Scottish Power - transposed meter readings Economy 7

Strawbry

Hey everyone, I've been reading a lot of posts here fairly similar to mine, but none that's given a solution to my problem, so thought I'd post and hopefully get some advice from you all

I am with Scottish Power for electric only, I live alone in a studio flat and work full time(away from home). I am on Economy 7, 2 rate meter.

I moved into my rented property a year ago, and received estimated bills for the first quarter. They were around £280 for the quarter, which I knew was too high since my elec spending in my previous property was around £40/month on pre-pay meter.

So, I started submitting my(3) meter readings online to get my bill as accurate as possible, and it all seemed fine.However, the second time submitting my readings online I noticed that they 3 rates were all transposed. So, the box for Total contained the Day rate, and so on, so I tried to enter the readings in the boxes they should be to make it all right, but it wouldn't let me since obviously Total would be less than the previous reading.

So, what I did next was phone customer service to ask them to enter them for me instead. But they just entered it all in the incorrect boxes, not fixing the problem! One of the people I spoke to on the phone said I should take pics of the meter(Day, Night and Total) twice in one day, to see which rate has increased, to check that the meter is working correctly.

Did that, and last I heard was that it was escalated to Meter Reading department, that was over 2 weeks ago. I contacted them about a week ago asking for an update, but all I got back was that they are "working on it"

Meanwhile, they are still expecting me to pay an inaccurate £300 bill and threatening with debt collectors!

It's clearly a problem with their software, not my meter readings....

So sorry for the very long post!

Any advice on what to do??

dogshome

DON'T USE THE PHONE !

WRITE a letter headed Complaint, enclosing a photo of the meter together with a list of the readings you given so far with each one marked: Total - Day - Night accordingly

Strawbry

Dogshome, thanks for your reply

How is that different from e-mail photos?

They have acknowledged that they've received my pictures, they've just not done anything about it! :mad:

dogshome

A written letter delivered by Royal Mail carries more legal weight than an Email,
and by the terms of SP's licence it puts in train fixed procedures that they must follow.

They must ackowledge it and advise you of the Complaint No. allocated to it, then if they haven't resolved the problem 56 days after sending the letter, you can go directly to the Ombudsman

House_Martin

All the Eco 7 meters I have been involved with, with many suppliers, they only need the two readings, day and night.. total is never needed.Business eco 7 meters like pubs, they usually have three so they include the total and they really get messed up.. Ignore total when submitting readings if you are a domestic user.supplier can total the two if needed..The two readings when added up dont always add up to the total as one or both readings may have gone round the clock and started again at zero

Strawbry

HouseMartin, I have to enter the total on the website, and if I give the readings over the phone, the person I am speaking with can't enter the Day readings because it's less than what my previous reading was :mad:

House_Martin

Strawbry wrote: »

HouseMartin, I have to enter the total on the website, and if I give the readings over the phone, the person I am speaking with can't enter the Day readings because it's less than what my previous reading was :mad:

Make sure that you are getting the day/night reads correct. Old analogue meters have a circular 24 hr timer switch with the meter to regulate the the cheap 7 hours. These timer switches can/will be out of adjustment so the cheap 7 hrs can be at any time in the 24 hrs. The only eco 7 meters to trust are radio teleswitch controlled and they will be accurate. Digital meters can drift many hours also. Try and observe when the cheap 7 hours is in operation yourself. No one else is in a better position than the occupier to check this. Meter readers will get the cheap rate incorrect quite often and transpose it and auto billing systems are like all computers with garbage in garbage out results

Strawbry

The problem is not with reading the meter, it's to do with submitting the readings. It's their software that is faulty!

ang01622

Sorry - not really a reply to the orignal post, but my elderly mother has a similar issue, and I am finding it hard to get my head round it. She lives in a retirement apartment with night storage heaters. I told her previous supplier that in the winter months when she put her storage heaters on, the daytime usage went up which was clearly wrong. They were very patronising and said my mum must be using her electric fire during the day. We have now changed supplier and they said do a ‘kettle test’ – not rocket science but effective. I took the reading on two occasions – once within the day time and another in the night time period; each time I boiled kettles and put on her electric hob until the meter changed. It clearly showed that in the day it was registering on the night time readings and vice versa. So they are going to change the meter, but the engineer will not be able to check for any faults. So this meter and any ‘evidence’ that it was faulty will disappear and I will have nothing to go back to her previous supplier with. I have contacted UK Power Networks who are the distribution network operator and they say it is not their responsibility and could give no advice. Has anyone any ideas as to what the problem could be – is it possibly an issue with the building wiring? We paid someone to check the heaters, which were fine, but of course he could do no checks on the meter.

House_Martin

If the meter is attached to an old analogue circular 24 hour timer switch, it will be more likely that is the culpret.In nearly 20 years as a meter reader I ve seen so many of these old things which are out of kilter with the correct time and its this thing which controls the switchover times..There is a pointer at the bottom end of it which should be somewhere near the correct time..Most of the ones I see are so far off the correct time they cheap 7 hours can be anywhere within the 24 hrs.
Also if you have the old analogue meter as well showing Low/Normal or Day/night there is a little square window on the meter in the top right of the meter face which has a red indicator and a little arrow pointing to which rate is active at the time you view it..Night storage users really suffer when readings are transposed whereas non storage users usually end up with cheaper bills..
Even if the supplier sends out a meter reader to check , the chances are he/she has no idea about the meters..My two companies I worked for never ever trained any of us on the faults of this type of meter and its attached timer switch.
Digital meters can also be many hours off the correct time.