15 January 2007
Susan Kramer, the trade and industry spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, has openly criticised electricity companies who are back-charging their customers who use token-metres.
Her outburst follows the party's research, published earlier today, which showed that electricity companies were taking in up to £91 million through the practice.
Back-charging occurs when electricity suppliers charge their customers an additional fee to take into account the revenue they lost when energy price rises occur and aren't immediately applied to token metre users.
Since the token metres need to be recalibrated to reflect the higher pricing, customers are often left paying the smaller amount for several weeks before the supplier sends an engineer to update their charge, before landing their consumers with a hefty back-charge bill.
Describing herself as "appalled" by "incompetence and brutal money grabbing of certain energy companies", Ms Kramer has now written to all of the major electricity suppliers in an effort to prevent them from taking even more money of the nation's poorest communities.
"Electricity customers on a token meter are amongst the most vulnerable users," she said.
"I have written today to npower, Powergen and ScottishPower calling on them to end the practice of backdating charges.
"These companies should now drop this iniquitous practice otherwise Ofgem must step in to force them to," she concluded.