British gas faulty meter

silver.squirrell

I was going to switch electricity suppliers from British gas to another supplier. The new supplier wanted to know my usage in KWH and was not interested in knowing I was paying £60pm by standing order.

I contacted British Gas and they asked me to read my meter as they have only estimated it and they have never come to read the meter in the 18 months I was with them.

They then told me that my usage in the last 18 months was just over £4,000! and that with me paying £60pm I still owe them £3,000+ Clearly this is an error as there are only 2 of us living in a 3 bed detached bungalow (and I use oil for heating), and my last electricity bill with Seeboard was under £1,000p.a! and I thought they were expensive

Has anyone had a similar problem with the electricity meter being faulty and giving off a wrong readings.

All help or suggestions gratefully received!

Terrylw1

Hi,

I don't believe that is correct. It's very likely something is wrong with the readings on your account.

Does the reading you gave them look anywhere like the one on your bill?

It's difficult to advise without more information so if you could post something about your bill readings and your meter reading, it will enable us to advise you further.

You could have given them an incorrect reading by mistake, they may have entered it by mistake or they may have started your account when you joined them with an incorrect reading.

A bit more info will help us to understand and advise you.

Cardew

I must agree with Terryw1 above.

Before you start suspecting the meter, start suspecting the meter readings.

Either the start reading was wrong or your reading incorrect. Could you be reading the fractions of a kWh as complete kWhs?

However even £1000 pa with seeboard is very high for a property that doesn't use electricity for heating. The average annual consumption is 3,300kWh which will normally be about £300.

silver.squirrell

This is the first post I have made, so I am not 100% sure on how to do things. Just to clarify a couple of points

Well the situation is that when I switched suppliers, I was the one who read the meter. Since then we haven't had a single visit from Britsh Gas to read our meter, we have only been paying the £60pm which was the average monthly payment our electricity bill was with Seeboard (and we had been with them for 20 years at our current house).

It was only when I was thinking of switching to Staywarm and we needed to know the consumption that they asked us for our meter reading which then revealed this £3k+ electricity bill.

I am sure that the problem arose because of the start readings, but until British Gas come to read the meter reading on the 15.11.07 we will not know for certain

Terrylw1

Hi,

Ok, since you gave the start readings, do you stil have them?

If so, are they the start readings on your first BGas bill?

Then take another reading off your meter. Does it agree with the one BGas are quoting?

If you have a reading now and you know the correct start reading you can work out how much you have used very easily by deducting the start reading from your current one.

How many units have you used in that time?

If you take Cardew's annual usage figure/price and work it yours based on that it means you have used 44000kwh in 18 months. There is no way you have used that much.

I suspect you either have an incorrect start read, incorrect current reading or maybe an incorrect reading inbetween. All of thse can cause massive jumps.

have you had any meter changes close to when you joined BGas or even later?