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This week, Watchdog investigates energy suppliers who are chasing people for money they don’t owe, who are not even their customers.

Alwyn started receiving letters from E.ON addressed to ‘The Occupier,’ despite having a pre-paid electricity meter with a different provider. After two years of discarding the letters upon receiving them, he decided to get in contact with E.ON to ask them to stop. After this, E.ON created an account under his name without his consent, and the letters kept coming but were now addressed to him.

Alwyn received nearly £3,000-worth of bills from E.ON and debt collection letters too. He was also rejected from buying car insurance because he had six default payments from E.ON, despite still not being a customer.

Julie and her husband Graham started receiving EDF electricity bills for three different businesses after they moved into their house in 2020. Julie discovered that whilst the address in the letters was similar to theirs, it did not even exist.

Julie was unable to resolve the issues, and they have received over forty letters from EDF, including threats of debt collection.

When we wrote to E.ON for comment, it said that Alwyn’s case was very unusual. It apologised for the distress caused to him whilst it worked with his housing provider to resolve the case. It said that Alwyn’s credit score has now been amended, and that it has provided an update to the relevant credit reference agencies.

In relation to Julie and Graham, EDF sincerely apologised for the inconvenience caused. It admitted that they should not have received any letters intended for one of its business customers. It maintains that the letters were correctly addressed, deducing that they were incorrectly delivered by the postal service due to similarities between Julie and Graham’s address and that of EDF’s business customer. Additionally, it said these similarities resulted in EDF engineers visiting the wrong address. It acknowledged that it should have intervened sooner to ensure any issues with the postal service were resolved more promptly. It said that it has taken steps to correct this, and Julie and Graham should no longer receive letters incorrectly delivered to them.

You can watch the full VT here for 28 days - /iplayer/episode/m002bkvr/the-one-show-30042025?seriesId=unsliced