Meter Reading Calcs Gas at Over £600 for Quarter!!

LoidPhil

I have an online tariff with Scottish Power for both gas and electric. This requires me to submit my own meter readings on a quarterly basis, upon which my bill is then calculated (usually resulting in my direct debit being increased!).

I have, today, taken readings for both gas and electric and submitted them via Scottish Powers secure online service. The resulting bill shows that my charge for Gas alone for the period 20/08/08 to 09/11/08 is over £600. It's usually a third of this!

Suspecting a meter mis-read I went and checked, but no I had written the correct figure down - difficult not to given that it's a digital display.

I checked my historic readings which are as follows:-

01/10/07 10885
21/12/07 11329 (444 increase)
11/03/08 11864 (535 increase)
31/05/08 12266 (402 increase)
19/08/08 12464 (198 increase)
09/11/08 13903 (1439 increase!!!)

According to this I've used virtually as much gas in the last 2 and a half months as I have in the previous 10. Ironically I was expecting a lower than average consumption as we've been consciously trying to stop putting the heating on for the odd hour here and there (we only have gas usage for water, central heating and hob).

My meter reading appears to have jumped by over 1,000 more than what I would expect it to be. In quarter we've had our boiler serviced (no problems found), our heating/water control clock replaced (but the boiler is in living quarters so we would've heard it if it was coming on of it's own accord), and we also had a letter from the meter people to say that they were coming to replace our meter but when the guy came he said it was one of the newer ones so didn't need replacing. I didn't see what he did to make that decision, so can't say wether he just lifted the flap and looked at it, or whether he poked around a bit (and advanced the reader by 1,000 or so!!).

I honestly don't know what to do, as there is absolutely no way I can afford to pay this, nor do I want to pay for something that I haven't had the benefit of. I can't see anyway though, given that I have been submitting my own readings, that I can prove to Scottish Power that I haven't just been submitting lower readings up to this point.

Things aren't helped with it being a Sunday so nobody at Scottish Power is available. Are they my first port of call, or do I need to contact the people responsible for the meter?

Any words of support/reassurance appreciated. I'm going to be stewing over this all night I can tell.

SwanJon

Is it possible that you misread the meter? Is it one with clock faces (they are often culprits).
If so, it can be easy to misread one around 9 or 0.
Could it be that the read should be 12903 and you have misread the second digit?
Read it again more regulalry and see if it becomes clearer.

angelavdavis

Check you don't have a gas leak near the meter. I had a gas leak near the meter which only came to light when my bills started escalating in the same manner. I started reading the meter daily and noticed the smell of gas, when I got Transco out to check it, there was a fracture in the connection going from the meter into the house.

Cardew

Welcome to the forum.

The important thing to find out is when the meter was last read by SP(or their meter reader) and that reading.

You also need to check that your bills used the reading you gave them. The computer is programmed to ignore readings that it 'thinks' is an error, and substitutes its own readings.

You are absolutely sure he didn't change the meter? Looking at your historic readings it would appear that the meter is Metric(not Imperial)

As you imply, the 'accusation' might well be that you have submitted wrong readings(by design or accident)

We are told that it all the tests carried out gas meters never read fast, and looking at the design it is difficult to see how they can, although is it possible for a digit to 'jump'??

It is virtually impossible to use 1439 gas units(over 15,000kWh) at this time of the year in less than 3 months.

A leak 'your' side of the meter is highly unlikely as your house hasn't disappeared in a puff of smoke, and you would hear/smell a bad leak - anyway you can test by looking at the meter with no gas demand.

angelavdavis

Cardew wrote: »

A leak 'your' side of the meter is highly unlikely as your house hasn't disappeared in a puff of smoke, and you would hear/smell a bad leak - anyway you can test by looking at the meter with no gas demand.

Sorry Cardew - but I disagree. You couldn't hear any gas leaking nor smell anything near the meter even.

The meter is located outside the property with the main gas supplying pipe going along the outside of the house - it doesn't enter the property straight from the meter - it wasn't even picked up by the Corgi guy who checked my boiler installation when I queried the fact that my gas bill had jumped to three fold his usual level.

BallandChain

angelavdavis wrote: »

Check you don't have a gas leak near the meter. I had a gas leak near the meter which only came to light when my bills started escalating in the same manner. I started reading the meter daily and noticed the smell of gas, when I got Transco out to check it, there was a fracture in the connection going from the meter into the house.

I had a similar problem a few years ago. I had an old gas cooker and everything else was electric. Gas usually came in at £8 a quarter, until one quarter I had a bill for approx £100!! There was a gas leak and it was coming from my cooker. That scared me as it could have blown up. :eek:

Cardew

angelavdavis wrote: »

Sorry Cardew - but I disagree. You couldn't hear any gas leaking nor smell anything near the meter even.

.

If it were a leak it is something of the order of 11,000kWh worth of gas.

I had a very small leak many years ago and the smell was unmistakeable.

Anyway, as I said, it is too easy too check - the meter will be racing away with a leak of that magnitude.

LoidPhil

Thanks for your comments guys. Looking back through my old bills it would seem that SP took a reading themselves back on 01/06/08 that tied in with mine. As I said in my original post, the meter has a digital display thus rendering it fairly impossible to mis-read.

I've done a test this evening by taking a reading and then using no gas for the next 2 hours - the reading hasn't budged, and I don't smell gas so I doubt I have a leak.

Sounds like the meter has either thrown a wobbler at some point in the past 3 months but is now okay, or that Transco have messed about with it in some way. I've spoken with my neighbour and they defo replaced his meter (as well as his neighbour and so on) - I don't think mines been replaced, but perhaps they did something to it???? Knowing my luck I'll be another one of those cases where the neighbours supply is being logged on my meter - actually, is that possible??

I'll get on to SP tomorrow to see what they advise. I'll let you know how I get on.

angelavdavis

Phil,

It might be worth you taking daily readings so you can report them back to the gas company. Eon allowed me to do this for a month so they could then compare with these in order to sort out the bill. They then reduced my bill by £480 as a result!

I would still query with Transco - it sounds like something is amiss somewhere.

Ref your neighbour being connected to you - it is possible as I have heard of this happening with flats, the only way to do this is to check that your neighbour has the heating/cooker on and then repeat your meter check with all your appliances off as before.

LoidPhil

I've spoken with Scottish Power. I'm not really that much further forward albeit they did confirm that they took an actual reading from my meter on 15/09/08 which was 125xx. My reading on 19/08/08 was 124xx, so I had used somewhere in the region of 100 or so units in a little under a month. My reading now is 139xx, so I've seemingly used 1400 or so units in the 2 months since their reading, or in other words my consumption has gone up 7-fold. Me smells a rat (I wish it was gas, that may explain it!!)

The other point that was raised during our conversation, when I mentioned about the letter from Transco, was that SPs records of my meter reference number are different to the actual reference on my meter. It's only 2-digits different, but it got me thinking about whether they have switched mine to a reconditioned one taken from another house in the neighbourhood. SP phoned Transco though and they claimed that our meter was not replaced.

I've been advised by SP to log my consumption levels daily and report back to them next week.

A question for anyone who knows a thing about gas consumption. My meter read 13903 m3 yesterday evening and I've just taken another reading now and it's 13913 m3. That means I've used 10 cubic metres in the past 24 hours. During that time I've had the hot water on for 1.5 hours, the central heating on for 3 hours (boiler thermostat set to 4 of 6) and the hob on for 10 minutes. Does that seem an excessive consumption rate based on use? If I've got my sums correct this equates to a consumption of 112.77 kwh in 24 hours. I've just checked my energy consumption levels for Dec 07 to Mar 08 (the time consumption levels should peak) on SPs website and my daily average for the whole period was 75 kwh and the heating must have been on at least twice as much during that time. I'm beginning to suspect a dodgy meter may be the culprit????

Magentasue

We have a combi boiler. This week, hot water for six (we do share baths!), heating on all evening and an hour in the morning and cooking by gas, we are averaging 80kwh a day.