A 78-year-old woman who has to have daily care for memory problems was sent a letter saying her energy bill was to increase to almost £7,000 a month. Sylvia Dea's son Jon was shocked when he came to help her with the bills and tried to call British Gas immediately, but was disconnected.
Debt is an issue that is close to Jon's heart after losing a relative to suicide after she struggled to cope with the stress of mounting bills, reports TeessideLive. He said: "I had an auntie who a few years ago through the stress of debt actually killed herself, and how would I feel if my mother had committed suicide because she thought she was now laboured with £87,000 a year through this."
British Gas said the bill was an error on their part. Mrs Dea's bill actually amounted to £241.08 per month and she was already in credit by more than £2,300.
A spokesperson for British Gas said: "We’re sorry that we made a mistake when calculating Mrs Dea’s bill. This was quickly corrected and her new monthly payment is £241.08 per month. We have reached out to Mrs Dea to confirm this, and to apologise for the error.
"We had an opportunity to resolve this sooner when Mrs Dea’s son called us and are sorry for any distress this may have caused."
Jon said: "If I hadn't discovered that letter and taken that letter away, if you think about that few hours I'm there looking after her, to the amount of hours she's there alone. If she picked that letter up in a moment of very good clarity and read through it she could have had a massive reaction and no one would have been there to deal with the consequences.
"I consider that personal debt is one of the greatest problems facing our society at the moment, and it doesn't matter if it's family or anybody.
"Any single person who thinks that they're in an unaffordable situation, they hide that because they don't know how to face the truth. Then it builds up and it explodes on them, they either break down and you could have tragic circumstances. It worries me not just for my mother's situation, it worries me that anyone could face this."
