When you took over the house/flat you should have received meter readings from your letting agent or taken readings youself on the day, this prevents you from being charged for previous unpaid bills. Its always best to call the utility companies on move in day with the readings. You don't say if you did this but without these readings they couldn't be expected to know that a new tenant had taken over the supply.
Speaking of, I've had a lot of hassle with my electricity meter readings since I moved into a flat in a renovated hospital building in May. On the day I moved in, I asked about the meters, but the estate agent didn't know where they were so she said she would get her colleague to read the meters the next day. I didn't hear anything back from them, and when I asked one of the site officers (they are still renovating other parts of the building), he just said, 'they're outside, downstairs'... but all I could find was the water meter and no evidence of electricity meters.
I spent the next few weeks calling the estate agent (who checked me in) and the letting agent (who is based in London) trying to find out the initial meter reading... it even got to the stage where they called me asking for it and I had to explain that I had been asking THEM for it for the last 6 weeks!
Finally I got an email back from them with the meter readings...but they were latest readings, taken 2 months after I moved in. When I went into my online electricity account to enter the readings, apparently they had a May start reading of 1700 kWh less than the July reading (no idea who read it though)... that's about 18 months worth of electricity that I had apparently used in just 50 days of actually physically being in the apartment (while working 12-hour day and night shifts)!
I paid my May-August bill based on their estimated usage of 300 kWh and also called and emailed the company and gave them another reading and hoped they would sort it out... only to find that when my bill came in October, they were trying to charge me £330 for the last 3 months of electricity... and I've only spent 3.5 weeks in the flat since August as I'm working away from home at the moment!
So I emailed them again and finally got something sorted out (I hope) - there's still no sign of an accurate initial meter reading, but they've done an back-calculated estimate based on the July reading and the October reading. I'm still waiting for a revised bill now though, as they've apparently wiped the other reading from my account and have just put in the calculated May reading and that's it (so my account is apparently in credit)!
