I bought a leasehold flat on 4th August but not living in it and it is empty awaiting a tenant.
Today (31st Aug) EDF send me an energy bill to my home address.
How do they know my address?
The solicitor has still got to do the land registration and has only just (28th Aug) informed the block management company of the change of ownership.
Is big brother at work?
The vendor would usually know your name and address, and have the usual incentive to let EDF know them.
The vendor completes a form informing their conveyancer who supplies utilities, and they have informed EDF. Or the vendor has informed EDF directly. I doubt there's anything spooky going on.
Yes it could be something like that but the vendor was not the occupier either and the last tenant left in January. If the sellers conveyancer knew the utility providers, my solicitor did not. I had to phone some central gas transport company I found online to see who the suppliers were to put it into my tenant info pack.
To give EDF their due, they have written off the consumption between January and 23rd August which was non trivial as the outgoing tenants left the hot water boiler in some sort of keep hot mode when they left. When I took over I was alarmed to find the flue warm so cut off the gas immediately and read the manual to find that the boiler has an ECO button which has to be pushed in to stop the boiler keeping a small amount of water hot.
Maybe the previous owner has been billed for this consumption - who knows. I've got photos of all the meters with Exif files giving date time and location on the day of exchange to me as evidence if needed.
You're lucky. When we moved out of house-before-last British Gas (spit) said "You owe us £296" (about 18 months consumption at the time), even though we had the meter read quarterly and paid by Direct Debit. They refused to even discuss that this might be wrong. Since I had no evidence and moving house is stressful enough, I paid, and vowed never to give them another penny ever again, which some 30 years later, I haven't.
The houses being built either side of me do not have letter boxes anbd so I get theor mail.
The last one is nowhere near complete, but already electricity bills and several demands from TV licensing and council tax have appeared.
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In which case, the liability for the supply would have passed to the property owner.
I'm sure you must have filled something in to get a supply, and all the companies now share data. Brian
Nope No contact at all...
The TV licensing letters are usually the first letters to arrive at new builds.
The postman is not allowed on site as (s)he has no hard hat, no safety boots, no hi viz and he has not had a site induction. There are also no letter boxes or doors.
Their usual response is "not again, this happens all the time" and off they go.
HMRC once turned up at a job I was working at and demanded access to deliver a letter by hand to a new build that was half built. There was a lot of argument between him and the site manager before he f***ed off.
When I moved in to my house I took photos of the water and elect meters, and sure enough they tried to charge me the previous owners and tenants bills But we have an ombudsman here and me telling him that I had photos was enough to get it straightened out.
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