Help...Gas usage overcharge

HCDP2021

We are hoping you can help us to deal with British Gas, and their attempts to overcharge us by (at least) 100x the amount of gas we’re using.

in an attempt to explain to them that our meter is an old imperial meter that measures in single units of 1 cubic foot, NOT single units of 100x cut ft. They just don’t seem to understand that [for eg] our last monthly reading was just 15cu ft, a total of 4.4kwh, not 480 odd kwh as they think.

We’re in a position now, where they want to put our monthly payments up from £110 a month, to a minimum of £200 a month, this is insane, we’re a 3 bed house, 2 adults and a toddler, we only have gas for hot water and heating, heating is off for six months of the year, and even when we do use it it’s timed, we’ve never used more than 81 cu ft in a month. We cook with electric and even with a hot tub running consistently use around 600 units / 600kwh of electric.  Also having wood burners / open fires in the house, means our gas use is minimal. We submit monthly meter readings without fail around the 10/11th of every month. Below is our account usage, you can see conversion to KWH is excessive, which they admit is high.

We are now approaching the end of our contract, BG want us to renew at a higher tariff, which we can get cheaper, but they won’t let us leave with what looks to be a huge bill owing, due to their lack of ability to understand decimal points. The stress and anxiety this is causing my wife is awful, it’s a totally unfair that we are unable to talk to anyone with a basic understanding of the problem. What do we do?

Anyone? Any ideas...! Thank you

Reed_Richards

Welcome to the forum.  Typically an imperial gas meter measures in cubic feet but you do not report the last two digits so the reading you give is in hundreds of cubic feet.  I assume that you are giving British Gas the readings rather than having a meter reader come visit.  For confirmation that you are indeed reading your meter correctly please take a photo and post it here.  The more information you give the better the help you will get.    

Reed_Richards

By the way, 4.4 kWh would typically get you hot water for a day, maybe less.  

Farway

HCDP2021 said:

We are hoping you can help us to deal with British Gas, and their attempts to overcharge us by (at least) 100x the amount of gas we’re using.

in an attempt to explain to them that our meter is an old imperial meter that measures in single units of 1 cubic foot, NOT single units of 100x cut ft. They just don’t seem to understand that [for eg] our last monthly reading was just 15cu ft, a total of 4.4kwh, not 480 odd kwh as they think.

We’re in a position now, where they want to put our monthly payments up from £110 a month, to a minimum of £200 a month, this is insane, we’re a 3 bed house, 2 adults and a toddler, we only have gas for hot water and heating, heating is off for six months of the year, and even when we do use it it’s timed, we’ve never used more than 81 cu ft in a month. We cook with electric and even with a hot tub running consistently use around 600 units / 600kwh of electric.  Also having wood burners / open fires in the house, means our gas use is minimal. We submit monthly meter readings without fail around the 10/11th of every month. Below is our account usage, you can see conversion to KWH is excessive, which they admit is high.

We are now approaching the end of our contract, BG want us to renew at a higher tariff, which we can get cheaper, but they won’t let us leave with what looks to be a huge bill owing, due to their lack of ability to understand decimal points. The stress and anxiety this is causing my wife is awful, it’s a totally unfair that we are unable to talk to anyone with a basic understanding of the problem. What do we do?

Anyone? Any ideas...! Thank you

There was not a "below" showing usage

Have you accidentally been inputting the units wrongly into their web site?

I'm not with BG but I would assume that they have decades of experience in recognising cu feet

Hopefully a BG customer will be along soon to help

Farway

A very similar thread here about confusion with reading units on imperial meter https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6283450/gas-bills/p1

MWT

HCDP2021 said:

...but they won’t let us leave with what looks to be a huge bill owing, due to their lack of ability to understand decimal points. The stress and anxiety this is causing my wife is awful, it’s a totally unfair that we are unable to talk to anyone with a basic understanding of the problem. What do we do?Anyone? Any ideas...! Thank you

Almost 100% certain this is self-inflicted unfortunately.

Gas meter readings must always be reported in whole units, there are no decimal points used in the reading you submit.

For an old imperial meter reading in cu ft you will submit the 4 left most digits or dials and never report anything less than units of 100cu ft.

If you want to post a photo of your meter and the reading you would submit based on that photo we should be able to clear this up quickly...

brewerdave

As per Reed_Richards' post - it is not possible to only use 15 cu ft for a month for hot water. We have an old Imperial meter and even in a month where we have been on holiday for ten days and only used the gas for hot water via the boiler, we used 400 cu ft = 127kwh

Robin9

But 15 cu ft is about 480 kWh   Convert cubic feet to kWhs (energylinx.co.uk)

That will cost you £15 (add standing charges and VAT about £25)

There's something more going on  - give us a copy of your bill please - redact the personal and account info. Give us the readings from 12 month ago and now please - photo appreciated


At £110 (edit I assume gas only and not dual fuel)  a month that is a fantastic amount of gas - my 4 bed detached is under £40

QrizB

HCDP2021 said:

Below is our account usage, you can see conversion to KWH is excessive, which they admit is high.

@HCDP2021 as a new account you can't post images or links, unfortunately.

You will have to transcribe the meter reading numbers and dates.

@Farway mentions, there was a similar thread recently. If you read that thread and look at the photos of the meters given it might explain how Imperial meters work and how to read them. You'll also see that, for most meters, you can't directly measure 15 cubic feet as the smallest moving number is counting in tens.

brewerdave

Robin9 said:

But 15 cu ft is about 480 kWh   Convert cubic feet to kWhs (energylinx.co.uk)

You are making the same mistake as the OP - 1500 CU FT = 480KWH

Robin9

Does your meter look like this (as posted by GrizB on the other thread.
)?  When submitting your reading online you give 0814  .  If you just enter 814 then chaos can result.