Help Please: Business Electricity from British Gas - wrong readings - what a mess!!

weeden

Wondering if anyone can help?
One meter with two readings (day and night) - electricity readings taken by third party for whole period.
No bills received for a long time, then all of a sudden receive a letter stating the direct debit to quadruple to take account of 'outstanding amount!' Asked for copies of all bills, as the last time I looked we were in credit with British Gas!

.......turns out that the bills (not received by us by the way) all have estimated readings on them....but not a problem....it will resolve itself eventually.

British Gas then cancelled all previous bills for over two years and re-issued bills, but this time they shift the readings round....night to day and day to night.....obviously at different rates....and not in our favour.:mad:

They also charged us at exorbitant rates because 'our contract had came to an end' What contract? What end? Where was the correspondence?

Have explained to them that yes we will pay for electricity used....but at an agreed average rate not the rate that has now appeared on our bills (an increase of 300%) as we believe we have to pay for what we've used. However I don't believe we should pay for their mistakes in taking the incorrect readings, and of issuing bills with incorrect rates attached to incorrect readings.

Have taken this up with Centrica and British Gas on many many occasions but my correspondence is met with out of office replies constantly or read replies but no reply is in the offing as yet.

Can anyone help with where we stand or point me in the right direction to have this sorted out. It is stressing us out.

Any help would be most appreciated

kjsmith7

It could be that the meter readings, the day and the night, were the wrong way around, meaning you were being charged your expensive day consumption on the cheaper night rate, and your cheap night rate on the expensive day rate - this would obviously cause you to now have a large debit on the bill because your readings were previously 'twisted' around.

It isn't really an increase of 300% if it is correct - because as you have said you should be paying for what you use, I agree. It is important that you check the meters regularly, even when you get a quarterly bill showing 'accurate' just in case

I would check that the change is correct, however. Take a meter reading, remember to read both readings. If you have a digital meter, you may have to push a 'cycle' button, if it doesn't say cycle, don't worry just press any buttons there till the display changes - you can't break the meter. Be sure the read the meter in the day time, say around 3pm just to be sure.

You may, on some of the screens, see the date and the time, and also see "88888.88", this is just to check that the meter display isn't broken. Ignore those. You may also see a 3rd reading, this is just the total of your day and night registers added together and is merely a checksum to check the meter is adding up properly.

Now, read the meter again, in the day time, perhaps an hour later to give the meter time to count some electricity. One of the registers/readings won't have changed - this is your 'night' or 'low' reading. The other one will obviously have changed - this is your 'day' or 'normal' reading. Check that they have it the right way around on the bill! If it's not, telephone them with your findings and have the two sets of readings you took to hand so they can escalate the matter further.

Hope this helps

Ada3050

Just been through this with scottish power, so you have my sympathy on this one.

I had to make a complaint and with a bit of persuasion they agreed they were in the wrong. You will need to keep on at them until its sorted out.

I did what kjsmith7 said about taking readings 1hr apart and that seemed to satisfy them.

Good Luck!