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A HOLIDAY park owner who was wrongly charged £244,000 for just one month’s energy says he had been in an “absolute nightmare”.
Patrick Langmaid, the owner of Martha’s Orchard holiday park at Constantine Bay, Cornwall, had the money taken out of his bank account on December 28.
He said is normal bills were between £2,100 and £2,700 a month.
TotalEnergies has since apologised unreservedly and confirmed he would be refunded by the end of Friday.
The company claimed the money had been taken after an “erroneous invoice” had been issued.
A spokesperson for TotalEnergies said: “We are taking steps to ensure that this error can’t be repeated and we are also investigating our initial response to the incident, to ascertain what we could have done better upon initial contact and how we can learn from this going forward.
“We understand the seriousness of this situation and the issues it can cause and apologise unreservedly to Martha’s Orchard.”
The businessman said the money had been in his account in order to pay suppliers and staff.
Mr Langmaid suggested customers should be able to set a maximum allowable payment under the direct debit system.
He told the BBC: “It’s not beyond the wit of man to come up with a model that doesn’t allow them to take the money in the first place.”
Mr Langmaid said he had been charged for 901,593 units in November, while the month before it had been 1,409 units.
He added the huge bill “made my eyes water”.
Mr Langmaid said though he was confident the money would be refunded to him via the bank’s direct debit indemnity.
He added though he had been frustrated by the communication with his energy firm.
In order to prove how much energy he was using he says he was asked to send photos of the meter readings.
Mr Langmaid said it was as if he was “in the wrong” by default and then had to “justify why we should get our £250,000 back”.
He said it was “obvious” there was an error and the hassle had “shaken my trust in the whole direct debit system”.
Last month, artist Sir Grayson Perry contacted his energy supplier EDF via X, formerly Twitter, wanting to speak to someone to ask why his electricity bill had shot up from £300 to £39,000 a month.
Similarly, former BBC journalist Jon Sopel also revealed his EDF energy bill had shot up to nearly £20,000.
The presenter of The News Agents podcast took to X to write an open letter to the French-owned company asking if he could speak to a human rather than a bot about his monthly standing order which had risen from £152 to £19,274.
The tweets prompted other EDF users to share their stories claiming they had been overcharged by thousands of pounds.
Mr Langmaid owns Martha’s Orchard holiday park at Constantine Bay, Cornwall[/caption]
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