19 December 2023 , 09:58
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Turner Prize winning artist and broadcaster Sir Grayson Perry has slammed EDF Energy after the firm handed him a "ridiculous" monthly electric bill of £39,000.
The 63-year old said he had previously paid just £300 per month before the company attempted to take the huge sum from his bank account via direct debit on Monday. Speaking on X (formerly Twitter) Sir Grayson said: "Hi @edfenergy I’ve been trying to speak to someone to explain how my electricity bill went from £300 a month to £39,000. Your call centre has been no help but you tried to direct debit this amount today from my account."
Sir Grayson, who has been cross-dressing since his childhood, is known for several Channel 4 documentary series including Why Men Wear Frocks, Who Are You?, Rites of Passage and Grayson Perry: All Man. His pottery, tapestry and other textiles works have been the subject of countless exhibitions around the world.
Sir Grayson took to X to vent his frustrations (Getty Images)Former BBC journalist and News Agents podcast host Jon Sopel responded to Sir Grayson yesterday, meanwhile, with a similar dilemma. "Same has just happened to us," he wrote. "Ridiculous. We’ve now sorted. They wanted to raise ours from £152 to £18k. Wonder how many others have had this. @edfenergy - can you shed light please on what is happening?"
Other X users accused the French energy company of trying to take huge sums of money without prior warning in bills that clearly appeared to be wrong. While some followers claimed their elderly relatives had been threatened with bailiffs if they didn’t pay up.
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"The #EDF dept that sends threatening letters with promises of bailiffs entering your home is very efficient. When me elderly and recently widowed mother didn’t pay a neighbour’s EDF bill sent in error to her, it’s what they did to her," one of Sir Grayson's followers said.
Another commented: "Elderly, frail and totally stressed and worried parents keep getting erroneous bills for thousands and sorting them out is a farce. Good luck." A third added: "They tried to charge me an insane amount too. Their tactic appears to be to refuse to use meter readings (that we had provided) and instead use estimated numbers (which happen to be much higher of course). It’s essentially attempted theft on an industrial scale in my view."
And a fourth pondered: 2Who in the billing department put that bill in an envelope without stopping to think that £39,000 seemed a bit steep for a residential property? You’d have to have several kilns on full blast constantly for a whole month to rack up that much usage!"
EDF later said it could not discuss specifics of any case, but confirmed Sir Grayson's and Sopel's were "not related in any way". It said: "Customers do not need to worry – these are not related to a wider issue with our billing system and we’ve not made any changes to how we process direct debit changes for customers.
"Unusual changes to direct debit amounts can sometimes occur when there is an erroneous meter reading recorded on the system. We have robust interventions in place to ensure that any large increases in customers’ direct debits are verified through a human check and in almost all such cases, system errors are rectified and prevented, without customers being impacted."
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