11 year utilities mistake.

johnthunder

I just had a usual meter reading visit my house last month and then a week ago I got a call saying there is a problem with my meter.

I have lived here for over 11 years and they say now my meter has been read wrong all that time.

It clearly says Cubic Feet on the meter and I have been paying for Cubic Metres.

They are saying I owe over 8yrs worth of bills but they will reduce it to the last 12 months, it was originally £4020.02 withdrawn charges £1864.65 CR with a total including vat £2263.14 which then became £2172.23

After numerous emails they reduced it to £418.62, I am still disputing this and today they have reduced it to £341.49 and then say they will reduce it to £300 due to poor customer service.

Personally I don't think I should be the one paying for this, I don't mind paying for what I use but there are no figures as to where these charges are coming from and it looks like they are just pulling figures out of the air hoping I will pay the lowest amount they try to tempt me with.
Do I need to seek legal advice?

Gas
06 Mar 12 Estimated 8864
02 Mar 12 Customer 8860
02 Mar 12 Meter Reader 8860
01 Sep 11 Meter Reader 8605

Electric
06 Mar 12 Estimated 81970
02 Mar 12 Customer 81929
29 Nov 11 Estimated 80866
01 Sep 11 Meter Reader 79889

dogshome

Hmmm - This is all no fault of yours, but down to the complete shambles that was made of legislation changes that allowed Utility Co's to compete directly with one another.

A metric meter measures out 1 Cubic metre of Gas for every unit, whilst an Imperial meter measures 100 cubic feet, which is 181% more than a cubic metre.

The crunch is that having been charged on the basis of having a Metric meter when it was actually an Imperial model, over those 8 years you have been charged only £100 for every £281 of gas you used.

Most certainly ask for for details of how the debt has been calculated, but on the face of it a £300 settlement figure seems a good deal, but keep in mind that in the future your bills will be based on Imperial calculations and your yearly gas bill will go up by around 181%

johnthunder

Yeah I used to pay £65 per month, they now say I will have to pay £91 per month, however they are assuming that I will stay with EON.

I doubt that is going to happen, the only good thing is in 3 weeks I am out of this house and moving to my first bought home, not an extra bill in need really since I just shelled out for my deposit and solicitors fees etc.

[Deleted User]

Hi johnthunder, you have been getting your gas dirt cheap for all these years, surely you must have noticed how little you were paying with the whole country screaming about the high prices ,fuel poverty for some etc.you have your responsability to contact your supplier yourself also with your obviously low bills.I have found many meters like that over the years, usually its the opposite way round where they are paying 2.81 times too much. They are usually onto the supplier pretty sharpish then.Last week I found two faulty electric meters where the occupiers had payed ZERO electricity for years in one of them. No chance of them contacting suppliers.you want to count yourself extremely lucky, I can t believe how genourous Eon have been, then again they proberbly havent lost a penny themselves,It all just disappeared from the grid

johnthunder

Who goes around comparing utility bills, we hardly use the gas.
I prefer the house freezing and we are at work for the day so to me the price of £65 per month seemed reasonable for what we are using.

The point is they read the meter for 11 years and did it wrongly, I don't care if my future bills are higher but I should not have to take the fall for someone else's 11 year error.

[Deleted User]

legally Eon can charge you for back billing of one year I believe,I only wish I had been in your position.they must have pretty thick meter readers at Eon not to spot that obvious mess up.You would nt have been getting away with such a bonanza of cheap gas if I d been knocking on your door.anyway,welcome to the real world of sky high gas prices.Stick with Eon,they have been very good to you.Over at Brit Gas a few years back we had a young lady one parent family who had her electric read wrong for a while and she owed over £1500,they just walked in and stuck a prepay in and collected every penny back in debt on the meter.the back billing rule was kept pretty quiet back then

Terrylw1

sacsquacco wrote: »

Hi johnthunder, you have been getting your gas dirt cheap for all these years, surely you must have noticed how little you were paying with the whole country screaming about the high prices ,fuel poverty for some etc.you have your responsability to contact your supplier yourself also with your obviously low bills.I have found many meters like that over the years, usually its the opposite way round where they are paying 2.81 times too much. They are usually onto the supplier pretty sharpish then.Last week I found two faulty electric meters where the occupiers had payed ZERO electricity for years in one of them. No chance of them contacting suppliers.you want to count yourself extremely lucky, I can t believe how genourous Eon have been, then again they proberbly havent lost a penny themselves,It all just disappeared from the grid

Can't really blame them, utilities earn enough profit.

Besides, they have all sorts of controls to see this e.g. the NHHDC reports stopped meters from the readers, not to mention suppliers tend to pick up live accounts that are not advancing as it could be a stopped meter.

The suppliers may overpay for a while since they pay an estimate, but After a few zero readings from the readers that estimate will end up at zero. At that point, the supplier no longer pays anything like the customer but the distributor has lost out.

My thoughts on these tend to be...you had enough notice of it but you shoved your head in the sand so sort your processes out!

Terrylw1

OP, why not raise it to their complaints dept and demand a written breakdown of it all as you can't understand the values involved at this time?

macman

You've saved around £4,000 pounds over 11 years, they're offering to reduce that to £300-and you want to complain or take legal action?
Yes, the error is theirs (though not helped by you failing to check your bills), but that doesn't mean that you don't have to pay for the gas used in the last 12m under the back billing code. Had the billing error been the other way, would you not expect them to credit you?
It's a fantastic offer, I'd accept before the change their minds!
I don't understand why you say that the figures are 'pulling figures out of the air'. Assuming that you have an actual reading from about 12m ago, the consumption should be obvious, it's then simply a matter of reconverting based on cu ft at the relevant unit rates to rebill, and deducting the amount already billed in error.

jalexa

macman wrote: »

Yes, the error is theirs (though not helped by you failing to check your bills),

I agree with your comment about the response to a bill reduction to £300 but not about the failure to check bills. There is no evidence of customer failure, indeed the OP reports meter reader readings within the last 6 months. A layperson cannot reasonably spot the metric/imperial issue if the reading was checked as "accurate".

The OP posts 6 months of actual consumption. It is entirely reasonable that the "12 month" consumption (or assumption) should be clearly stated as kWhrs (not ££s). That may be the case though it is not posted. And why should there apparently have been 3 attempts at the final figure?

macman

But a layperson can assess when their billing is unrealistically low.