Help...Gas usage overcharge

tim_p

If you think you’re being overcharged by a factor of 100 then presumably you expect your monthly gas DD to be £1.10 + daily standing charge (based on your example of £110 / month rising to £200.

Without sounding rude, I suspect it’s not them who fail to understand the decimal points and their charging system. 

Gerry1

Robin9 said:

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.

Can't see why missing the leading zero would be a problem, but chaos will definitely result if you enter 081410 or 81410.

Petriix

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

Post a few replies to this thread until you unlock your photo posting ability, then post a photo of your meter and a copy of your bill (with personal info redacted). Otherwise we can't help.

Gerry1

HCDP2021 said:

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.

No way.

4.4kWh corresponds to using an electric kettle for about an hour and a half.  You'd need far more than that for three people for a month if you were relying on using kettles because the boiler had failed, so your figure is obviously far too low.

QrizB

HCDP2021 said:

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.

600kWh of electricity at 16p/kWh is £96, plus maybe £5 for a month's standing charge, so your current monthly DD of £110 covers your electricity but very little else.

We're a 3-bed semi, 2 adults and 2 teens, and in June we used around 20 cubic metres (700 cubic feet, 650kWh) a month for hot water. (We're also using 2400kWh/yr of electricity, so your 7200kWh/yr is quite a lot.)

Tallerdave

QrizB said:

We're a 3-bed semi, 2 adults and 2 teens, and in June we used around 20 cubic metres (700 cubic feet, 650kWh) a month for hot water. (We're also using 2400kWh/yr of electricity, so your 7200kWh/yr is quite a lot.)

Similar story for us (2 adults, 1 child, large detached house) - June was 677kWh gas and 302kWh electricity.  The gas use would have been lower but the heating was kicking in for about 20-30 minutes on quite a few of the coldest nights of the month.

HCDP2021

Hi all,
thanks for the many replies, it appears we misread the red digits as decimal places and not individual cu ft. So BG's assessment would be correct. Even if they don't actually employ anyone who can explain that to us in simple English. 

I do, however, still feel that our gas usage is very high. Searching the "average gas usage in kwh for a three bed house" through up and EDF web page which states ow use as 8000kwh per annum, average use as 12000 per annum and high use as 18,000 per annum. 

Our annual use in kwh (now we've corrected the readings) is in order of 18,700 kwh (from 63,600 cu ft), using this converter - google kylesconveter dot com (cubic ft to kwh)

I simply do not understand how we can use that much. We only have hot water / heating that runs on gas, we have a 2018 Worcester Green Star 30i combi boiler (on demand only) so it's fairly efficient. We have wood burners in the living and dining room, we (my wife!) also have a "put on another jumper policy", since may our heating has been off, bar a couple of very cold eves. When we do use the heating it's 6-8am, and then 4-9pm, that's it except on weekends and only if it's very cold - it may get a 1hr boost. We just burn things instead! 

hot water, we're two adults and a toddler, toddler has a bath with mum (9 times out of ten), I have a shower in the evening and, occasionally if it's been a hot night, in the mornign too, but we're not talking lengthy showers here. 

My wife is a chef and cooks from home, so there probably is a lot of washing up, maybe an additional bath-worth during the busy days,  so one to two baths, and one to two showers a day, very little heating and some washing up, I can't see how that makes us such heavy users? In contrast, I know large families who heat and cook on gas, yet use far less than us, how can that be? 

Our electric is relatively high, we have a (very economic 1500w) Softub hot tub and the wife cooks with electric 3 days solid, not to mention two large freezers and a commercial fridge, otherwise, except for a computer, we rarely have the tv on, don't tend to leave lights on everywhere and are fairly efficient with leccy, we kind of expect around £70-80 per month. 

In short, usage seems excessive on the gas. 

Tallerdave

Doesn’t sound too bad to me. Years ago my 4 bed detached used 26,000kWh. Current place uses 42,000kWh but it does have acres of underfloor heating!

QrizB

HCDP2021 said:

Hi all,
thanks for the many replies, it appears we misread the red digits as decimal places and not individual cu ft. So BG's assessment would be correct. Even if they don't actually employ anyone who can explain that to us in simple English. 

I do, however, still feel that our gas usage is very high. Searching the "average gas usage in kwh for a three bed house" through up and EDF web page which states ow use as 8000kwh per annum, average use as 12000 per annum and high use as 18,000 per annum. 

Our annual use in kwh (now we've corrected the readings) is in order of 18,700 kwh (from 63,600 cu ft), using this converter - google kylesconveter dot com (cubic ft to kwh)

...

Our electric is relatively high, we have a (very economic 1500w) Softub hot tub and the wife cooks with electric 3 days solid, not to mention two large freezers and a commercial fridge, otherwise, except for a computer, we rarely have the tv on, don't tend to leave lights on everywhere and are fairly efficient with leccy, we kind of expect around £70-80 per month. 

In short, usage seems excessive on the gas. 

Thank you for coming back, we get a lot of first-time posters who never return!

• You've got a new boiler which should be efficient. How about the rest of your house? Detatched, semi-det or terraced? How many square metres? When was it built, and of what? Do you have double glazing, cavity walls (& are they insulated), what about the loft?
  
• How far towards the Frozen North are you?
• how long have you been living here? Is this your first home or do you have a previous one you can compare to?
• How big is your bath (they vary) and is your shower pumped?

On the electric front, the cheapest deal I'm offered on Which? Switch for 7200kWh/yr as a new customer is around £1200/yr; the cheapest of the Big Six is around £1400/yr. I think your expectations of £70-80 per month is a bit optimistic.

HCDP2021

QrizB said:

Thank you for coming back, we get a lot of first-time posters who never return!

• You've got a new boiler which should be efficient. How about the rest of your house? Detatched, semi-det or terraced? How many square metres? When was it built, and of what? Do you have double glazing, cavity walls (& are they insulated), what about the loft?
  
• How far towards the Frozen North are you?
• how long have you been living here? Is this your first home or do you have a previous one you can compare to?
• How big is your bath (they vary) and is your shower pumped?

On the electric front, the cheapest deal I'm offered on u switch for 7200kWh/yr as a new customer is around £1200/yr; the cheapest of the Big Six is around £1400/yr. I think your expectations of £70-80 per month is a bit optimistic.

Hi, thanks fort he reply. 
Rest of house... built 1920's [I think] semi cottage, so solid construction, cavity walls, not certain if cavity insulated. roof insulated and floored, double glazed with exception of back door - which can be drafty, probably not the best insulated house but certainly not bad for an old cottage. Very exposed on top of a hill though! 

Located in The High Weald.. Sussex / Kent border, So very South East! 

Lived in South East for 40 some years, been paying my own gas bills for near 30 years. 

average bath, 90 ish, too small for a 6'1 ex rugby player who's been somewhat increased by lockdown boredom! Shower not pumped. 

My error on the electric, it was around £70 before my wife began using the home kitchen to do a load of baking - once small private events could start up again. she adds around £40 a month on the cooker. 

we did a comparison and BG actually worked out cheaper than the likes of bulb, with everyting taken into account, so we're happy to stay with them. We're just not convinced the usage is correct.