British Gas Nightmare

Yorkie2020

So I've been with BG for Gas only for 18 months. My old dumb meter was never read so always estimated bills. In October they said I was paying too much and made my payment £5 a month. Fitted a smart meter Nov 8th and now my bill has come in at £1453 in debit. The killer is that since my smart meter was fitted between Nov 8th and 16th Dec the smart meter told them I'd used 647 units in 39 days, equating to 7388 Kwh and £275.35!!!

I know the estimated bills are to blame for the shortfall but the 647 units in 39 days seems ridiculously excessive. It's a big house but the heating isn't on during the day.

Surely this cant be right?

Yorkie

Gerry1

Welcome to the forum.

Sounds like they're still billing you as though your meter is still imperial. Look at the calculation on the bill. If it's wrong, divide the results by 2.83 and see whether that looks reasonable.

Robin9

Its possible the new meter details have not got onto the system.

Have a good look at the meter and note its serial number - this will be an imperial meter.

Have a look at your bill - is the serial number the same - does this bill say m3 or ft3

Gerry1

Yorkie2020 wrote: »

Fitted a smart meter Nov 8th

Robin9 wrote: »

Have a good look at the meter and note its serial number - this will be an imperial meter.

Do they really make imperial smart meters? :huh:

Robin9

Gerry1 wrote: »

Do they really make imperial smart meters? :huh:

Er no - I meant to say metric

victor2

Yorkie2020 wrote: »

So I've been with BG for Gas only for 18 months. My old dumb meter was never read so always estimated bills. In October they said I was paying too much and made my payment £5 a month. Fitted a smart meter Nov 8th and now my bill has come in at £1453 in debit. The killer is that since my smart meter was fitted between Nov 8th and 16th Dec the smart meter told them I'd used 647 units in 39 days, equating to 7388 Kwh and £275.35!!!

I know the estimated bills are to blame for the shortfall but the 647 units in 39 days seems ridiculously excessive. It's a big house but the heating isn't on during the day.

Surely this cant be right?

Yorkie

The maths for the meter readings to kWh to cost sound about right for a metric meter, but the usage does seem a little high, although not impossible, averaging almost 190kWh per day.
Presumably, you have a gas boiler providing hot water and heating. What timing is each set at and what type of system is it? See what your boiler is using by reading the meter at the same time each day for a week or so. Is it a combi boiler, or is there a hot water tank in the property? Is it an older style "gravity" system where the hot water is on whenever the heating is on? What temperature is your boiler set at? Is there a central thermostat controlling the heating? Do radiators have TVRs on them?


As for the current balance, you'd have to look at the position since they addressed the situation after estimating readings for 18 months.

MeterMan

My first thought is that the meter installed did not start on a zero read.

Do you know if the meter is smets 1 or a smets 2 meter? If its smets1, then most of these that are fitted are reconditioned.

Dig out your checklist, the start read should be listed on there, but if the fitter didn't check then it maybe listed as 00000.

If you could go online and check your account, you will see what the meter read was when it started automatically reading. If that doesn't work, call the billing team and ask them.

If its smets2, Its very likely (99.99%) that the read would have started on zero.

Yorkie2020

Thanks for all the replies. I am looking into things further. One thing I have noticed from my online account is that my smart meter is saying I've used exactly the same amount of gas every day (213kwh). Highly improbable.

Sorry I can't post links but the chart is in the post below.

victor2

You might want to remove the link as it shows your name. Better to use a less informative image sharing site. Such as postimage...
Anyway, the "flat" graph could well be because BG have just used the monthly consumption and averaged it over the whole month. It obviously doesn't reflect your daily usage, and despite smart meters, they probably only store a monthly usage against your account. Does kind of defeat one potential benefit of smart meters, but there we go.

Yorkie2020

If that's the case then, as you suggest, smart meters are a complete waste of time.
What's the point of them offering a daily and weekly usage option in the "detailed history" tab when you can only interrogate usage down to the monthly level?
I'm going to give BG a call on Friday and find out what the score is.

RelievedSheff

Yorkie2020 wrote: »

If that's the case then, as you suggest, smart meters are a complete waste of time.
What's the point of them offering a daily and weekly usage option in the "detailed history" tab when you can only interrogate usage down to the monthly level?
I'm going to give BG a call on Friday and find out what the score is.

They can show the daily useage. Our BG smart meters do. But we sometimes find that the meters have a short period where they don't record every day to the website and in these instances the usage is averaged out over the number of days it didn't record giving a flat graph as you found.