£600+ electricity deficit! british gas

3011gillian

feeling really stressed out as i'm not sure where to go with this one.

basically we have live in our flat for 3 years now and have paid £68 a month for at least the past 2 years. now this is a lot, but we have economy 7 and just thought it was that. we submitted regular meter readings and when it was reassessed our payments by direct debit stayed at £68per month. then last week we have got a letter from british gas saying our payment would be £242 per month!!! and when we called we were told that there was also £600+ that we owed!!!!

Now our meter readings are correct and we HAVE been using that huge amount of electricity. only at this stage did we think hang on this isn't right and we checked out our economy 7, it has been ON for 3 years constantly!!!! not switching over to the correct timer rates. there was no indication of this on the electratech panel we have. (electratech no longer exist apparently)

My issue is not that this electricity has been used but as we were unaware of the fault and our payments were kept consitent by BG, is there anything we can do about this £600+. I've called up AGAIN today and have been told that although they are excessively high, our usage has not cossed a threshold were it would flag up that there is something wrong. 2 people living in a 2 bed flat would not use that amount of electricity!!

tripled

From what I can find out the electratech panel is part of the heating system, which gets a pulse from the teleswitch when the meter ticks over. However it seems to be the homeowner's property, not that of the distributor.

If this is the case (hopefully someone will confirm/contradict me) then it is highly unlikely you can get any form of refund from BG as you have used the electricity and they have had to pay for it.

The amount of electricity you have used, although excessive for your sized property won't be excessive by BG's standards - they don't have a record for each property saying "2 bed property, 2 occupants, storage heating, washing machine, tumble drier, etc", for all their computer knows it could be a five bedroom house. Also people's usage can vary wildly, some people may be very conservative and have a very low bill, others who may have lots of appliances, 6 kids, work from home, etc, with far higher usage.

3011gillian

I'm so confused, i don't see how we could have know. why would they let us pay £68 for 3 years if we were actually using £242 worth a month. surely only British Gas had the full information. they DO know how many people live here and the size of the property(they needed this info when we signed up) and how much people in the area are paying. i really feel they have been negligent/unresponsible or something!

does anyone think i have a leg to stand on?