Electric meter says I owe nearly £10,000!!! Please help.

junko44

Hi everybody,
I moved into my rented house on the 7 April last year, a couple of months after we moved in I paid an estimated bill that was addressed to the landlord then called them up to change the name on the bill over to mine and my partner's. Seemed fine, nothing to worry about etc. Called electric company to ask when another bill was due, and again paid an estimated quarterly bill of around £120 (I thought this a little low). I was asked to call back with a meter reading, I did and the reading was 77921.

The person on the phone didnt seem to believe me and asked me to check the meter again and confirm the numbers several times( I know nothing at all about meter readings).
A bill then arrived just after christmas for £661, I thought that maybe I had been under charged on the previous two estimated bills, but this still seemed very high. I looked at the bill and the reading they had for my house was 07921. I just checked on a website that estimates your bills from meter readings and it seems to think I owe nearly £10,000 if I update it to the correct reading!!
I took a new meter reading today and the reading is now 80450, this means that in the last 3 months I have used over £300 which I find hard to believe as we live very modestly. Our house is only a two bed cottage with just me and my partner living here, we have a laptop, all energy saving bulbs and the usual white goods (excluding tumble drier and dishwasher). We have a TV that is only on for a couple of hours a day.
Our heating is oil so we do not have any heating run on electric.

I don't know if meters these days can be faulty, it is a newish looking digital meter. I'm really scared as I will never be able to pay £10,000 and I have no idea how we could have used this amount of electricity in just one year.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Many thanks!

macman

Clearly it cannot be £10,000.
What was the opening reading given when you opened the account? Your usage since is then a simple calculation.

junko44

Thank for the reply. I was told by British Gas that a meter reading was given in February before we moved in, they did tell me what it was and I'm nearly 100% sure it started with 03.
I'm just really confused by this and don't really know what to do.

rising_from_the_ashes

Did you read the meter the day you moved in?

This is the point that you'd be liable for any usage.

There is no way you can have used that much in a year - my advice would be for one of you to sit / stand in front of the meter, the other to turn everything off in the house - and see if the meter still continues.

If it does, then someone / something is using your electricity.

qwilpen

the advice previously given is good switch everything off t hte wall, if the meter is still advancing then start to switch off each circuit. if this does not prove anything contact your supplier and ask for a " meter accuracy test" to be conducted, an engineer will call out and test the meter on site.

DO NOT LET THEM REMOVE THE METER untill the supplier has confirmed/ rejected a meter error or your claim will disappear.


there is an escalation process where an independent examiner may get involved, if you are unble to agree with the supply company.

the examiner will remove the meter and conduct a thorough eamination.


hope this helps

qwilpen

ps i do work in one of the electricity companies on metering equiptment.

wouldbeqaulitymoneysaver

((((junko44)))))
Good Lord Almighty!
Electricity Companies !!!! up all the time, get all past Bills, online? and get CAB help. Best of luck that Bill cannot be real.

Joyful

Take a reading now and in 24 hours then call BG with these reads and your meter serial number. There is obviously a problem with your readings.

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

junko44 wrote: »

...I know nothing at all about meter readings...

Perhaps the actual reading was 779.21 and you told them 77921 by mistake. That would be an over-estimate of 77142kWh. At a typical unit cost of 14p per kWh this would come to about £10800 which is roughly what you say is the bill.

molerat

I think OP gave 77921 and from the first post they used 07921 for the bill. The latest read by the OP is 80450 so 80450-77921=2529/210(7mths) =12 kWh/day, a reasonable figure. Looks like old readings have been misread.

OP take daily readings from now on and record them. The main problem is if OP did not read meter on takeover this will take a lot of unravelling. Possibly a twin rate meter being read wrongly ? Meter changed but not recorded ? Does the serial number on the meter match the one on the bill ?

Terrylw1

Its clear that the latest 2 readings are inline and providing you haven't included the red dial or those after a decimal point, doesn't match to the suppliers readings.

What is telling for me is how the supplier dropped the last digit off and added a leading zero. This sounds like they are trying to make it fit to produce the bill.

So, what I reckon has happened here is that the jeter has been set up as the 1st digit at zero and ever since, the supplier has been making readings "fit".

For now, whilst good advice, ignore monitoring consumption as its far more likely to be an account error that has been going on well before you. There are all sorts of potential causes but you need to contact the supplier again stating all this and if they don't believe you, tell them to send out an engineer. There's a chance that the data they have supports your readings but due to their own process failures, they have failed to use it for correction. It could even be an error from an old change of supply that you are inheriting.

Another point for you to consider. You paid bills in the landlords name but if you gave readings for moving in, they would only bill you from that. Have they used them? If so, you paid the landlords bill in error so get your money back. If they estimated your opening readings, get hour money back from the landlords account - any credit caused by estimation or your opening reading would cause the supplier to put te landlords account in credit and send him/her a cheque refund from your money!!!

Your landlord doesn't seem to key an eye on the bills given these reading issues.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

are you reading meter properly?

You ignore digits after the decimal point or in red.

What type of meter have you?

A)

reading 7437.78, ignore .78,





reading 98738, ignore the red