british gas huge bill

sharon499

my niece has been with british gas for 3 yrs and has paid on avarage a whopping £150 a month for electricity. she has now come to the end of a fixed deal and has tried to change to another povider, bg refused to let her go and have now found discrepancies in the meter readings for her address, the readings were read back to front, the day reading was recorded as a night reading and vice versa, they now say that she owes them a whopping £5000 plus.
It was there mistake,does anybody know if they can legally charge this amount?

MrsTinks

What kind of house does she live in??? We are what I call a power hungry house of 2 adults and a toddler thanks to lots of technology and 2 tropical fish tanks and I pay under £40 per month!!! (and I'm in credit!)
Unless she's running a hydroponics farm in the loft or basement there is something seriosly wrong!
It could be a fault meter, it could be a lot of things but she definitely needs to fight this if she's been paying £150 per month let alone the £5k extra!

t0rt0ise

It sounds odd to me. If she uses most electrictiy at night and has been charged the higher cost for those units then it would seem that she's been overcharged rather than undercharged. Or have I got it wrong?

dogshome

Hi sharon499 - Your nieces £150 monthly D/Debit payment to pay for power thro' her ECO7 meter works out to £1,800 a year, which is high but not impossible if she lives in a largish house, however a demand for another £5,000 that has built up over 3 years, puts her Annual cost up to £3,466 a year which is off the scale.

She must check that the meter number listed on her bills matches that on her meter
She must go thro' her past bills to check that the meter readings consistently follow through from one to another,( If she no longer has them, BG must supply copies when asked ),paying particular attention to the first bill to see if the Day/Night readings were the right way round


Your post implies that she Switched to BG 3 years ago, if so did her previous supplier get the Day & Night readings the right way round ?

If her previous supplier got it right, and/or BG got thier 1st bill right, she should write a letter of Complaint to BG pointing out that they have a duty to produce accurate billing

Premier_2

sharon499 wrote: »

..., they now say that she owes them a whopping £5000 plus.
It was there mistake,...

I'm not sure about it being their mistake, but there certainly seems to be a mistake somewhere.

I suggest she re-checks the details.

Yellowcard

They wouldnt just land her with a bill that size, she'd most likely be elligible for backbilling and i'd imagine get a substantial compensation against it to help with it.

MrsTine how you're using that much and paying so little is beyond me haha! Who you with / what tariff?

MrsTinks

Yellowcard wrote: »

They wouldnt just land her with a bill that size, she'd most likely be elligible for backbilling and i'd imagine get a substantial compensation against it to help with it.

MrsTine how you're using that much and paying so little is beyond me haha! Who you with / what tariff?

Currently BG - but it's electricity only We have oil heating... I do have all energy saving bulbs but the hob, the oven and everything else is electricity...
It's reading accurately (I keep a sharp eye on it and do my own readings as well as BG doing theirs) - but I DO switch suppliers and tariffs when a better deal is available to whatever I have at the time

Davie_101

Sadly this doesnt surprise me. British/Scottish gas are the worst company we have ever dealt with. We often had months when they overcharged us thousands of pounds then refunded them months later. There were dodgy meter reads and when some tenents of ours ran up massive debts then cleared out Scottish Gas initially told me they had a meter read when they left, then denied it and said Iwould have to pay their bill and take the tenents to court to recover the money. They refused to let us leave at the end of the contract as they wanted 90 days notice so I renewed with as short a contract as possible then immediately cancelled. The only plus was at the end they decided they were due us £5000 which was a bit of a bonus.
The first thing to do is to phone them and get any meter reads they have which may give a picture of your use and any you have yourself then you can go back to them and try for a commonsense resolution. Get them to do an immediate meter read to establish where you are today. Write down details of every phone call etc.. with dates times, names and what was said. If all else fails go to trading standards.
We have since moved to Scottish power and found them to be much better.

sharon499

thankyou, i haven't spoken to her again yet but i will pass on all of your messages.
by the way it is possible to reduce your electricity bill my bill was approx £60 per month with UTILITY WAREHOUSE but just had it reduced to £5 per month due to low usage(they ended up owing me quite a large sum) I am all electric and have oil central heating and calor gas hob