Mum left panicking after smart meter error landed her with £27,000 energy bill

Paula Chopin received a £27,000 bill from Bulb energy after her smart meter mistakenly suggested she had used enough electricity to power a large business (Picture: BPM MEDIA)

A mum-of-two was landed with a £27,000 energy bill in the run-up to Christmas due to an error with her smart meter.

Paula Chopin, 42, from Leicester, was gobsmacked when her it mistakenly suggested she had used enough electricity to power a large business.

Her bill came to £27,404.81 – an amount she says she’d struggle to use in a decade – covering just three months from the beginning of July to the start of October. 

Despite the surging cost of energy due to skyrocketing gas and electricity prices, Paula believed she’d actually accumulated more than £1,000 in credit with Bulb. 

It was in contacting the company to recoup some of that money for other expenses that she found out about the whopping debit on her account. 

Paula said: ‘I was trying to claim back my £1,000 in credit I had with the company – getting in touch via calling and using online chat to try and get an answer.

‘They told me they couldn’t for two reasons – one was the fact that they had estimated my gas meter since the pandemic because it had broken, and the second reason was that I owed them more than £26,000.

‘This was the first I’d heard of it as it wasn’t loading up on my end, so the customer service staff sent me a copy of the bill to my email for me to look over, and I was stunned to see they had suggested I had used £27,000 in energy since my last bill.

‘I’m a mum of two kids in a three-bed house, that energy bill would be more than what I’d pay over ten years, and it only got sorted after I raised an official complaint with Bulb. Even then, it took me weeks before they admitted they’d made a mistake and corrected it.

‘I found this out in October, on the run up to Christmas, so it caused a lot of problems with our plans. Until they corrected it I was told I had to pay it, and I was told I couldn’t get a payment break while I tried to sort out the error. But I did anyway, so I could actually afford Christmas.

Electricity prices in the UK rose by 66.7% and gas prices by 129.4% in the 12 months to January 2023, according to the Office of National Statistics (Picture: Getty Images)

‘Even when I got my money back, they only paid me back around £800 of the money as they used some of it to pay the corrected bill. But I’ve raised the whole situation with the energy ombudsman who will be looking into it.

‘My gas meter broke during the pandemic and I made Bulb aware of it in 2020, but because of the pandemic they told me they couldn’t come out and fix it.

‘I told them twice after the pandemic and it’s still not sorted. My gas bill has been estimated ever since because they can’t get an accurate reading from it and when I first got the huge bill I initially thought it was because of my gas meter – but it was actually the electricity that was high.

‘So I’ve had two issues, I have struggled to get my meter fixed which would have stopped me getting credit paid back out, but also the huge bill which led to all of the credit being taken out of my account.

‘Even when they’ve paid it back in, it’s a lot less than what I was expecting, with them claiming I’ve had a spike in electricity which led to more being added to my bill – but there’s no proof of this looking over my electricity usage.’

The increase in rates has left many families struggling to get by (Picture: Getty Images)

Paula was overwhelmed when she first received the invoice, but her loved ones encouraged her to contest it. 

She said: ‘I panicked at first but my family and friends told me something was clearly wrong. I’m just glad that it happened to me and not an elderly person or someone really struggling that might have been tipped over the edge by the bill.

‘There’s a lot going on with high costs and money being tight for everyone, so how they thought a £27,000 energy bill was perfectly reasonable to add to my account and charge me for is bizarre. Surely this should have flagged up on their system and corrected before it even made it to my account?’

The deputy head teacher and mum of two has since moved to Octopus Energy, the current owner of Bulb, who have given her assurance that the mishap will not occur again. 

They say they are actively working to address her concerns. 

A spokesperson has confirmed that the electricity bill was a result of Bulb’s remote connection to Paula’s smart meter in September 2022, prior to Octopus’s acquisition of the firm.

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However, a system glitch arose during the reading, giving the impression that Paula had consumed more energy than she had. 

They said: ‘Unfortunately, a system error occurred in which it looked like Paula had used a lot more energy than she actually had (~100,000kWh worth) and this resulted in a large incorrect bill on her account for just over £27,000. This error was quickly rectified and the incorrect estimated readings were removed by Bulb.

‘Paula’s bills were reissued on 7 November to reflect her accurate usage and the incorrect charges were removed. She confirmed this was all sorted back in November 2022.’

As per the company spokesperson, Paula’s gas meter has not been repaired since it is still under the control of British Gas. 

The spokesperson continued: ‘This means Octopus or Bulb are legally not allowed to make any changes to the meter. Octopus is now in the process of getting the meter transferred over to us. Once this is done, we will arrange a gas meter exchange appointment with our engineers (the whole process should not take more than two weeks).

‘We will keep in close contact with Paula about her gas meter exchange, and it’s great that customers like Paula have begun to transfer to Octopus, as it means we can sort the problems they had with their previous suppliers, and that they won’t experience any issues like this ever again.’

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Paula Chopin was gobsmacked as to how she’d racked up the same power debit as a large business.