Old electric meter mistakenly discarded. What could be the cost charge??

Mstty

Have you started looking for another job?

leoguy555

Mstty said:

Have you started looking for another job?

Why would you say that? 

Mstty

Well you seem so worried about this despite all the very helpful posts. Some asking you for extra info and how to handle it and others confirming the normal engineer proceedure.

Just wondered if you want to save yourself the stress

However I have started this conversation on twitter with BG to hopefully confirm the engineer should take the old meter with them but perhaps.you might want to tweet them yourself to add anything you also want covered?

leoguy555

Mstty said:

Well you seem so worried about this despite all the very helpful posts. Some asking you for extra info and how to handle it and others confirming the normal engineer proceedure.

Just wondered if you want to save yourself the stress

However I have started this conversation on twitter with BG to hopefully confirm the engineer should take the old meter with them but perhaps.you might want to tweet them yourself to add anything you also want covered?

Well, I feel a little better with people saying it's the fitters fault for leaving the old meter behind for all those months. But I can't help still feeling guilty for throwing it out, despite genuinely thinking it was for scrap. It WAS for scrap, but it should've been scrapped by the power company and not me. 

It's only the uncertainty of what the power company may do if they decide to penalise my boss for the lost meter or possible lost readings will be that's bothering me.  I'm grateful for all the people's advice and posts here.

You should ask on twitter what would happen if the fitter leaves the meter behind for months at the property, the meter gets mistakenly thrown out, fitter comes back after months to find meter lost and power company not happy. what will the outcome of that be and will they charge or penalize the consumer? That's exactly the issue here. What you're asking on twitter above so far is we already know, yes, that's what should happen. If I was on twitter , I'd do the asking myself 

Mstty

Let's see what they come back with and I will post it here

BobT36

leoguy555 said:

You should ask on twitter what would happen if the fitter leaves the meter behind for months at the property, the meter gets mistakenly thrown out, fitter comes back after months to find meter lost and power company not happy. what will the outcome of that be and will they charge or penalize the consumer? That's exactly the issue here. What you're asking on twitter above so far is we already know, yes, that's what should happen. If I was on twitter , I'd do the asking myself 

I think his point is to get an answer out of them (directly) on what the procedure SHOULD be, as followed by their staff. 
Once you have that in hand well, proves who's fault it is, doesn't it. (not yours). 

They try and charge anything, you simply fire back citing that tweet (screenshotted and archived, of course) as evidence that THEIR procedure wasn't followed by THEIR staff. Ergo, not your problem. 

wild666

leoguy555 said:

Phones4Chris said:

@leoguy555 I think it's quite simple, you should tell your boss what @t0rt0ise has suggested and what others here have said, it was the installers fault. Also he needs to raise a complaint to BG, that should get this some proper attention from BG, they cannot deny the fact the the old meter was incorrectly left on site by the installer next to a bin! And also submit those photos of the meter readings.

Ok, well it seems unanimous the advice here is that the installer messed up by leaving the old meter behind instead of taking it away there and then. That's not something I knew then but it's something I know now. Even at that, I DID find it strange that he did leave it at the time . Why disconnect 2 meters, take one away and leave the other one? I suppose he must've simply forgotten. Not my fault apart from his. However, I still feel guilty for chucking it. 

It's not as if it got chucked out after a day or two either. It sat in there for months and months. Would you believe he had actually left it sitting in a precarious position as well , half balancing it on the edge of a electrical box a meter or so from ground level.  Pretty stupid. I moved the meter from there and put it down on the floor so at least it didn't fall off and get smashed. That's where it remained for all those months. ; On the floor next to where it'd been disconnected. And when he hadn't came back for it after the months, that's when I cleared the bin bay out with other crap and flung the old meter out with that believing he didn't need it and it was scrap.

It was quite a few weeks after I'd chucked it, he ambled back round thinking it would still be there. He didn't seem to care very much it wasn't. When we asked him if the meter getting chucked was a big deal, he was like ,"uhh, well it'd just get scrapped anyway." And he said that he'd just put down in his notes that the meter had been "mistakenly discarded by a third-party worker." He said the power company may charge for the lost meter. How much that charge could be is one of the questions ive never managed to find an answer to here

If they charge for the meter they are likely to try and charge the cost of what they paid for the meter new even though the meters can be bought for £15 now. As someone said just invoice them for storage costs until the date the meter was thrown out with the other rubbish. If they want £70 for example, invoice them for more than £70 e.g. £1 per day from the time it was left until it was thrown out. 

Swipe

I really don't get why this thread is continuing. It's the boss's problem to sort out as it's their own fault for calling up BG about the disposed of old meter and opening the can of worms. If they had just paid the bill when it arrived that would have been the end of it. What did they hope to gain by even mentioning the old meter?

leoguy555

Swipe said:

I really don't get why this thread is continuing. It's the boss's problem to sort out as it's their own fault for calling up BG about the disposed of old meter and opening the can of worms. If they had just paid the bill when it arrived that would have been the end of it. What did they hope to gain by even mentioning the old meter?

I know. That's what I think as well. I guess my boss thought that honesty was the best policy and tell them the meter was chucked out rather than collected.  If the fitter hadnt actually reported the last readings, then the bill couldn't have been generated. Anyway, the boss has photographic evidence of the meters final reading of it comes to the point they'll just have to accept them.

I've actually read a few other problems similar to this on this site. There was one where the fitter removed an old dial mechanical meter, chucked it out, and had reported a grossly incorrect reading final back to the power company. The consumer got a vastly over-read bill, knew itnwas badly wrong, And the consumer had a hell of a job trying to prove the readings were wildly wrong.

Similar situation: no correct last reading and lost/discarded meter.

 I think it got resolved eventually because the consumer had the brains to take a pic of the meter just before it was disconnected and the power company investigated average last bills /readings etc....

leoguy555

Mstty said:

Let's see what they come back with and I will post it here

Heard anything from them yet?