Maximum time to pay huge gas bill?

Slinky_Malinky

Hi everyone,

I`ll try to keep my story as brief as possible....

I moved into my house nearly 6 years ago after my divorce. Because I was on benefits I qualified for a grant for 10 inches of loft insulation - the chap who came to see me claimed it would reduce my annual gas bill by £300 (yeah right, I thought skeptically.....but every little helps...) Naturally being skint I tried to be frugal and my gas bills were indeed low and paid by monthly direct debit at £10 per month - when married we paid around £40 per month but used the heating/hot water pretty much willy nilly. I thought this was very low but the meter was sometimes read by them and every time I got a card put in for readings, I took them accurately ( even got ex-hubby to check them for me as my bills were so low)

A few months ago the meter reader called, when he read my meter he commented that they had been treating my meter as a 4 digit meter but in fact I had a 5 digit meter. He phoned someone, they called me back and said it would take them a couple of months to sort it out, they never mentioned how much I was likely to owe. Now I have had an estimated gas bill showing my gas usage from February to August as only £8 which is absurd. No mention of the meter reading or adjusting for being a 5 digit meter.

I am going to have to phone them to sort this out once and for all. Chatting to a chap who was trying to get me to change suppliers, he reckoned I can expect a bill of around £3K and that I should get advice from OFGEM.

I don`t dispute that I have to pay for the gas I have used, and saw another post on this forum which says they should calculate pro rata the backdated gas price/usage. Sometimes when I read the meter I may have written the reading on old bills so perhaps that will help them with that. How long can I take to pay it back? Can they charge me interest too making the debt even higher? I am working now but not well paid and have no savings.

Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

SwanJon

They won't be able to charge interest,. and should recalculate all the bills so that the gas is charged at the rate it was charged when it was used.
But the good news on a 4 dial meter the unit is bigger than on a 5 dial meter (so you pay almost 3 times as much per unit). If this is the case you may even find they owe you money. (If it is the other way around - sorry)
If there is any balance you could ask for as long to pay it back as it took to build up - but you'd be locked into them as a supplieruntil you paid it off.
You'd probably get somewhere askign for a reduction too.
If they don't seem to be playing ball, aask for it to be registered as a complaint - they then have 8 weeks before you cantake it to the Energy Ombudsman for resolution. (Ofgem regulate the whole industry and don't deal with individual cases -be vary wary of people who try to get you to change suppliers, always do your own research)

Good luck.

Slinky_Malinky

Thanks for the reply, if they would give me a few years to pay it back without interest then I wouldn`t worry about being tied up with them as a supplier. I will have to dig out my old bills and see how many meter readings I can find - though of course they should have some sort of record of these anyway as I must have filled out several cards over the years even though they would be missing the last digit I suppose it would roughly indicate my rate of usage.

Thanks again.
Slinky

SwanJon

Did they say thay had missed off the last digit? If so, it makes for worse reading - while 1 imperial (4 dial) unit is abut 3 times bigger than a metric (5 dial one), it is about 3 smaller than 10 metirc ones.
When I have come across these (I work for BG) it tends to be the first digit missed off (the 10,000 one).
If it helps, the mythical average customer uses about 2 imperial units a day (about 5 metric units), if you ignore summer winter etc.

Slinky_Malinky

I have checked my bills and they only quote 3 digits on their readings so they have missed off the first and last digit. The 10,000 one is a zero anyway - I hadn`t realised just how complicated it was with the pricing between 4/5 digit meters. I feel very uneasy that they could bill be for any amount and I would have no way of checking how accurate their figures are. Not saying they are dishonest for a minute but mistakes can happen and this is a messy one.

I will have to brace myself to phone them today as it can`t go on any longer.

Thanks for your help.

ETA - phoned them with the latest meter reading and found out they are still dealing with it but have a huge backlog so will take a few more months to put right. Spoke to lovely lady who was very reassuring that fair arrangements will be made.