War veteran, 84, in suicide bid after energy firm hounded him for £6,600 that he didn't owe

By Liz Hull
Last updated at 4:28 PM on 05th July 2008

Source: Daily Mail

A war veteran driven to despair by soaring electricity prices tried to commit suicide when a power company broke into his home and installed a pre- payment meter he did not know how to use.

Walter Bargate, 84, swallowed 100 sleeping pills and painkillers after spending three freezing days without heating, lighting or cooking facilities in the middle of winter.

The great-grandfather, who has impaired vision and is physically disabled, left a heartbreaking suicide note to his children, scrawled in the pitch dark.

He said he had been pushed to take his life when engineers from German-owned power firm E.ON installed a pre-payment meter after claims that he had failed to pay his bills of £6,600.

But unknown to Mr Bargate, who served as a navigator on Lancaster bombers in the Second World War, E.ON had been wrongly calculating his electricity costs for years. In fact, the retired civil servant had overpaid his account by thousands of pounds because the firm had wrongly wired his meter.

He didn't owe it a penny. He was discovered unconscious by a relative the following morning and has since recovered.

Mr Bargate's plight has emerged at a time when experts have warned that average household heating and electricity bills are likely to rise by more than £400 in the next few months to around £1,400 a year.

Last night Mr Bargate's daughter, Sarah Hayes, 50, said the power firm had treated her father with nothing but contempt. 'E.ON have behaved in the most outrageous manner from beginning to end,' she said.

'It chokes me to think how desperate he must have felt. I'm disgusted with this company. They broke into his home while he was in bed upstairs and, despite his age and frailty, could not recognise that he was a vulnerable customer.

'Even now, when it has been proved that they wired the meter incorrectly, he is still waiting for an apology.

'Where the Germans failed during the war, E.ON almost succeeded in killing my father 60 years later.

'They have a moral and legal duty to compensate him for all that he has been through.'

Mr Bargate's ordeal began around four years ago when he started struggling to pay the large electricity bills.

As a fiercely independent man, the divorced pensioner refused to ask his two grown-up children for help.

He assumed the inexplicably high bills were correct and he was simply out-of-touch with soaring prices.

In fact, there was a long-standing technical problem. The off-peak meter had been wired through the main meter, which meant he was being charged more than double for the energy he was using.

Fearful of his mounting debts, Mr Bargate stopped opening correspondence from E.ON.

In February last year three engineers, armed with an official warrant, broke into his semidetached home in Stockport to install a pre-payment meter.

When the electricity supply ran out a few days later Mr Bargate could not fathom how to top it up.

He desperately tried to contact E.ON - hanging on the phone to a customer service representative for three hours on one occasion - but failed to get any help.

After three days days and two freezing nights without heating, lighting or cooking facilities he had reached the end of his tether and took the overdose.

Doctors warned Mrs Hayes that her father was unlikely to survive, but he pulled through.

Mrs Hayes then discovered her father's suicide note and unopened correspondence demanding £6,600 in unpaid bills.

She referred the matter to the energy-supply ombudsman, who discovered the faulty wiring and said E.ON UK should write off the debt and £500 compensation.

The ruling suggested that while the faulty wiring dated from 2002 when the meters were installed, the problem could go back to 1983 when E.ON took over his supply.

Mrs Hayes, of Burnage, Greater Manchester, is taking legal action to try to recoup £10,000 she estimates her father overpaid and to secure compensation.

Adam Scorer, director of campaigns at the utilities watchdog Energywatch, said the case was a 'catalogue of crass errors' by E.ON.

'They have a legal and moral obligation to acknowledge the horrendous impact of their actions on Mr Bargate's quality of life and to provide suitable redress,' he added.

E.ON said there was no evidence of overcharging before 2002. A spokesman added: 'We had not received payment for over two years, despite our numerous calls and letters. We were therefore granted a warrant to fit a pre-payment meter at Mr Bargate's property.'

The spokesman added: 'As soon as we were aware of the fault on Mr Bargate's meter we corrected it and offered our sincere apologies to the customer and his family.

'We were not aware of Mr Bargate's medical condition. Had we known of this we obviously would have taken it into full consideration. Had we been made aware of the severity of this situation by Mr Bargate or his family we would have acted upon it immediately.'

Mr Bargate's story will feature on ITV1's Tonight programme on Monday at 8pm.

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