Our progress so far:

In 2014 EDF Energy supported an industry-wide campaign called My Energy Credit to try and pay back any credit that previous customers had on a closed electricity or gas account.

As part of this campaign, our Customer Services team at EDF Energy reviewed over 250,000 accounts, which is every closed account in the last seven years where customers hadn’t claimed their credit, to see what we could do to return the money to them.

 

To do this we:

  • Searched our database of customers to see if a customer with a closed account was now being supplied by EDF Energy at a different property and transferred or refunded any credit to the new account
  • Wrote to former customers to ask them to get in touch with a final meter reading so we could confirm the credit amount and refund it
  • Wrote to former customers at their last known address, hoping that many of the letters would be forwarded on. The letter asked these customers to give us their new address, so that we could post a cheque
  • Reviewed closed accounts with a final bill based on an estimated meter reading to try and make this estimation as accurate as possible
  • Changed our messaging on bills and our website to make it as clear as possible how customers could claim any credit on a closed account
  • Implemented new steps in our process to remind customers to contact us with their address and final meter readings when moving home
  • Amended our change of supplier policy to treat estimated readings given to us by a new supplier as accurate, where there was no further information available issuing a final bill based on this reading and, where appropriate, an automatic final refund
  • Employed a tracing agency to try and locate past customers who had moved address and forgot to tell us where they were going. If we found them and were able to validate the credit on the account, we have sent them a cheque refund.

All this action brought us a great deal of success and last year we refunded £35m to 350,000 customers who changed supplier or moved house. We’re continuing with this in 2015 and remain committed to making sure both past and present customers receive any credit due to them.

Despite all our efforts we still have some credit balances left where we haven’t been able to find the customer or check whether or not the credit is correct. While the credit will always belong to the customer and they can claim it at any time, EDF Energy has committed to donate £5m over two years to vulnerable customers who are struggling to pay for their energy charges.

Going forward, we'll also donate the value of any credit that remains unclaimed after two years to good causes.

If you've moved house or changed energy supplier and think you may have a credit owing to you please complete and submit our form or call us on 0333 200 5100(1) and we'll be happy to check our records.