Error recovery
We audit backwards. Then we tell you the truth about it.
Where historic billing data shows you have been overcharged, we build the case and pursue it. What we will not do is tell you how likely that is before we have looked, because in this market nobody credibly knows.
How the audit works
- You give us the historic invoices you hold — most organisations retain somewhere between three and seven years.
- Every invoice is re-extracted and every charge recalculated from first principles.
- We compare what should have been charged with what was charged, meter by meter, period by period.
- Discrepancies are separated into those with a genuine basis for challenge and those that merely look odd.
- For each viable item you get the amount, the period, the meter, and the specific grounds.
- With your authority, we raise it through the proper route and pursue it to a conclusion.
The legal window
How far back a claim can reach.
Commercial claims between merchants in the UAE are subject to a five-year limitation period under Federal Decree Law No. 50 of 2022, in force since 2 January 2023 — reduced from ten years under the previous law. That sets the practical lookback window for a recovery claim.
Two things worth knowing: the audit period and the claim period are not the same. We will analyse as far back as you hold data, because it establishes pattern and baseline, even where a charge is beyond claiming. And whether the five-year rule applies retroactively to obligations arising before January 2023 has been litigated and is not fully settled — we would check the position at the time of any actual claim rather than assume it.
This describes the general legal framework as we understand it. It is not legal advice, and a specific claim of any size should be put in front of a qualified UAE lawyer.
What we will not claim
Most firms selling recovery work lead with a number — a typical refund, a success rate, a percentage of bills found to be wrong. We are not going to, for two reasons.
- Whether UAE utilities routinely refund historic overbilling is unproven. There is a dispute process. There is a legal limitation period. Whether that reliably converts into money returned, at what rate and over what period, is not something we have seen credible market-wide evidence for.
- The real prevalence of billing errors in this market is unproven. We know what error rates look like in the UK. We are not going to quote UK numbers at you and imply they transfer.
We would rather be the firm that said this up front than the one that promised a recovery rate and then explained it away. When we have real data from real client estates, we will publish what we find — including if the answer is that recoveries are rare.
Why we do it anyway
Because the audit is genuinely useful even when it recovers nothing. It establishes how your estate is actually charged, confirms which tariffs and capacities apply where, builds the baseline that all subsequent monitoring runs against, and frequently finds forward-looking savings — an over-specified capacity, a power factor penalty, a meter that should have been closed — that reduce what you pay from here regardless of whether anything historic is refundable.
On fees: we will agree commercial terms with you in writing before any recovery work starts. We are not quoting a percentage on a website as though it were fixed, because it is not yet.
Start with the historic audit.
It is the least speculative part of what we do, and it tells us both whether there is a longer conversation worth having.