A MIX-up saw a nonagenarian pay £4,500 more for her bills than she should have done.

Kathleen Stanier, of Summers Road in Malvern, was charged the excess cash for her electricity by Scottish Power after a faulty reading of her meter.

It was only because her daughter, Jude Green, spotted the error and managed to halt the payments that she stopped overpaying.

Mrs Green, 56, said: "Mum had her direct debit set up and that was being taken out.

"Because she pays it automatically, she just continued to file her bills away without checking them."

However, in June this year Mrs Green noticed a discrepancy in what her mum was paying.

"When I saw how much they were I thought it was crazy and rang straight away," she said.

"The chap said it looked like it had been wrong since the meter was read in January 2013.

"After that I thought I'd wait and see but nothing happened.

"In the meantime another month had gone by and the direct debits were still coming out."

Mrs Green was then told to stop her mum's direct debit payments until it was sorted.

Problems continued to mount up, however.

Retired mental health nurse Mrs Green explained: "The next thing mum got was a letter saying 'we haven't received your electronic payment s and you owe £774.59'.

"Of course that stressed mum out, and then they put her on a monthly cash plan, which we hadn't spoken about at all."

In August, Scottish Power emailed to say they recognised the problem but couldn't resolve it due to an internal error.

The issue has now been passed to the Ombudsman, which Mrs Green said "could take six to eight weeks to investigate and come up with an outcome".

Mrs Stanier's online account is now £2,500 in credit, which her daughter described as a "complete communication breakdown" as she had not been told this would happen.

Mrs Green said: "I just wonder if any other people have gone through the same thing as well.

"It's just lucky that I noticed, otherwise it would be going on blissfully unaware."

A Scottish Power spokesman said they did not want to comment as the Ombudsman was dealing with the complaint.

However, the spokesman confirmed Mrs Stainer had been issued with a refund.