Bill shock on way for thousands of customers as Electric Ireland and Bord Gáis Energy admit separate billing blunders

Around 11,000 Electric Ireland customers are facing bill shocks, after it emerged that a blunder means they have not been asked for a payment for months.

Bord Gáis Energy has apologised after mistakenly taking direct debit payments twice yesterday from 11,500 of its customers.

The supplier was last night scrambling to reverse one of the two payments.

State-owned Electric Ireland, which has more than 1.1 million customers, has admitted a “billing issue” means some of its customers have not received bills that were due last month.

It comes at time of an energy crisis, with the bills that are overdue covering a period of time when electricity and gas usage was sky-high. This is due to the fact that the early months of the year tend to see high energy use in homes.

Energy regulator, the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU), said it was probing Electric Ireland’s failure to meet agreed billing period commitments.

Some customers have not received a bill for four months.

One customer explained: “I have had no bill since January 3 now, and I am going be destroyed in May with a double bill.

“A complaint was sent in March 20. It was not logged until March 27, and there has been no response on what is happening. This is an old-school attitude to customers.”

Electric Ireland said in statement: “Electric Ireland is aware of a billing issue involving an incorrect discount rate being applied to some customers.

“This has resulted in less than 1pc of our electricity customers having their bill delayed.”

It said it is working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, and corrections to those affected customers will issue as credit on their bills.

A mistake in applying new discounts for those coming out of contracts led the company to withhold the bills until it rectified the errors.

Affected customers are due a small refund – but may end up with huge delayed bills.

“We apologise for the inconvenience that this may cause, and want to reassure those customers affected that we will contact them and make any necessary amends as quickly as possible,” Electric Ireland said.

Bord Gáis Energy wrote to some 11,500 of its customers yesterday to say: “Unfortunately, due to an error with our banking partner’s system, some of our direct debit customers have experienced a double direct debit taken from their bank accounts today.”

It said it was working with its bank, AIB, to reverse the payment for affected customers as quickly as possible.

“We understand the inconvenience and frustration this may have caused, and sincerely apologise for this,” the British-owned company said.

Bord Gáis Energy said it was investigating the cause of this issue with AIB to avoid it happening again in the future.

The bungles come as both Bord Gáis and ESB-owned Electric Ireland have persistently resisted demands to cut prices for household consumers.

Electric Ireland has announced a reduction of up to 15pc – but for business customers.

Wholesale energy costs have collapsed back to the levels last seen before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The refusal of the energy suppliers to cut household prices is despite a survey emerging this week showing electricity prices in Ireland are the highest of 33 countries across Europe.

Electricity prices here are double the EU average.