Electric Meter Problem

pammy61

I have been having trouble with Scottish Hydro Electric since 2005. We changed a token meter to a credit meter in October 05. Up until December 06 I rang Scottish Hydro every month to ask about my bill & if I could set up a D/D to start paying. They constantly told me their records showed me as having a token meter. They promised every time I rang they would look into it & get back to me but never ever did.

At the beginning of December 06 I received a letter claiming I owed over £1,300.00. I phoned to enquire how they had come to this figure in that no-one had been to read the meter but guess what the girl on the phone said my records still showed me having a token meter! Again they promised to deal with it. A week later I received another letter saying they were going to cut me off. I phoned again & all they wanted to do was discuss how I was going to pay the bill. I was not happy at they way I had been treated. They offered to put in a check meter to see if our meter was working properly.

This was arranged for the beginning of January 07. The engineer arrived and guess what - on his job sheet it said TOKEN METER. This chap was really nice & told me to get in touch with Energywatch which I did. Unfortunately they cannot help in this case. My meter has been checked & seems to be working okay. I've still never had a bill though.

Scottish Hydro then phoned me last week to discuss how I was going to pay this bill. It was now sitting at over £1,800.00. They have offered a 25% discount as goodwill with payment over 2 years at £59.00. They also want £140.00 per month towards normal usuage. This seems very high to me & I am in the process of trying to find out how much electricity we use on a daily basis. We have Gas Central Heating by the way.

Scottish Hydro actually did admit the confusion was their fault.

Can anyone please give me any advice on this or where I can get some help. What are my consumer rights. They have admitted liability.

Thanks for reading this.

Pam.

anniecave

This does indeed seem high. How big is your property? Is there just you in there, or are you a family? Do you have lots of high usage electrical appliances?

Myself and my flatmate have a badly insulated flat in the West Midlands, and we don't have gas, and our electricity is around £85 per month. So if you have gas anyway, unless there are lots and lots of you in your place, or you have lots of appliances, that does seem high.

If you owe £1800 back dated for over a year then £140 per month for normal usage is consistent with this. So the figures are consistent with each other if nothing else. They just seem consistently high.

Can you recall how much were you paying on the token meter?

Can you take daily readings for a few days and see how many units you are using per day?

They should have sent you a bill explaining how the £1800+ figure is arrived out in terms of meter readings and calculations of pence per unit. During the period since the the token meter was exchanged for the credit meter, have there been any readings recorded for this. Can you read the meter now and ask if there are any historic readings? I am wondering if it has just been estimating since the meter was exchanged with no proper readings, this may explain the large bill.

I hope you get it all sorted.

Cardew

Could you have had a debit balance on your pre-pay meter when you changed to a credit meter? and this is included in the £1,800 figure?

Did you not take any meter readings at all when you got the credit meter?

Obviously that consumption is extremely high. As the post above states, you really need to get a bill showing how they have arrived at an £1800 figure. The question to ask is if they were still under the impression that you had a pre-pay meter how do the know the reading of the credit meter when it was installed?

So Step I is to establish exactly what you do owe.

Step 2 is to negotiate a settlement on the established amount you do owe.

25% off and time to pay is reasonable; once it has been established just what you do owe.

Lastly it demonstrates the futility of ringing these companies - just write a simple letter and send it recorded delivery.

pammy61

Thanks for both your replies.

We are a family of 3. Husband out at work all day, daughter 12 at school & I work part-time. Got the usual tvs etc. in the house, washer, dryer - on every other day, dishwasher, fridge, cooker is eletric fan oven & gas hob - all brand new appliances in 2005. It is a 3 bed semi.

When the meter was changed it actually had about £5 credit in it. The readings were done at that time. Every time I phoned I gave a meter reading to them. They said the bill was estimated then I gave another reading but it didn't seem to make a lot of difference. I do not know what tarriff I am on as I've never had a bill. At the moment I am taking readings every evening at the same time and so far this week our usage has gone down every day. Monday to Tuesday was 30 units, Tuesday to Wednesday was 20 units, so I'm trying to see what different things I'm doing each day.

I do agree with what you say Cardew and will write or e-mail from now on.

Regards,

Pam.