Prior electric company is trying to screw me (UK-USA) personalfinance

I'll preface this with I don't think this is the best subreddit for my problem, but I'm hoping somebody will have some solid advice.

So, I'm an American and I just got done living in the UK for 20 months. While I was in the UK I had a moderately sized flat (2 bedroom and a family room) which I hardly used and didn't even both to keep warm during the winter. My only electrical usage was my computer, refrigerator, stove/oven and about 4 space heaters (during the winter). For 20 months I paid roughly 40-50 pounds each month, I felt this was fair enough. Averaging 45 pounds a month, this comes out to 900 pounds.

On January 14th I moved back to the states, and closed out my utilities. I took a meter reading on the 12th of January (2 days before my close out date) and gave it to the electric company for my final bill. Come February I get a bill for ~1600 pounds. I thought to my self what the fuck, and promptly proceeded to call them up. After talking to them, they said that they sent out somebody on the 10th of January to take a meter reading and they had to adjust my bill accordingly. First of all, I never let any of their technicians in, and I was home most of the day on the 10th, so I don't really believe it (my meter was inside). It is possible my landlord could have let them in, but the timing would have had to of been really coincidental for me to miss them.

So I told them I took a meter reading 2 days later and gave them that, because maybe they had made a mistake. They said they would look into it with those numbers and figure everything out. About a week later I called to get in touch with them and get an update and throwing my meter readings in has brought the total up to just a little under 2900 pounds. Thats right, 2 days of me cleaning up the flat accrued me an extra 1200 pounds in electrical.

I called bullshit but they insist that's what I owe them and keep harassing me about paying it.

What are my options here? Keep in mind, I'm back in the states now with 0 intentions of returning to the UK..

tl;dr: Over the course of 20 months I paid 900gbp to my UK electric company, after moving back to the states and closing my utilities they're charging me an additional 1200gbp. After giving them the meter reading taken 2 days after they "took a reading" the bill bumped up another additional 1700gp

Again, sorry if this isn't the right sub, and if not, can somebody point me the right way? I thought about /r/LegalAdvice, but am not sure

Edit: I might also add that I'm not exactly rolling in cash. I am in between jobs at the moment (my last job was in the UK), and don't start my next job until May, where I'll start making roughly $60k a year

Submitted April 22, 2015 at 02:54PM by SkaTSee http://ift.tt/1EakD1A personalfinance