British Gas sends me a bill for £17077.20

sickandtired_2

I moved into my new flat in april 2006. its an all electric high rise. i chose BG to be my provider. asap changed my meter from prepayment (key) to credit (normal paid by bill). as it is the cheaper option and does not put me in the situation where my freezer defrosts when i forget to charge my key! in december 2006 i rang BG as i had not received my bill. found out they still had me down as being on the key meter. they assured me a bill will be sent. in april 2007 i rang again..again they assured me the bill would be sent. in june i rang to complain again..complain that they havent been charging me lol. told them if they dont send me a bill i will change my provider and never pay them(as they still had me down for the key meter). in october my bill finally arrived. dated 4 oct 2007 for £17077.20. at first i thought the Emirates Stadium i live next to was wired up to my meter. i rang to complain. the nice lady said she is cancelling that bill and a new one will be sent soon. a few days later a bill dated 3 oct 2007 arrived for £922.that is quite reasonable for 67 weeks i had been charged for. but i wanted a reduction as the meter internal timers for economy 7 did not work till the meter was changed in apr 2007 so i rang in. i was told that bill had also been cancelled and the matter is with the complaints team. my concern is that they will keep delaying the matter and i will end up with a large red bill. so im sending a letter to the complaints team to outline the matter on paper and make sure they know i have been trying to pay for my electricity. i must say their staff has always been very polite and helpful on the phone, if ineffective. im looking forward to finding out how much they will actually bill me, and how easy it will be to arrange to pay that bill in installments.

SwanJon

They can only bill you for the last 52 weeks. See if you can estimate a read for a year ago and get them to use that.

The economy7 issue is different, but you might be able to persuade them to use estimated reads based on your current day/night consumption.

Get them to spread the balance over as long as it took to build up.
You've been doing your bit by asking for the bill.

Good luck.

sickandtired_2

thank you! lots of good tips. how do i back up the 52 weeks? i havent sent that letter in yet, will re-write it, but think i need a bit of hard fact to base the timescale element on.

Cardew

BG are fully aware that they can only go back 1 year - that ruling came in in July this year(before that it was 2 years) Just state "I understand from Energywatch that bills can now only be backdated a year"

However are you sure that the bill for £922 was for 67 weeks and not a year?

sickandtired_2

great i will quote u. that bill was from may 2006 when me credit meter was put in to the last quarter which was august. now in two minds wether to send that letter now or wait till they send me a revised bill. maybe they will sort it right.

Terrylw1

Hi,

You have got a few issues in here.

1st that huge bill was most likely caused by a meter reading taken off your meter applied to the old meter held on file i.e. they had not updated to your new meter. This is called Meter Rollover. Essentially your old meter could be reading = 65745, but creating your bill based on a new meter on reading = 00035 would cause a rollover. Can you see why it would be so big from these readings? It will show on the bill.

The other issue could be that they transposed the readings when they changed it which also causes rollovers.

Ok, the rule now is 1 year but there was a clause in there that stated if you had been made aware of the issue prior to the rule changing to 1 year, you would be locked into the 2 year backbill. I'm sure this was July 2007, so if they contacted you before then they may bill you for the full 67 weeks. Might be worth checking that with Energywatch just incase if they try it.

You also have a faulty timeswitch issue here. Did you have E7 before that faulty meter was fitted? If so, they will have no problems assessing your usage during the fault.

One question - was the timeswitch stuck on night rate? If so, you may be better off if they don't bother assessing this (unless it forced your heaters on 24 hours a day which would be worse)

The rebilling is all easy stuff, but the timeswitch assessment will depend on how much data they hold in terms of readings on your E7 usage. If they don't have that, they will need to negotiate a satisfactory bill with neither of you knowing who is best out of the deal.

sickandtired_2

get u bout the rollover. i think im ok on the 52 week ruling... they havent made me aware of anything. they were clueless - i was the one asking for a bill all that time. they thought i was paying with the key. the flat has always been on economy7 and has storage heaters which im not familiar with. the heating was on all day as i discovered when an electrician got a shock while trying to fix a heater during the day. i dont even mind paying from the time i moved in, as long as they charge me an average consumption. flat is all electric.work full time so not here. i cook rarely. washing machine on once a week. heating on only during the coldest months. computer on most of the time lol. i dont toast or iron much. im thinking £14/week averaged tops.does that sound fair?

Terrylw1

Ok. You have another issue in then as well.

The fact that the heater was stuck on all day means that your Supplier via the Meter Operator has overcharged you as you had no choice but to leave it on all day until they visited to fix the faulty timeswitch. So, I think you should mention that this extra usage, even at off peak rate, would be unfair as you did not choose to have the heating on all day.

They won't charge you an average consumption in a faulty timeswitch case. It's hard to define what an average is.

What they will do is look at your consumption on E7 prior to this fault and determine how much you use peak & off peak as a %. Then they will rebill the faulty period out based on this %. This will correct a bill but what Suppliers don't consider is the extra heating caused by this. In the case of a customer with heating stuck on 24hrs, the Supplier has been charged, so they pass it onto you.

Thats unfair in my book since you wouldn't choose to do this. However, I have seen many a customer blagged that way.

If they haven't made you aware, did you make them aware? It's the same thing in Ofgem's book. However I would think you could easily push them into the 52 week.

sickandtired_2

Thanx for all the good advice from the above posters.feel i can keep on top of this now, will keep u posted.