Customers are getting billed twice because of the industry’s inaccurate databases

Tens of thousands of households suffer bungled switches when they change energy supplier, the Telegraph can disclose, while others are moved to new providers without consent. Many of these errors can be traced to incorrect national databases that store meter information. Over the past two months our mailbag has contained a worrying number of cases in which households that attempted to cut their energy costs suffered problems switching to a cheaper provider. In some cases, they faced bills for hundreds of pounds after two energy companies charged them at once, or a bill bore no relation to their meter readings.

We launched an investigation to discover the causes and uncovered a widespread problem with incorrect transfers. More than five and a half million households switched energy supplier in 2012, according to figures from the Department of Energy & Climate Change. Simultaneously, the number of botched switches was 0.7pc, energy regulator Ofgem confirmed.....Read more here