Dodgy Electricity Meter Please Help !

bobcapes

Hope someone can help us.
Years ago we had a pre payment meter fitted because British Gas cocked up leaving us with a huge bill, we had this meter for about 15 years without any problems we decided to go back to Direct Debit and thats when the problems started.
(1)
We noticed our bills seemed higher than pre payment meters.
(2)
It took 18 months to convince them there was something wrong, but eventually they realized we were on ecconmy 7. In the meantime so annoyed we had changed to EDF. British Gas convinced us to go back telling us it was all sorted It was'nt so we left again to go to Southern Electric, because all our family were with them.
Thats when we realized our Electric bills were a lot higher than there's, we live in simalar sized properties with the same household appliances.
We changed to EON in 2010, the bills were slighty cheaper.
Yesterday we had a phone call from them our electricity is twice as much as the 3 bed be national average.
I forgot to mention our bills are the same winter or summer.

dogshome

Hmmm- Summer & Winter bills of the same value ! ?

First thing to check is that ECO 7 meter - Is the billing chargeing the Day & Night rate readings the right way round ? Suppliers mix them up all too often

Check which dial is which, by turning everything off in the middle of the day and then boil a kettle to see which meter reading is registering the use - Is this the meter for which you are charged Day rate ?
If your supplier does have them the wrong way round, get on to them immediately

bobcapes

Thanks for the reply, I will do as you suggest and let you know what happens.

bobcapes

Hello again.
It's only a one tariff meter, we did the kettle test and it seems ok. But we took a meter reading at 20.30 last night and we've already used 14 kwh today, the washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher have not been used today.

dogshome

Hmmm - So if you have a 'Standard' one tariff meter, how did your previous comment regarding an ECO7 meter come about ?

Is there any mention of Day & Night rate charges on your billing ?

Quite often suppliers will agree to charge an ECO 7 meter at Standard meter rates if requested by the customer, but, this is done by just a note on the account - If you change supplier the note is lost and you will be charged on the basis of an ECO7 meter because the national database says that is what you have

chanz4

what about your fridge/freezer, sky box, cable modem?

Terrylw1

dogshome wrote: »

Hmmm - So if you have a 'Standard' one tariff meter, how did your previous comment regarding an ECO7 meter come about ?

Is there any mention of Day & Night rate charges on your billing ?

Quite often suppliers will agree to charge an ECO 7 meter at Standard meter rates if requested by the customer, but, this is done by just a note on the account - If you change supplier the note is lost and you will be charged on the basis of an ECO7 meter because the national database says that is what you have

There are E7 meters invarious regions that have been set up to operate as standard billing across 2 registers or E7 across the 2 registers. This is compliant as long as the data has been set up to allow this.

The supplier then updates the distributor by changing the MPANs Profile Class from 2 to 1 which reflects a change from E7 to E7 metering at standard charges.

Sadly, some suppliers such as Bgas are not following the compliance as they should and just internally change the billing, so when you switch, a compliant supplier wont let you have other than E7.

OP, can give more info on the tariffs, whether your meter has 2 reads or 1 etc as its unclear and as Dogshome pointed out, you can't be billed for E7 on a 1 rate meter unless the make one if the registers readings up every quarter.