Gas Problems NOT AGAIN!!!!

kaznelson

Hi, About 10 years ago we swapped Gas Suppliers from British Gas to Powergen.We were then sent a bill for £9k for 2 days gas!!!!! After months and months of phone calls/letters/governing bodies etc we finally sorted the problem.

But ever since then our bills have always seemed high. In June we got a new Combi Condesing Boiler and thought our bills would drop. But since June we have received the following:


July 05£147
Oct 05 £74
Nov 05 £105
Feb 06 £312!!!!!!!!!!!
May 06 £100

Its only on reading todays bill I noticed we were in Debited to Powergen. Checked the Feb bill and says we have used 1516 Primary Units & 13586 Secondary Units.

Phoned Powergen who said that this must be because they have only been estimating our bill since 2004. They estimate the reading to be 7481 when I checked it is actually 7502. I have to ring them back tomorrow.

Any ideas on what is happening????

Cardew

If I understand you correctly Powergen have got their estimates pretty close to your actual consumption(7481 to 7502)

If you phone back with the revised reading your revised bill will be slightly higher.

In the 10 months since your July bill you have used(been billed for) £591. Do you think this is too high?

Not clear what you don't understand.

kaznelson

I knew my reading was higher than the estimate but I can understand how we have been billed for 15102 KWH in the period from Nov-Feb 06. That is nearly triple the average we use and triple what we were billed for same period last year??

cdon

Have you had your meter changed during this peroid? If you had an old imperial meter and it was changed you will now have a metric meter and the calculation is different. I think its 2.6 times higher with imperial. Have a look on the reverse of the bill for the calculation and check that they are not charging you for imperial if you have metric.

matto

Which of those bills were based on estimated readings and which were based on actual meter readings?

kaznelson

Thanks for the advice, all the bills were estimated & no we havent had a new meter in recently.

I spoke to Powergen today who said that it appears we were using a lot of gas over the winter!!!!! Back to wearing lots of layers this winter

matto

If they've been estimating your bill for this length of time and are only 20 units out then overall PowerGen have been doing a very good job. Obviously you should expect some fluctuation between summer and winter usage. If you want a better idea of how much gas you're actually using at different time of year then you'll have to give PowerGen your meter readings more often. Can't fault PowerGen on this occasion.

tedc_2

kaznelson wrote:

Thanks for the advice, all the bills were estimated & no we havent had a new meter in recently.

I spoke to Powergen today who said that it appears we were using a lot of gas over the winter!!!!! Back to wearing lots of layers this winter

Beware!

I switched to BG in December & then found that my kwh were about 3 times higher than they had been with Scottish Power.

It turned out that they were billing me for an IMPERIAL Meter even though I have had a metric meter for approx 5 years! (BG allege that Scottish Power did not properly inform them at the changeover!)

Just check the conversion to kilowatt hours on your bill.

With a metric meter they multiply the units used by 1.02264, then by 40.2, then divide the result by 3.6 to get the kwH used.

If you are being charged as an imperial meter user they will also be multiplying the whole thing by a further 2.83 !

You can check this with a calculator.