Hartlepool businesswoman's warning as money is taken from her account months after switching energy supplier

T H Flory Car Electrics moved to British Gas from E.ON six months ago.

But Emily Patterson, who owns the Middlesbrough-based business with her husband, says E.ON kept on sending them bills for gas and electricity supposedly used up until the end of last November.

The largest of these demanded nearly £3,000.

Eventually, at the start of last month, £261.58p was taken from their account.

E.ON has since apologised for the error and said “the matter has now been resolved”.

Emily, 32, from the Throston Grange area of town, is still warning people to check their bank accounts.

She said: "It’s so easy to miss it because you look at your bank account and you just think, oh it’s just the gas and electric, you don’t necessarily click on it and think I’m not with them, you just think the gas bill has gone out,”

Emily said the bills started arriving in September and gradually increased from £788.85 for gas and electricity to £2,897.64 for electricity alone.

She said last month: “For every month we have received at least four emails from them, requesting meter readings, requesting money.

"As a business, it affects our credit score. It is starting to have a knock on effect.”

Emily said she reminded E.ON that her business had changed supplier and was told E.ON would look into the matter.

But she said the £261.58p was still incorrectly taken from the works account on December 1.

Speaking shortly afterwards, she said: "It’s a massive hit at this time of year. Luckily, with us being a business, we do have a bit of a flexibility, we do have money in the bank.

"We’re only a small business, there’s three of us working here and that’s still a lot of money to all of sudden have sent out.”

An E.ON spokesperson has now said: “We have spoken to T H Flory Car Electrics to confirm the account left us in August to go to another supplier but due to an error it remained in our systems, which we have apologised for. The matter has now been resolved.”