Micro-business back-billing: supplier data covering April 2012 - March 2013
Correspondence and other
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- Supply and Retail Market
This letter summarises data provided by suppliers following a request by Ofgem, relating to their back-billing of micro-business customers between April 2012 and March 2013.
A back-bill is a request for payment issued to a customer for previously unbilled consumption. Ofgem received evidence that businesses were being back-billed for periods going back six years or more and for large sums of money. Following a roundtable held by Ofgem in 2011, a set of voluntary standards were developed to address micro-business back-billing and most suppliers have signed up to them. The data shows that suppliers are moving towards limiting the period of time they can back-bill from the date of issue and the back-bill values, although some longer the periods and values remain. We now expect to see further improvement.