Powergen incorrect meter readings

FTB83

Hi - I am new to this board but since moving into my first home have been generally browsing many forums here and felt the need to post today!

I have just received my first quarterly gas and electricity bill from Powergen; I almost fell of my chair!

We pay a direct debit of £40 per month and our bill stated we were £119 in debit, with the electricity part of the bill being £170!! (gas was only £20) My first thought was how on earth are we using all this electricity and how can we cut down, then I checked my electricity meter (which my statement said was checked by an engineer on 27 July) and saw that rather than registering 8300kwh as per my bill, it was in fact only 6600kwh! So in effect we had been overcharged by about 1700kwh (about £120 I think). I called Powergen who seemed fine about the revised reading and will reissue a bill, but I said that the reading on the bill was stated as an actual reading rather than an estimate, and asked what had gone wrong. He said the engineer "probably just estimated or mis-read the meter". God help us! :eek:

Has anyone else had such problems? And how can obvious errors like this be handled in such a blase way as though it happens everyday? (I am guessing it probably does) I think maybe Powergen should be looking into ways of tackling this, even though they have a freephone number, customers shouldn't have to be wasting their time ringing up to correct meter readings that were apparently taken by 'engineers'. We should be able to trust our utility suppliers!! Just some thoughts anyway!

nenya

If your reading today is lower than the reading that they billed you too then get a meter read and tell your supplier to rebill you to the corecct reading. Personally i feel that just because it comes from a meter man doesn't mean it's a correct reading. Human error - a mispressed number when imputing your reading onto your account can just cause havoc.

Hope you get the problem sorted.

trigger_mike

I've got problems with my powergen bill as well, First they canceled our £60 monthly D/D without telling us then we got a bill from 16/1 to 30/05 saying we used 376 units of gas and wanted £270.46+ vat which sounds a bit steep.

We are now changing over to sainburys (part of scottish power) as they are cheaper.

Powergen rang up asking why we are leaving, offering a cheaper rate for electric which they said they can't offer to most people but also told me to get a ordet done to check out my gas prices.
Don't know what to do.

seven-day-weekend

I always get my meter readings every month, keep a record and input them online to the Powergen site.

I haven't had a bill yet, but when I do there can be no argument, I have meter readings going back over a year. (not all for Powergen!).

Rikki

I'm with powergen. I don't pay by DD. ( I do have a powergen payment card which I can use to make payments towards a future bill if I wish.)
I provide powergen with accurate readings everytime they produce a bill and wait for the revised bill before paying.

FTB83

They all sound like good ideas. We decided to pay direct debit as the previous owners were in a similar situation to us (working throughout the week and only using utilities in the mornings, evenings and at weekends), they paid £40 per month which they said always left them in credit, and also paying via DD means you receive a discount for paying this way.

Will just keep an eye on the bills and also take regular meter readings and keep records of these.

Thanks all, I hope trigger_mike that you manage to resolve your problems aswell. I have read that you can use some comparison websites like energy line and uSwitch to see how your current supplier compares to others, but I also have read in Martin's weekly emails that now is probably not a good time to switch due to innevitable price rises by suppliers across the board.

Gal

Nice to know that people in the world can longer make mistakes without being criticised for it.

I fail to see the real issue. Your meter was misread - Powergen have issued you a revised statement to confirm what you have told them. Next time you see the meter man shoot him.

FTB83

Gal wrote:

Nice to know that people in the world can longer make mistakes without being criticised for it.

I fail to see the real issue. Your meter was misread - Powergen have issued you a revised statement to confirm what you have told them. Next time you see the meter man shoot him.

That's a bit of an unfair reply - my query was purely to ask whether this has happened to anyone else, and how could such a big mistake be made - i.e. if people are trained to read meters, how can a mistake to the effect of nearly 2000 units be made and not be looked into.

It is easy for mistakes to happen, and I'm not criticising that, but when these errors are made by such a large profit-making company in the service sector, that is when I think it needs to be looked into.

p.s. just seen from a previous post that you work for Powergen...

djohn2002uk

Gal wrote:

Nice to know that people in the world can longer make mistakes without being criticised for it.

I fail to see the real issue. Your meter was misread - Powergen have issued you a revised statement to confirm what you have told them. Next time you see the meter man shoot him.

Powergen, Powergen, Powergen. Seems to me that one or two mistakes can be allowed, we all make them, but Powergen seem to make a habit of it, or at least the people working for them do.
They continually billed me for the wrong amount because they wouldn't accept that I had a metric gas meter, not imperial.
I see similar threads on here over and over during the last two years and I wonder how much of their profit is acumalated from erroneous bills leaving customers ripped off.
Think if I worked for Powergen I would have kept it to myself.

BexTech

But it wasn't Powergen who read the meter, it was a local meter read company.

We've had the same meter read company and guy read our meters, when we've been with British gas, NPower, Powergen and now EDF (who are still the cheapest for us).

We did have one problem where two digits were transposed, but humans do make mistakes.

djohn2002uk

BexTech wrote:

But it wasn't Powergen who read the meter, it was a local meter read company.

We've had the same meter read company and guy read our meters, when we've been with British gas, NPower, Powergen and now EDF (who are still the cheapest for us).

We did have one problem where two digits were transposed, but humans do make mistakes.

BexTech, with us it wasn't a meter "reading" by a third party but Powergens stupid idea that it was an old imperial meter. I argued with them for over a month and finally got EnergyWatch involved.
I had already decided to change to Scottish Power because of the debacle of Staywarm chucking me off then inviting me back (all this because of them working out my gas usage as if I had this imperial meter and classing me as a heavy user).
They then put me on their standard tariff and still billed me for an imperial meter and as a final bill they wanted over £100 which I couldn't get them to change but after Energy Watch got involved I got a rebate of £8.
I don't usually refer to any employees in a derogatory way but my view of the staff at Powergen CS is beyond printing on here.