Sky high Gas usage reading

dhp82

Good evening all,

I have been with Scottish Power for around 3/4 years now for my gas and the past year or so has been somewhat turbulent. For one reason or another they didn't bill me for a whole year and to my surprise called them immediately to make the payment covering the whole bill.

To give a little background, i had a meter change which was originally registered properly with them and I think this caused the no bill issue. I live in a flat (sweltering hot half the year) with 2 other people, our gas is only used for hot water, the cooker is electric. So therefore realistically, 4-5 showers a day between 3 of us, never have baths, and a few sink fulls for washing up.

Now to the usage.... They have said my usage over a year is 35000 kwh a year, even the guy on the phone said that's 3 times higher than the average household in the UK.

June last year to March this year they have my consumption at 97.2 units a day. OBSCENE!!

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what could be an issue here as they keep telling me everything is correct!

As I say, our gas bill is solely for heating , we have a new combi boiler too.

Any suggestions very welcome.

System

Occam's Razor - the first thing to check is that you are being billed for the correct type of meter. Check your meter type (cubic feet or cubic metres) against what is shown on the bill.

dhp82

Thanks for the response.

I have checked and my meter is in metres.

The only things stated on the bill are :

gas units used X calorific value X volume correction divided by 3.6 = gas units expressed in kWh

Would this therefore suggest I am being billed correctly?

Robin9

Can you read your meter please - it should be like 0001234.56

It is possible that is has been entered as 123456 or 1234000.

ie when reading you ignore the numbers after the decimal point.

How does this compare with your bill ?

dhp82

Hi,

The reading seems to be correct 08326.753 and tallies up with what it says on the bill.

I just dont believe that my gas usage can equate to £125+ per month for just using hot water.

Robin9

Is the reading on the bill E (estimated) or A (actual)

What was the reading on the previous bill ?

House_Martin

You have a metric meter, now you have to check if they are billing you as if it was the old Imperial meter. If they were your bill would be nearly three times higher. If the number of units you have used are multiplied by approx 31 to get to kwh then they are misbilling you. Metric units should be multiplied by 11 to reach the Kwh s total.

dogshome

Plenty of posts on this site showing Scot Power have a history of c*ck-ups with meter changes.

As other posts, check that your billing is being charged as a Metric meter:
Divide the the number of KWh charged by the number of meter units used - The answer should be 11 with a decimal point - If its 31with decimal point you are still being charged for the old Imperial meter.
If this is the case, a £100 bill for the gas should have been £35.

However even with that error, it still doesn't add up.
With the living conditions posted, I would expect the use to be somewhere around 520 Metric meter units = 5,900 KWH a year
But even if those 590 Metric units are being charged as though they were Imperial, the KWh total would still only be 16,380 - Nowhere near the 35000+ SP are claiming Something is seriously wrong with SP's figures
The new meter is faulty
SP confusing the new and old meter readings - They have done this before!

Best to WRITE a letter headed Complaint to SP

System

dhp82 wrote: »

Thanks for the response.

I have checked and my meter is in metres.

The only things stated on the bill are :

gas units used X calorific value X volume correction divided by 3.6 = gas units expressed in kWh

Would this therefore suggest I am being billed correctly?

Yes, that would suggest that you are being billed correctly. However, as others have suggested, you need to check that you have been entering the metering readings correctly.

Gas metric meter

Metric gas meters measure gas usage in cubic meters (m3) and usually show 'M' or 'M3'.

1. Write down all the numbers before the decimal point, left to right.
Metric gas meters measure gas usage in cubic meters

2. Ignore any numbers after the decimal point (which may be shown in red).

To keep it simple, if you use 100 cubic metres of gas then you should be billed for about 1122 kWh (this varies depending on the calorific value used in the billing cycle)

Look at your old bills and find a reading with either an 'A' or 'C' annotation NOT "E'. Read your meter and work out how many cubic metres have been consumed. Multiply this by 11.22 to convert into kWhs.

For example, my last bill was based on a reading of 25650. and my reading today is 25673. It follows that we have used 23 CM3s or about 258kWhs.