Gas Meter suddenly thousands lower

irishmark

We've been running a high gas bill for a while now and have built up a significant debt to npower and suddenly there's been an engineers visit and the meter is showing 8000 units less.
That's actually lower than the reading when we moved in.

Its also showing we use about 45 units a month, not the 300 units a month it had previously been reading, and we haven't change our habits in those two months (both were winter and similar temps)

The meter isn't new, it's still a wrecked out POS and it's reading 15k, not zero. The previous npower read was 22k and we had an estimate of 23k

I'm a bit gobsmacked and wondering how I should approach this with npower.

It seems clear to me we've been being overcharged somehow but I'm not sure I can demand them to refund me for a meter reading lower than when I moved in (Although admittedly, thats down only as an estimate)

When I entered my readings today, there was a message saying my readings were unexpectedly low and would be manually reviewed next monday, so I was going to wait for that to happen and then give them a call.

Any advice? What are my rights? What has happened? can an engineer "rewind" a meter?!

Robin9

Can you post your readings - Actual or Estimated - going back as far as you can

irishmark

20/02/2018 Customer read, Gas 15090
09/02/2018 Customer read, Gas 15072
31/01/2018 npower read, Gas 15046
23/01/2018 Estimated read, Gas 23205
20/12/2017 Estimated read, Gas 22903
05/08/2017 npower read, Gas 22146
17/02/2017 Estimated read, Gas 21499
27/08/2016 Estimated read, Gas 20843

Robin9

On face value a meter reading error by nPower on 05/08/17 - should have been 12146.

Have you any other Customer readings ?

irishmark

No, I wish I had, my gf was looking after the gas and swears she entered a reading when we moved in, but it's not there. The meter is really, really difficult to read, even in good light.
Your probably right, wonder if I can convince them that!

House_Martin

irishmark wrote: »

No, I wish I had, my gf was looking after the gas and swears she entered a reading when we moved in, but it's not there. The meter is really, really difficult to read, even in good light.
Your probably right, wonder if I can convince them that!

Sounds like a Secure Liberty meter if its difficult to read .what make of meter is it please ?.
By "engineer " do you mean a meter reader ? Meter readers definitely cannot "rewind " a meter.
Prepayment meters can be wiped clean and have credit added by a meter reader with a special "gis " card
I have seen many gas meters running backwards but they are older types of mechanical meters.

Robin9

I misread my MIL Secure Liberty months ago and still trying to get the supplier - Flow - to take a new reading. Supplied photos.

Its a dreadful bit of kit not intended to be actually read. MIL's is under the stairs and needs to press 9 on a miniature key pad.

stewie_griffin

Is there anyway you can post a photo of the meter?

poppellerant

Robin9 wrote: »

I misread my MIL Secure Liberty months ago and still trying to get the supplier - Flow - to take a new reading. Supplied photos.

Its a dreadful bit of kit not intended to be actually read. MIL's is under the stairs and needs to press 9 on a miniature key pad.

I agree, they are terrible to try and take a photo of. It would be far better if the light stayed on longer and if the readings didn't only show for what seems like two seconds.

nPower

irishmark wrote: »

We've been running a high gas bill for a while now and have built up a significant debt to npower and suddenly there's been an engineers visit and the meter is showing 8000 units less.
That's actually lower than the reading when we moved in.

Its also showing we use about 45 units a month, not the 300 units a month it had previously been reading, and we haven't change our habits in those two months (both were winter and similar temps)

The meter isn't new, it's still a wrecked out POS and it's reading 15k, not zero. The previous npower read was 22k and we had an estimate of 23k

I'm a bit gobsmacked and wondering how I should approach this with npower.

It seems clear to me we've been being overcharged somehow but I'm not sure I can demand them to refund me for a meter reading lower than when I moved in (Although admittedly, thats down only as an estimate)

When I entered my readings today, there was a message saying my readings were unexpectedly low and would be manually reviewed next monday, so I was going to wait for that to happen and then give them a call.

Any advice? What are my rights? What has happened? can an engineer "rewind" a meter?!

Hi irishmark,

I'm sorry to hear you're having issues with your account. Please contact us using the details on our profile page so we can help out with this.

Thanks,

Jen