Advice on long-term broken meter reading refund?

anews

Hi there,

 

I was hoping I could get some advice for an issue I’ve been having with my energy meter and company.

 

I have lived in my flat since July 2020, and in December 2021 I realised that my electricity meter has been broken ever since we moved in. We’d been paying a dual day/night tariff, but the night tariff readings had never changed since we’ve moved in, and all our energy had been registered as day, costing us a fortune. I’m happy to hold my hands up and realise it was stupid to not notice for so long, and now I keep a monthly excel so I can track our usage so this can’t happen again.

 

I understand as the person providing the readings, I may be partially responsible for some of this error. However, in the third month in our tenancy I wrote an email to our provider, as it’s their preferred method of communication, and asked if they could see anything weird with our account as the bills were far higher than we expected. I got an email back saying it’s probably because of our immersion water heating (which I now know to be way out of line with normal immersion costs), and they clearly hadn’t looked at our account at all, which is normally standard practice for the company.

 

We’ve been dealing with the company for a while and they’ve now offered to replace our dual rate with a flat rate for the last 6 months, and refund us the difference. As a low-income PhD student who’s been struggling to pay the high energy bills for the last year and a half, to only be refunded for 6 months is an insult. I understand I also didn’t notice the error with the meter until late, but I can’t help feeling like the company is also massively responsible because when I reached out for help I was just dismissed and the problem not picked up. I was wondering if anyone might know what my rights might be regarding expecting a full refund.

 

Thanks in advance for any help or advice!

Alice

Robin9

Dig you heals in and reject the offer.   Go back to when you noticed the error -  September 2020

Escalate to COMPLAINTS and bypass Customer Service - and also a  good will gesture

QrizB

Robin9 said:

Dig you heals in and reject the offer.   Go back to when you noticed the error -  September 2020
Escalate to COMPLAINTS and bypass Customer Service - and also a  good will gesture

Agreed, the energy company has an obligation to provide accurate metering equipment. Your email in September 2020 - assuming it did bring their attention to the metering discrepancy, as you state - should have brought about a prompt replacement.

Curiousgirl1

what sort of heating do you have? Could it be the landlord/ previous owners changed the heating system & had the night rate disconnected?

anews

Thanks everyone for your advice this far! I'm glad people seem to agree I should hold firm and expect a proper refund as it's their responsibility to maintain the meter and to help us out when we say our bills looked weird.

anews

Curiousgirl1 said:

what sort of heating do you have? Could it be the landlord/ previous owners changed the heating system & had the night rate disconnected?

It's electric radiators, but there was no mention of any day/night rate weirdness on the very thorough check-in report we got from the landord, so who knows!

Curiousgirl1

anews said:

Curiousgirl1 said:

what sort of heating do you have? Could it be the landlord/ previous owners changed the heating system & had the night rate disconnected?

It's electric radiators, but there was no mention of any day/night rate weirdness on the very thorough check-in report we got from the landord, so who knows!

Sounds like their electrician wired everything up to the day rate but they haven’t told the energy company. Shouldn't happen but it does. Only way to know for definite is for an appointment. Sounds like the meter needs changing anyway so they can see when they come out. 

You can then argue with them that you should have been on a single rate but not sure how far you’ll get especially if you hadn’t noticed yourself for 18 months when they had been sending out bills 

anews

Curiousgirl1 said:

anews said:

Curiousgirl1 said:

what sort of heating do you have? Could it be the landlord/ previous owners changed the heating system & had the night rate disconnected?

It's electric radiators, but there was no mention of any day/night rate weirdness on the very thorough check-in report we got from the landord, so who knows!

Sounds like their electrician wired everything up to the day rate but they haven’t told the energy company. Shouldn't happen but it does. Only way to know for definite is for an appointment. Sounds like the meter needs changing anyway so they can see when they come out. 

You can then argue with them that you should have been on a single rate but not sure how far you’ll get especially if you hadn’t noticed yourself for 18 months when they had been sending out bills 

They definitely admitted it was broken (they can see it somehow), and they need to get it fixed, but there are also not appointments to get a meter re-fitted. I know I should have noticed, feel like such a numpty, but it's my first time being solely responsible for bills and I didn't really know how to de-code the information in the bills, as it's not obvious. That part I 100% will admit is my fault. But considering they also had this same information and didn't tell me when I specifically reached out for help about bill costs, seems pretty shady

Gerry1

Curiousgirl1 said:

anews said:

Curiousgirl1 said:

what sort of heating do you have? Could it be the landlord/ previous owners changed the heating system & had the night rate disconnected?

It's electric radiators, but there was no mention of any day/night rate weirdness on the very thorough check-in report we got from the landord, so who knows!

Sounds like their electrician wired everything up to the day rate but they haven’t told the energy company.

Surely if it's a E7 meter each register will still record usage correctly at the relevant times?  Even with all the heating on the 24h circuits there will still be some overnight usage to record, including the 24h stuff such as the fridge, freezer, router as well as normal elective use if going to bed after the start of E7 or getting up before it ends.

If people switch away from an E7 tariff then they usually ask the supplier to bill both rates at the single rate (some such as Bulb will refuse) or they get a single rate meter instead.

Curiousgirl1

Gerry1 said:

Curiousgirl1 said:

anews said:

Curiousgirl1 said:

what sort of heating do you have? Could it be the landlord/ previous owners changed the heating system & had the night rate disconnected?

It's electric radiators, but there was no mention of any day/night rate weirdness on the very thorough check-in report we got from the landord, so who knows!

Sounds like their electrician wired everything up to the day rate but they haven’t told the energy company.

Surely if it's a E7 meter each register will still record usage correctly at the relevant times?  Even with all the heating on the 24h circuits there will still be some overnight usage to record, including the 24h stuff such as the fridge, freezer, router as well as normal elective use if going to bed after the start of E7 or getting up before it ends.

If people switch away from an E7 tariff then they usually ask the supplier to bill both rates at the single rate (some such as Bulb will refuse) or they get a single rate meter instead.

Not necessarily. It has been known for landlords/agents to have the storage heaters removed & panel heaters installed & their electrician disconnects the low rate as they reckon it’s not needed. Shouldn’t do it but they do. If the low is disconnected, nothing clocks up on it. 

Also depending on the type of meter sometimes when the low stops advancing it clocks up everything on the normal, sometimes it doesn’t so they essentially get low for free. Obviously with the smart meters that will all stop 

QrizB

anews said:

Curiousgirl1 said:

what sort of heating do you have? Could it be the landlord/ previous owners changed the heating system & had the night rate disconnected?

It's electric radiators, but there was no mention of any day/night rate weirdness on the very thorough check-in report we got from the landord, so who knows!

The bad news is, if you've got electric radiators (rather than storage heaters) the savings you might get from having a working E7 meter are limited.

Curiousgirl1 said:

Gerry1 said:

Surely if it's a E7 meter each register will still record usage correctly at the relevant times?  Even with all the heating on the 24h circuits there will still be some overnight usage to record, including the 24h stuff such as the fridge, freezer, router as well as normal elective use if going to bed after the start of E7 or getting up before it ends.

If people switch away from an E7 tariff then they usually ask the supplier to bill both rates at the single rate (some such as Bulb will refuse) or they get a single rate meter instead.

Not necessarily. It has been known for landlords/agents to have the storage heaters removed & panel heaters installed & their electrician disconnects the low rate as they reckon it’s not needed. Shouldn’t do it but they do. If the low is disconnected, nothing clocks up on it.

Even with nothing connected to the switched E7 supply, all the electricity used on the 24h supply during E7 hours should still be registering on the E7 meter. It might not be much, maybe 1kWh/day, but there should be *something*.