Moved house and changed suppliers - meter estimate stupidity.

tomstickland

This is more of a rant/silly story than a request for help.

I bought a flat (first time buyer). First thing I did after finding the bill demands for the previous tenant was go onto USwitch and see how much I could save. All looked good: NPower - British Gas on Economy7 could save up to 40%. So I instigated a changeover, using the energyhelpline cashback deal.

BG then asked for a meter reading which I posted to them.
I informed NP of the situation. ie: just bought property, outstanding bills etc.

Last week I received a bill from NP for £24. It clearly stated that the readings were estimates. They were also clearly based on an occupied flat and wrong. So I phoned up BG to ask what the readings were that I had provided them with. They didn't know because of a system changeover. Well done. They claimed that they'd phone back "within a few days" with the readings. I left it at that.

I then read my meter readings.

Today I phoned NP and explained that the estimated readings were obviously out of proportion with my electricity usage (the flat has been empty whilst I decorate it). I did a quick spreadsheet and this showed that rather than the £24 they were asking for, at most I owed them £6. They said that I needed to tell BG to dispute the figures. So I phoned BG and they agreed to do this. They finally acknowledged that my readings were lost in the changeover.

However, not only are the handover figures on the NP bill an estimate, but the start figures are an estimate. The funniest thing is that it shows 68 daytime units in 57 days and 258 Econ7 units. For a desserted flat with the Econ7 distrubution circuit breaker off.

I phoned NP and explained that I took issue with their starting estimates. I think the woman was quite enjoying herself - fine line between being helpful and just having a good challenge in coming up with quick answers. I asked how the Econ7 reading could be so high and she said "do you have a fridge on". She said she had the figures and that, yes, a fridge could have consumed that many units in that time period. Meanwhile I did a Google search and came up with my own figures and they showed that a very inefficient fridge could have used that many units, just about. Then I asked why the nighttime units were so much higher than the daytime units. She said, "well the starting units are an estimate anyway". And so on. Anyway, because I'm feeling pedantic and I don't want to pay for things I haven't used, I'm going to look up the consumption figures for the fridge and work out the units for 57 days. I'm also going to monitor the usage until I move in and then scale that up to 57 days to seee where I'm at.

The silly thing is that my new bill will be only £6 anyway, but I don't want to pay for electricity I haven't used. On the other side, the flat was empty for a year, so there's a vast grey area on what the starting figures were.

Two thoughts:
1) they rely on customer inertia/laziness and take a slightly optimistic view on estimated readings
2) Such large organisations that noone really has to care - leave a problem and it becomes someone elses.