Meter Readings - How often?

James

Does anyone out there know of any Gas and Electricity suppliers who will read your meters once a quarter or least twice a year? My present supplier, ‘Atlantic Electric & Gas’ read the meters annually.

Eyesight and positioning of meters rules out doing it myself.

Thanks in advance.
James

irnbru_2

James wrote:

Does anyone out there know of any Gas and Electricity suppliers who will read your meters once a quarter or least twice a year?

Scottish Power read them quarterly, well at least around here they do.

James wrote:

Eyesight and positioning of meters rules out doing it myself.

Ask your supplier if they can be moved to somewhere you can read them. I belive some will move them for free within a fixed distance.

James

Thanks I contacted Scottish Power, and yes the will read my meter quarterly. The down side is that choosing this method means you pay a higher tariff, it's much lower if you use the on-line facility.

The gent at the call centre was very helpful, and I put it to him, are they excluding those who are unable to read their meters themselves from using the (cheaper) on-line method.

The chap was very good and is following this up for me.

Hoopylass

how often do you think that you should read the meter to keep the bils acurate?

Morseman

The problem is that, whichever Supplier you are with, they will usually use the same Data Collector (which is the company that employs the meter readers). That means that the company that reads the meters in your area is almost always the ones who were supposed to read it for your previous Supplier!

The exception is where a Supplier decides to use their own, but for domestic meter readings, unless they have a lot of customers in one place, it's not cost effective to send out their prefered Data Collector.

When you think about it, the cheapest way is for a meter reader to do an area and visit every property. If they changed every time someone changed supplier then it would be a worse mess than it already is!

The way the electricity and gas market is now organised, you have a company who look after the cables and over head lines, known as the Distribution Company, a company who looks after the meters, known as the Meter Operator, another company to read the meters, the Data Collector and a company to make sure the right readings go to the Supplier, called the Data Agregator (although often the Data Collector and Data Agregator are the same company).

Suppliers, the people who send out the bills, can 'unbundle' the various organisationsand appoint their preferred Meter Operator/Data Collector/Data Agregator, but this is usually only worth doing if you have a lot of customers in an area. This is usually where the Supplier used to be the local Regional Electricity Company (REC) before privatisation because not that many people swap suppliers, even now!

For business customers, Suppliers may well appoint a different Data Collector because meters at sites with above 100kW supply capacity should have meters that can be remotely read and don't need smeone to call out other than the annual 'safety check'.

For domestic meters, Data Collectors are supposed to try to get one actual read per year, but under the Metering Codes of Practice, they can go for up to two years and, even if they miss this, nothing will be done unless they miss out a lot of meters. The main reason for this visit is a 'safety check' and to make sure people are not fiddling the meters!

Morseman

Hoopylass wrote:

how often do you think that you should read the meter to keep the bils acurate?

I would suggest you read the meter once a month, say the last day of the month and keep a record. Then when the bill comes, which may well be estimated if no meter reader has called, you have figures that you can use to check the estimate. It also helps you to see how much you use and you can use this to help you to reduce your energy use, but that's a different subject. :rotfl:

Most bills, for domestic customers, are sent out quarterly (every 3 months) so the minimum you should aim for is every 3 months.

As an alternative, if you cannot be bothered to do this and, lets face it, it's not the most thrilling of excersizes! :rolleyes: Then read the meter when you get the bill, and compare their reading with yours. I did this for my last gas bill and they had over estimated by over £100... I rang in my own meter reading and that means they now have to send me an ammended bill. So, I get longer before I have to pay, and the money is in my account not theirs, plus I pay the correct ammount and not their over estimate.

As they say 'It's not rocket science' but if you know the system, then you can make it work in your favour, not theirs.

--... ...--
Morseman

Hoopylass

Thanks morseman, i will be reading the meter when the bill comes in at the end of may!

jxtreme

i work for a large utilities company,

we send our meter readers round all year round on a rota basis per area (postcode).

unfortunatley the company used is not very good and many of the readings come back incorrect, or not at all.

it is therfor much easier for both the company and the customer to read their own meter's on a quaterly basis just before they usually recieve the bill, even better would be to recieve monthly readings from a customer as this guarantees up to date readings and correct bills.

if you wanted to get your meter moved it could only be done free of charge if the move is 15 inches either way ( or without moving the meter board itself) otherwise most companies would charge unless there was a valid reason for moving them

BTW if anyonne needs any help with any issues re utilities give me a shout ill be more than happy to help you out


jxtreme

Morseman

jxtreme wrote:

i work for a large utilities company,

we send our meter readers round all year round on a rota basis per area (postcode).

Hi jxtreme,

I wonder which 'Utility' Company (or do you mean Supplier?) you are with?

I was an Electrical Engineer with MEB from 1978 - 1990 (well, a trainee engineer and then various engineering jobs until I left) and then joined PowerGen (now part of E.On) until a couple of years ago. One of my 1st jobs was quoting people to have their meters and cut-outs moved.

I used to be part of the Industrial and Commercial Energy Sales team, specifically 'technical support' to the Sales people, solving problems with registration, data collection and billing. Mainly large industrial and commercial customers.

I was involved in sorting out the mess in 1990, when the 1MW market opened, the mess in 1994, when the 100kW market opened, and that was some mess! Then got involved with Offer, the DTi, Suppliers (British Gas and the other RECs) on, of all things, pre-payment meters. Mainly because I was probably only one of two people in PowerGen at the time who know what a pre-payment meter was, and how it worked. Some people had never heard of Token meters, let alone key and smart card. LOL

I'm not with any Supplier/MoP/DC/DA now, I do energy efficiency reports, CCL reduction agreements and contract energy management.

If anyone has a problem with their gas or electricity supply or bill, I may not know the answer, but I will usually be able to point people towards people who know. :j

jxtreme

funnily enough i work for Pgen at the moment used to do work for npower but found they are as bad an employer as a supplier,

the reason i dont use the term "supplier" in my previous post is because most of the companies dont technically supply the gas / elec as they buy it from other places (just a little quirk of mine)

Morseman

jxtreme wrote:

the reason i dont use the term "supplier" in my previous post is because most of the companies dont technically supply the gas / elec as they buy it from other places (just a little quirk of mine)

You are quite right, the Supplier doesn't get the actual energy to the customer, the Distribution company does that. :rotfl:

The number of people who I met in various energy companies who don't know the difference between kVA and kW, or what Power Factor is, used to amaze me. :eek: Most companies can't even get the capital letters in the right place when they write them down.