Gas bills: 1.5 million customers overcharged by faulty meters

Andy_WSM

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30214471

More than a million pre-payment gas customers have been overcharged because their meters are faulty, the industry has admitted.
About 1.5 million meters have not been working properly since they were installed, some as long ago as 2007.
The industry body Energy UK said customers may have been overcharged by as much as 25p for each top-up.
Those worst affected may have been overcharged by as much as £110, but most will have lost far less.
"We apologise unreservedly to customers," said Lawrence Slade, the chief operating officer of Energy UK.
"We have acted quickly, and we want those affected to get their money back as soon as possible," he told the BBC.
Refunds Customers will be automatically refunded by their energy supplier, and can have their payment cards updated when they take them for a top-up.
The meters were not properly calibrated to measure the cost of the gas being used.
Richard Lloyd, the executive director of the consumer group Which? said it was a "shameful example of energy companies failing their customers".
He said customers need to be reimbursed as soon as possible, and with interest.
On average, customers affected are likely to have lost up to £6.50 for each winter period, said Energy UK.
British Gas, the largest supplier of gas in the UK, said more than 700,000 of its customers may have been overcharged.

bbright

Scottish Power tried to overcharge me and my housemates by £1000 - it's luckily we had all of our meter readings, because they refused to believe us for about 2 months. When they realised that we weren't gonna back down they caved and scrubbed it off our account.

societys_child

bbright wrote: »

Scottish Power tried to overcharge me and my housemates by £1000 - it's luckily we had all of our meter readings, because they refused to believe us for about 2 months. When they realised that we weren't gonna back down they caved and scrubbed it off our account.

Glad you got it sorted, but this thread is about fauty meters.

bbright

societys_child wrote: »

Glad you got it sorted, but this thread is about fauty meters.

Whoops, sorry about that. To be fair, it was because of faulty meters that they refused to believe were faulty.

supermassive

We had a prepay gas meter fitted about 2 months ago. We've had multiple ones taken out and refitted now because they just keep eating money. We apparently used £20 in less than 24 hours. 24 hours when we weren't even home.

NelMac

Noting todays headline about overcharging I wonder how they will go about refunding everyone. I've had one of these in my flat for 10 years and very quickly worked out why the gas I was buying was disappearing at a ridiculous rate.
Infuriatingly, even when the house was unoccupied !
I top up in BULK meaning I don't run about with a card as I refuse to believe paypoint don't make money from a transaction fee, (that the energy supplier says they don't !)
They would be out of business pretty fast if they didn't make something from these transactions.
I sussed out that the combi boiler has a 'pre-heat' function and it was that causing the unaccounted for usage !
Even if you are not using the thing it decides to switch on and burn the gas 'just in case' you want hot water !!!
So, I switch the boiler off at the spur and only energise it when I need it.
Problem solved immediately !!!
So everyone, do NOT leave your boiler switched on !
Simple !
It appears MOST combi boilers do this and after sussing this out my energy usage is in MY control once again.
I wonder though, how much I've been ripped off for in the last 10 years ?

[Deleted User]

The fault was purely on top up, not gas consumption. At 25 p a go,once a week top up at the most is £13 for the year £91 for 7 years. Hardly mega money, so no big xmas payout is due. Still its 8 bottles of whisky so worth having it in your hands not theirs

sheffield_lad

NelMac wrote: »

I wonder though, how much I've been ripped off for in the last 10 years ?

The meters have been in use since 2007, and that in the "worst case scenario" customers could have paid £110 more for their gas than they should have.

tommybuk

Interesting reading, like sacsquacco says better in your pocket than theirs.


Anyone know how to go about claiming back any potential over charges? Nothing on British Gas's site at the mo.


Tommy

ChumpusRex

Just to clarify - it's on pre-payment meters, not credit meters.

There was also no fault - the meters were working perfectly - they had problem was that they had been programmed with the wrong tariff and metering information. Specifically, there is a conversion factor from volume of gas (cubic meters) to energy (kWh), called calorific value. This varies from time to time and region to region. However, on most pre-payment meters, the utilities set this to an artificially high value. (I'm led to believe that this was due to incompetence rather than malice).

The result was that most pre-pay meters would clock up more kWh than were actually used. As gas varies in quality from area to area, the exact amount that the meters over read varied from region to region and date to date.

In most parts of the country, the error is about 2.5% - in other words, for every 100 kWh you used, the meter would clock up 102.5 kWh.

I live in the NW, and over the time I had my pre-pay, it was racking up about 4% more than I was using (because the local gas was particularly poor quality, and the meter was set to a very high gas quality).

I did notice this, but never complained to BG about it. I had had such appalling service from them, despite an official complaint over trivial issues (setting up a new account, clearing a previous tenant's debt), that I decided that trying to explain something complex like calorific values wasn't worth my time.

[Deleted User]

Prepay meters installed from 2007 would probably be the small white E6 Landys and Gyrs. Its worth a claim to your supplier if you have one of these.