Help!!! £1000 British Gas Electricity Bill!!!

MoneySavingSpender

Normally the bill is £210-£280 depending on the season so is a £700+ over normal bill which arrived a few days ago.

The meter read

Mid November to Mid Feburary apprantely nearly 10,000 kilowatt hours was used, over 9500 of which were at the cheaper rate, a few hundred at the expensive 1st tier rate...

The Mid November reading is an estimate at approx 20,000, the Mid Febrary reading is a meter reading @ just under 30,000, right now it is over 30,000....

I do not have access to the previous bill for now...

I live with 4 house mates in a house share accross 4 rooms, 3 people and a couple.

All have "assured" me they had nothing like a powerful electric heater or similarly powerful running for weeks on end over winter, this applies to me also. The house is gas heated, there are no plasma screens in the house or anything similarly powerful that I can think of.

I feel like either BG have screwed up which seems less likely than housemates are lieing to me about 1 of them screwing up rather badly but I cannot prove anything, either way I see no way of recovering this cost really no matter what I try....

I am joint landlord of the house with my mother, I alone am paying off the mortgage on this place, this bill is in my name and I am co-habiting with my tenants, what are my options???

I feel so helpless

iceicebaby

At first look it looks like the estimate from In November was probably not high enough so you have underpaid then and now they have got a proper reading its catching up.

Beate

Have you provided them with a reading? The first thing is to check whether they got that number right - we once got a ludicrous bill where they had made a 8324 out of 3824.

MoneySavingSpender

Beate wrote: »

Have you provided them with a reading? The first thing is to check whether they got that number right - we once got a ludicrous bill where they had made a 8324 out of 3824.

This was my original thinking too so I checked straight away and it is now near 31,000, so their Feb reading seems accurate.

MoneySavingSpender

iceicebaby wrote: »

At first look it looks like the estimate from In November was probably not high enough so you have underpaid then and now they have got a proper reading its catching up.

I was wondering about that, I need to find the older bill to see.
Even if that is the case, then there was still a massive usage spike over summer or earlier?

Cardew

Well if in a month(mid Feb to mid-March) it has risen by approx 1,000(just under 30,000 to just under 31,000) it is difficult to see that you used 10,000 in 3 months(mid Nov to mid Feb)

As stated above the only conclusion must be that the mid Nov estimate giving a meter reading of 20,000 is way too low.

It may well be that you had several bills based on(under) estimated meter readings(not unusual) and it is now catch up time.

If that is the case and you contact BG and plead that they are culpable, for not insisting on a meter reading, they may reduce the bill as a good will gesture.

Bettyboop

Phone them up...get the high and low readings as they will be tomorrow and your bill should be corrected accordingly. I moved into my house in November last year and even though I am very sensible with the sort of lights I use I received a bill last week for almost £200.00. Which is overly ridiculous as that would mean I use £50.00 per month which is not true. I phoned them and a helpful lady asked me to give her the readings that very minute and guess what....they had overcharged a by a few THOUSAND units. In the end my bill ending up being £25.00. What a relief!

Hope yours gets sorted out.

Cardew

Bettyboop wrote: »

Phone them up...get the high and low readings as they will be tomorrow and your bill should be corrected accordingly.

I think you must have missed a couple of posts.

The final reading was by a meter reader and the OP has checked his meter reading and it was correct. So he is not disputing the reading

So what are they going to "correct" his bill to?

MoneySavingSpender

Thanks for your posts guys.

It is looking more and more likely that it is a high usage from somewhere earlier in 2006 that has caught up with me come the reading in Feb 2007.

However, if there are any avenues I can take, either by asking BG to help spread the cost, lowering the bill considering it is so out of pattern of my BG bills it would be appreciated, I'm not trying to escape paying the bill, but help make it easier, of course...

jinky67

do you charge your tenants for bills? maybe you should usage sounds very high

ultrapop

Have you had a gas meter changed over the last 18 months?

Same thing happened to me as I received a £1500 bill, after making 5 separate phone calls over the past 6 months, at last a clued up representative told me the newer meter runs 2.8 times faster that the older type gas meter, and they have not recorded the update on their system!

By the way, the phone call was made 3 weeks ago and they still haven't sent me the amended bill yet, so I got a payment reminder as a result. I rang them again yesterday and was told it is still being looking into.

Hope this helps!