Faulty boiler causing high gas bill. Who pays??

StuMan · 16 February 2018 at 4:22PM

Guess that's that then . Doesn't seem to be any eventuality where Im not liable.

Thanks all for your help here and on other threads.

Ashagill · 19 February 2018 at 9:34PM

I have this query too, but slightly different and i'm really in a pickle, I hope someone can help.
Our very old boiler gave up in early Jan, and we went with our energy supplier EDF (who send it out to another company) to get a new one.
After the initial consultation, the chap said they expected for it to be done and dusted in a week and a half. Then they didn't give us an appointment for four weeks. I bartered it down to three and a half weeks, but that was an awful long time without hot water and in a creaky old 4 bed house with no double glazing.
We used some electric heaters a lot of the time (but not the whole time) and boiled the kettle to wash up and made do. After the new one was installed, we received the bill for the winter quarter which was 4 times the usual price for a quarter. We were expecting a spike but not that much.
We submitted a meter reading and the price went up again by over £200!
Now we owe almost £1000 for one quarter, and it seems horrible, given how freezing we were and how long we had to wait.
EDF wouldn't knock any money off the bill, and claimed they had nothing to do with the new boiler and weren't helpful with trying to figure out ways to pay, they just wanted to full amount before the next quarter.
We now have to pay £1000, plus the cost of a new boiler, and we are selling the old creaky house asap, but until then does anyone have any ideas on why this bill was so high for just one quarter?

I saw above that a faulty meter is possible but until the boiler collapsed the readings seemed normal enough (though, what do i know about normal meters?) How do we go about investigating this?

molerat · 19 February 2018 at 10:46PM

A winter quarter will easily use 2 to 4 times as much gas as a summer quarter. Look on your bills for an "E" against any previous meter readings which means this bill is a catch up. Divide the kWh on the bill by the meter units and check it is the same as the meter, 11 = cu.m, 32 = cu.ft.