Owe British Gas money but reading was wrong!

MusicalLawyer · 10 March 2012 at 10:39PM

So, we just switched from British Gas to Scottish Power.

When we gave our meter reading, we gave the wrong numbers!
Our Electricity Meter is SO high up, it's way above the living room door - even standing on a chair it's hard to see properly. So we've recently started to take photo's of it, so we can read it properly.

Anyway, we gave scottish Power a meter reading in Feb 13th of XX7XX, and when I took the photo of it just now it reads XX5XX - so it's 200kW less than we thought before.

They gave this reading to British Gas, who are charging us £228 for electricity from Dec 9th until Feb 12th - which is 200kW more than we should be paying - due to the f!!k up by us

If we ring both companies, will they amend this?
I can't phone either companies as they're closed and I'm panicking that I'm going to pay for electricity we haven't even used

We're having to pay the £200+ bill in instalments as it is

rising_from_the_ashes · 11 March 2012 at 9:15AM

By all means phone them, however, the problem may be that you aren't able to provide an accurate reading for the date of transfer (if it's reading 200 less now, then it would've been less than that on 13 Feb).

Without the full digits (not sure why you used Xs as it's a totally random number?) to compare it's difficult to say & this may be obvious but is the digit before the 7 and 5 the same?

Not really a lot you can do until you phone them up... sorry

determined_new_ms · 11 March 2012 at 9:46AM

I've had this recently and its a right pain, so I really do sympathise! I just had to keep calling, speaking to people who were incompetent and saying it was my fault. Keep going, I would consider putting it all in a written complaint. I had to do this for some clients a few years ago, it took about 8 months to resolve. But in the end I wrote an extrmely long complaint detailing all of the times I had contacted them, what was said etc and each person was given £100ish off of the debt and given a year to repay the amount owing as it was their fault. Good luck!

DVardysShadow · 11 March 2012 at 3:02PM

KellyKing1987 wrote: »

... If we ring both companies, will they amend this?
I can't phone either companies as they're closed and I'm panicking that I'm going to pay for electricity we haven't even used

Don't even go there. You may find that your new supplier accepts the new reading [it is in their favour] and the old supplier rejects it [it is not in their favour] and you end up paying twice and spend months trying to get it back. All for the sake of £25 or whatever.

If you leave it as it is, you will be slightly ahead with the new supplier and you will have deferred the payment for the difference into the installment plan you have from the old supplier. I suspect that you may even be under slightly less financial pressure as a result of this mistake.

MusicalLawyer · 11 March 2012 at 6:43PM

rising_from_the_ashes wrote: »

Without the full digits (not sure why you used Xs as it's a totally random number?) to compare it's difficult to say & this may be obvious but is the digit before the 7 and 5 the same?

I used X's as i didn't have the exact readings when I posted this.

The reading I gave was 86738 on the 13th, but the reading I took a photo of yesterday said it was at 86549.

I can't just leave it - I will have to give meter readings in the future and they're going to notice the difference... or do you mean to give them a reading near the end of the quarter (May 14th) as my meter should be just over what the 86738 reading? Then I'd have a cheaper bill from Scottish Power?

pleasedelete · 11 March 2012 at 7:35PM

It's a nightmare. British gas misread mine. I didn't notice at the time bit when I did next customer reading it was lower and tbey rejected it. 3 months later same again. I tried to change supplier but was refused as a marker of some kind was on thevaccount. I asked for a visit. He did reading. Again rejected as still lower (6 months after original mistake). They sent engineer to check meter (for tampering I assume). Only then was it accepted. I then tried again to move supplier although b&g made me pay them £1000 first and they then paid £2000 back.

Owe British Gas money but reading was wrong!

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