Caroline Nodder: Energy firms must be less slapdash in their dealings with pubs

There are some big plus points to being a journalist and one of them is the ability to stir companies into action on behalf of your readers.

The threat of being named and shamed in a newspaper can certainly get the Watchdog-style ball rolling in all sorts of situations.

It is extremely satisfying to be able to help when things go wrong for publicans and I am pleased to say we have had some measure of success recently on the issue of energy companies (see News, page 5).

I can remember years ago covering a series of stories about licensees who had been ripped off, overcharged and generally mistreated by energy providers, and sadly it seems that the issue hasn't gone away.

We have been inundated with letters, emails and calls from licensees who have found themselves in hot water over their energy bills since we covered the case of a licensee a few weeks ago who had been wrongly charged for his energy usage because the company had been misreading his meter.

Their mistake led to him being hit with a huge bill for more than £25K, but after The Publican ​intervened the energy supplier E.ON agreed to write off some of the charges and allow the licensee to pay back the rest over a reasonable period of time.

A fair and positive result all round - but in my view it shouldn't have taken The Publican intervening to achieve it. Energy companies should be less slapdash in their dealings with pubs when a single error like this one can mean tens of thousands of pounds in cost.

There are, I am sure, hundreds of licensees out there going through the same thing as we speak and thousands more who are currently unaware they face future problems.

Energy is such a huge part of a pub's overheads that a small mistake in a meter reading, the wrong unit rate being charged, or simply a series of administrative errors, can make or break a pub business.

The volume of readers who tell us they are experiencing problems tells me this is the time for every pub out there to do a bit of a systems check and make sure they are being charged the correct rate, for the correct meter reading, and indeed that their supplier is offering them a competitive rate.

It seems to me that energy companies need to be held accountable for the accuracy of their equipment and reading, and that it shouldn't be the publican who carries the can when things go wrong.

As one very astute commentator on the story put it, if a licensee undercharges a customer it's not as if he can then go back to that customer five years later and demand they pay the difference! Why should energy companies be given special treatment?

My advice is to keep a close eye on your current supplier, and also check when your contract is due for renewal so you can look into potentially swapping to a cheaper deal.

And if you are experiencing problems, then do get in touch because we at The Publican​ are happy to help sort it out.