A “struggling married mum who works full-time” has been charged an obscene amount of money for her electricity bill as provider admits “temporary glitch.”

The woman, who did not want to be named, but lives in Faringdon, was shocked to find her smart metre displaying £40,000 as her energy charge since October 1.

Her smart metre, a pay-as-you-go energy system issued by her provider, SSE Energy Services, has suggested at different points over the last four days that top-ups of £657, £1,970 and £40,000 needed to be made to cover electricity costs.

Read more: Bottled water stations: where to find them in Oxford

The woman's mum said: “My daughter managed to get through to SSE, but they just told her they were having technical problems, and that if electricity runs out completely, they will reconnect her.

“Her suggested top-up for today was over £600.

“She is being made to pay £20 a day at the moment, but her overall bill is in the thousands.

“We just don’t know how long this is going to continue for.

“If they keep taking £20 a day, she will have no money to feed her kids.”

A few months ago, the Guardian published a letter from a reader who had received a statement from her electricity provider, OVO, which cited a projected annual bill of £40,052.

The reader lives in a three-bedroom house with storage heaters and expected the annual bill to be around £4000.

A few days after calling the provider and sharing her concerns, the woman received another call that informed her the annual estimate was now £52,235.

 

Read more from this author

This story was written by Matthew Norman, he joined the team in 2022 as a Facebook community reporter.

Matthew covers Bicester and focuses on finding stories from diverse communities.

Get in touch with him by emailing: Matthew.norman@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @OxMailMattN1

A message from our Editor

Thank you for reading this story and supporting the Oxford Mail.

If you like what we do please consider getting a subscription for the Oxford Mail and in return we’ll give you unrestricted access with less adverts across our website from the latest news, investigations, features, and sport.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok for more. 

You can also join the conversation in our Facebook groups: stay ahead of traffic alerts here, keep up to date with the latest from court here, share your favourite memories of Oxford here, get your daily dose of celebrity news here and take some time out with news that will make you smile. 

If you’ve got a story for our reporters, send us your news here. You can also list an event for free here.