SSE nightmare

Erinio

Hello,
I wondered if anyone can advise on what we can do or where we can go to complain:
We moved into a new house in December and joined SSE.  Gave them a reading when we moved in and then about 8 weeks later we get a bill for over £1000.  We would usually use around £100  - £130 a month in gas.  Anyway after lots of reading about what was going wrong we realised they were converting the readings to metric when it is already metric.  Since then we have had the same thing constantly happen. I have written to complaints twice.  I have been hung up on many times by the call centre who just tell us thats the amount of gas we have used (they dont seem to understand the problem).  We were told on Friday the problem has been sorted by the complaints dept and a new bill generated.  Its come tonight and again they think we owe £1000 of gas.  

I am honestly at a loss on how to sort this out now.  I dont know who to turn to. What is worrying is that if we were maybe an older couple or someone who wasnt checking what was going on then we would just be paying these horrendous bills and SSE would just be letting us.  Im so upset about it. 

I take photos of my readings every month and they asked me for all my photos this month to prove my readings were right and still they have almost tripled our bill. 

Is there somewhere we can go to complain other than SSE complaints dept?  

Thank you in advance.

Ectophile

If they have closed your complaint, then the next step is the energy ombudsman. https://www.ombudsman-services.org/sectors/energy

Erinio

Ectophile said:

If they have closed your complaint, then the next step is the energy ombudsman.

Thank you very much.  I will go and do that just now.

Gerry1

Make sure you have submitted a formal written complaint, preferably by snail mail and getting a free Certificate of Posting.  Ask for a deadlock letter.  You can go to the Ombudsman upon receipt ot after six weeks if they don't send one.  Yes, six weeks not the usual eight; they agreed this because their customer service was so bad.

Erinio

Gerry1 said:

Make sure you have submitted a formal written complaint, preferably by snail mail and getting a free Certificate of Posting.  Ask for a deadlock letter.  You can go to the Ombudsman upon receipt ot after six weeks if they don't send one.  Yes, six weeks not the usual eight; they agreed this because their customer service was so bad.

Thank you.  I will do that.  

dogshome

No love for SSE, but the basic problem seems to be your meter

It will be a digital meter and these are made, ( Cheaply ), for a worldwide market, some of which want the read-out to be in Kwh.

There will a button/s  for you to press for the display read in Meter Units, not Kwh's - Put up a photo of your meter for advice.

SSE's problem, like all other UK suppliers, is that their Computer system is set up to only calculate KWh's from Metric or Imperial gas readings, which means that any reading fed into it will auotomaticaly be multiplied by either 11.2 or 31.5 , but send the Complaint letter any way as SSE own the meter and should have advised you of the reading options when you first complained

Erinio

@dogshome thank you for the reply.  This is the meter.  I did ask when we moved in how to read it as I had never had one like this before and they said just press the button and input the numbers as they are.  The bills they are sending me say that I have used x amount of imperial units and then the calculation to x2.83 to convert to metric.

Reed_Richards

I would not have thought anybody could miss the fact that the meter is reading in cubic metres.

Robin9

The display says 01209.239 m3       The reading you give the supplier is 01209  (ignore the figures after the decimal point)

m3  means its a  metric meter.   The supplier takes this and mutilplies by approx 11.2 to give kWh,  

Is the serial number on the meter the same as on the bill.?

Reed_Richards

Erinio said:

I take photos of my readings every month and they asked me for all my photos this month to prove my readings were right and still they have almost tripled our bill. 

So SSE have seen a photo of the meter which shows both the reading and the units.  They really ought to be able to get the bill right after that, surely?  

Erinio

Yes they have had so many photos of it since this started back in March.  Nobody seems to understand.  Its infuriating.  This last lady I have dealt with said she is the head of customer services and when she said she was sending and updated bill I said please make sure you are not converting it to metric she said it shouldnt make any difference to the bill.  Then she sent me the bill for over £1000 again and said they have credited us with £40 to say sorry for earlier errors but still havent fixed the error! 
Serial number on the bill is the same as the meter.