check those meter readings. 27 February 2007 at 4:12PM edited 30 November -1 at 1:00AM in Energy 1 reply 521 views

hotdiggerdy

i know it sounds like common sense but 2 weeks ago we had a meter reader come round and read both gas and electricity meters, we are with powergen dual fuel online, 8 days later our bill is sent to us by e mail and the eletricity reading was ok but the gas has been estimated so i checked the readings. because we pay by DD we are usually in a bit of credit but due to the time of year i expected this to go down a bit and sure enough we were now 97p in credit however on reading the gas meter i found that they had over estimated the gas usage to the tune of 139 units:eek: . I contacted powergen and they said that this was a mistake they actually had the meter reading anyway, they sent me out a new bill a couple of days later. Imagine my surprise when i was no longer 97p in credit but £119.45 in credit!!!!:eek: i have since put in a claim to have most of this refunded. and a complaint about this as it is not the first time it has happened. so check your meter readings!!

Chihiro_2

It's a good idea to check the readings when switching also, based on my mum's experience. I can't remember exactly what happened, but a reading was given to the old company and then a letter arrived saying that there had been an error calculating the bill and to give them a meter reading - this was several weeks later, so naturally, the reading was higher. As, technically, the contract with the new provider had already begun, my mum effectively ended up paying for nearly a month's gas twice. That was a shame really, as the only reason for the switch was cost, the CS from the old provider had always been good and I'd made that perfectly clear. The paranoid part of me can't help thinking that the "error" with the bill was not accidental, though.