Faulty Gas Meter - some advice and a question at the same time!

dudleypipe

Hi All

Ok - first up is my advice.
If you have an electronic gas meter (the kind with no moving parts) then check it regularly. We just got a £3500 gas bill for the winter months, and EON insisted it was correct. I told them I would get a second opinion, and had a local gas engineer check the boiler etc.

Turns out the boiler was OK, and it was the meter which was jiggered. We tested this by turning on all the gas rings on the cooker (which from the cooker installation manual, we knew would use 6kwh) for 2 minutes and checking the gas meter. The engineer had a booklet which told you how much the 6kwh cooker would use in 2 minutes (and converted it into units). It should have used some small amount, but the meter never moved. We then turned all the boiler on full blast, with hot water running, and all the gas hobs. It then started registering on the meter, but nowhere near the amount that it should have. In the words of the engineer "if the meter has no moving parts, it can over-read and under-read your usage".

EON have since had the meter checked and the battery is dead. They have now agreed that the reading was wrong. SO the moral of the story is: its worth checking at the same time every day for a couple of weeks to see if there are any major fluctuations when there shouldn't be. If there are any - your meter could be wrong.

Now for my question:
I've always thought our bill was quite high for the size of our house. EON have no way of telling me how much gas we have used, as they don't know when the meter battery died. Am i within my rights to ask them to recalculate our usage since we joined them last March, and rework the bill accordingly?

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Hi dudleypipe,

I am sorry for the problems that you have had with your meter, has this now been completely corrected and the meter running accurately?

E.ON can re-calculate the bill for you, there is a consumption team that do this, they can take a few weeks usage from the corrected meter and re-bill your account including seasonal variances.

Ring and ask for more info on this and then ask for a payment arrangement, if this would help.

Let me know if I can help further :beer:.

Helena

dudleypipe

Hi Helena

Thanks for your reply. I have someone handling my case (and the battery was only replaced recently) and I have to send in 1 weeks worth of daily readings. We're moving house in 4 weeks so we didn't have time to do a long survey to trial the new meter battery.

The person handling my case did say that they would only correct the current outstanding invoice, but I thought I would take this up after the weeks worth of readings have been submitted. Ever since we moved into this house (nearly 5 years ago) I thought our bills were quite high, I only wish I'd noticed this earlier. We used nPower for a few years, and I have no doubt that the meter was dicky then too. But obviously we have no re-course with nPower as they no longer supply us.

Kind Regards
Mark

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Hi :wave:

I am pleased that this is being sorted for you, it sounds good that they have asked you to do the readings, they can re-bill the account from this.

Thanks

Helena

dudleypipe

Hi Helena

Wow! I hope that EON calculate my gas bill from the readings so far. I read the meter at 6pm on Wednesday, and then at 6pm on Thursday, and both the readings were exactly the same - even to 1/1000th of a unit. In those 24 we both had a 5 or 10 minute shower each (which obviously kicks in the gas combi boiler for) and also used a cooker hob for about 15 minutes. Both of these things use enough gas to register on the meter, as they use more than 1/1000th of a unit.

I think its safe to say that this meter does not work :beer:

Cheers
Mark