TIP: Check Gas Bill uses intermediate meter readings

Highlander22

Hi all,

Just a couple of quick tips for you, especially if you are on a standard 2-tier gas tariff:

1. Submit meter readings on a frequent (probably monthly) basis, especially on the run-up and run-down to summer.
2. Check that your gas supplier uses those readings (all of them) in their billing.

If not, you could find that you are billed around 33% higher than your "real" bill should be.

We have solar water heating so our gas usage during summer (and some of spring and autumn) is negligible. We also take gas (and elec) readings on a frequent (weekly) basis.

During winter months, our Tier 1 usage is maxed so there is a lot of overflow into the cheaper Tier 2. However, in summer, we only use a fraction of the dearer Tier 1. If you do not follow the measures above, you will find (as we do) that your supplier will just take the readings at the beginning & end of your billing period and therefore your cheaper Tier 2 units will be blended across the summer months and therefore become the more expensive Tier 1 units.

For our last 2 billing periods (i.e spring-summer and summer-autumn), this has meant that we had been overcharged by 33% (our calcs of £60 vs their bill of £80 in total). This has happened for the last 2 summers and we have complained each time (and got our rebates).

As our supplier (British Gas) doesn't seem to want to change how they calculate bills to utilise the intermediate readings we supply, we thought it best to use "people power" to start applying pressure. Yes, the obvious connotation is that our bills will rise a little if lots of people complain and they do change their calculations and get less revenue through not being able to overcharge, but this would be fair on all.

We just hope this helps some people.

Terrylw1

Same in elec.

Even though your bill is not due, they can still take site/your readings and feed them into their consumption systems. Then should they need to estimate or review your billing, they have these to make it closer to what you actually use.

echoecho_2

Thank you for your post.

I completely agree that the suppliers should use all readings provided, not just the start and the beginning. THis is especially true when there has been a price increase.

However, would this make a real difference? My understanding was that suppliers only charge a maximum amount of tier 1 units over a one year period. So even if they charged you more at tier 1 in summer wouldn't the Winter bill be slightly lower as less would be billed at tier 1 in Winter?

Please excuse me if i have misunderstood this.

Highlander22

echoecho wrote: »

So even if they charged you more at tier 1 in summer wouldn't the Winter bill be slightly lower as less would be billed at tier 1 in Winter?

Please excuse me if i have misunderstood this.

echoecho - Thanks for your query. You might think that this would be correct if we were only billed annually rather than quarterly. However, with quarterly bills, the baseline for the next bill is the last reading from the last bill so you would not gain anything (except perhaps the fraction of an imperial unit that BG certainly can't handle in meter reading submissions). Trying to think of an analogy, if Tier 1 was a separate bucket for each quarter (and Tier 2 was any overflow that just spilled around the bucket), in winter, your buckets would be overflowing with lots of Tier 2 going on the floor, and your summer buckets would be pretty empty. What suppliers are trying to do is sweep up those (cheaper) winter overflows off the floor and fill up your (more expensive Tier 1) summer buckets.

Terrylw1 - Yes, you are quite right. In our case (and using gas for heating rather than any electric immersion heater and electric radiators), our electricity consumption is much flatter aka consistent per billing period than our gas consumption. We therefore do not encounter any billing discrepancies in our electricity (though, of course, I do monitor this also).