People horrified after seeing energy bills raised by thousands overnight

Sure, it might be the ‘happiest’ time of year for many at the moment, but it’s not exactly the cheapest.

Between Christmas presents, the last big nights out of the year, food shops for the big day and the increasing costs that come with the colder weather, people’s bank accounts may be quaking.

So, the last thing anyone really needs right now is to wake up and find your energy bills have rocketed even more than expected.

And that’s what’s happened for a load of UK households whose monthly outgoing seems to have suddenly increased by thousands.

It seems to be the case for people who use EDF as their energy provider as a user took to X to express their frustration.

Reaching out the British company, they wrote: “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.”

Pixabay/PublicDomainPictures

Yep, you read that right, they’re claiming their bill increased by a whopping £38,700 and others responded with similar issues.

Another also claimed: “Same has just happened to us. Ridiculous. We’ve now sorted. They wanted to raise ours from £152 to £18k. Wonder how many others have had this.”

Others also replied to say they’ve had various issues with the provider.

EDF did respond to the customer's tweet, as well as others with similar complaints, telling them it’s ‘sorry for any concern that this may have caused’ and that if they reach out it’ll ‘get picked up straight away’.

You shouldn't worry too much though, the provider said there isn't a wider issue with its billing system and that human checks are conducted to pick these things up and rectify them before the customer is impacted in 'almost all' cases.

Another user reacted to the major bill: “I thought mine going up to £800 for the month of August (not generally a month where I switch the heating on much) was bad, but this…”

Hirurg/Getty

Another joked that it sounds like a bill from ‘the year 7689’ as one said it’s ‘a horrible thing, in Christmas week too’.

EDF told LADbible: "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."