “At this point, my father is left significantly out of pocket and extremely frustrated, with no clarity or progress.”
We contacted the company – and a problem that had seemed impossible to resolve when Ben and his dad were acting alone disappeared in a matter of days.
“We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused to this customer due to errors in the way their account was managed,” a spokesman said. “This customer’s billing and usage were out of sync, and this is not the standard of service we aim to deliver. We recognise that we fell short in this instance.
“We have reviewed the customer’s account in detail and will be addressing the issues identified with the relevant teams as part of our ongoing training and service improvement efforts. We have reached out to the customer directly to apologise and to offer a gesture of goodwill for the level of service received in this instance.”
