Seemingly crazy SSE gas bill.

GeoffreyDee

I've taken a look at my bill, my meter and my SSE website. My meter is definitely a metric meter. Five black numbers followed by three red numbers. Red numbers not recorded, zero as first of the five black numbers. Looking at the SSE website and paper bills, only four numbers are printed (and without a zero at the start). Perhaps this indicates that I am being charged imperial money for a metric meter? 

MWT

GeoffreyDee said:

I've taken a look at my bill, my meter and my SSE website. My meter is definitely a metric meter. Five black numbers followed by three red numbers. Red numbers not recorded, zero as first of the five black numbers. Looking at the SSE website and paper bills, only four numbers are printed (and without a zero at the start). Perhaps this indicates that I am being charged imperial money for a metric meter? 

Look at the calculation they use to convert the units to kWh that will make it clear if they think it is metric or imperial.

Quick way to see is to divide their calculated kWh by the number of units, if metric it should be around 11.2, if they are treating it as imperial the result will be around 32...

MWT

GeoffreyDee said:

Our last set of meter reading numbers (approximately 5 weeks ago) on the SSE website were 5560 (with a zero at the start, but they don't record that 05560) . The reading we took today was 9098 (with the zero at the start 09098)

Regardless of any errors between imperial/metric, that is a huge amount of gas, around 39,000kWh in 5 weeks...

Who took the previous meter reading?

QrizB

GeoffreyDee said:

My meter is definitely a metric meter. Five black numbers followed by three red numbers. Red numbers not recorded, zero as first of the five black numbers.

OK, that's an old-school analogue metric meter. This isn't going to be a software fault.

MWT said:

GeoffreyDee said:

Our last set of meter reading numbers (approximately 5 weeks ago) on the SSE website were 5560 (with a zero at the start, but they don't record that 05560) . The reading we took today was 9098 (with the zero at the start 09098)

Regardless of any errors between imperial/metric, that is a huge amount of gas, around 39,000kWh in 5 weeks...

Who took the previous meter reading?

^ I was going to say exactly that. Could 05560 have been 08560? Did you take a photo?

If so, you've used 538 cubic metres, about 6000kWh, in 5 weeks. Still a *lot* of gas but not entirely ridiculous.

someone else has already asked for your previous meter readings. Do you have any?

theoretica

Definitely double check the calculation - as 4 digits almost certainly means they are treating it as an imperial meter.

Also do check the readings relate to the right meter - if there was a muddle before...   Are the other meters in the cupboard all metric?  Any with a reading a bit over 5560?

Alnat1

Should be a meter number on the bill, does it match the actual meter you're taking the reading from?

[Deleted User]

Under Standard Licence Conditions all bills are required to show the volume to kWh calculation that has been used. There is no need to do any calculation. Just check the meter annotation  (cubic feet or cubic metres) matches what is shown on the statement

Olinda99

the other obvious possibility is that you have a gas leak somewhere

turn everything off - see if the gas meter digits move

GeoffreyDee

I'm going to sound ridiculously naive here, which is unfortunate - please judge me only according to my age (20 when ended up setting up the utilities for my flat with other students, i'd only ever lived at home before and my family were seriously unwise with money, hence me trying hard recently to read a lot on this website and various books to correct my bad starting point) 

When I set things our original supplier called Spark sent people out pretty frequently to take meter readings. We didn't (still don't despite trying to book with SSE twice) have a smart meter. When the pandemic happened (early 2020) we clearly didn't have external people coming into the flat any more. Looking through as many bits of paper as I can find, our payments in the pandemic period were based on estimates. Clearly, the rational thing to do was as soon as suppliers stopped sending people to take readings, I (we? I tend to end up as the Responsible Person of the flat) to start furiously and regularly taking gas meter readings and keeping swiss precision track of everything rather than running on estimates. I definitely didn't do that and was not even aware it was a 'thing'. Yes, that was stupid and it was from a place of ignorance. Thinking like a detective here, I think what has happened is that the gap between estimate and real use is substantial and has been calculated for the prior period at current market rates (very high I gather). 

So I don't think there's any question of not paying this to them one way or the other. There are three of us in the flat. One is an international student who is much more interested in keeping things warm so we may have to come up with some sort of ratio of payments between the three of us to pay SSE back. I suppose some sort of minimum payment plan is the way to go. If I'm honest I'm a bit scared. It's a lot of money. I'm not lazy, I work while I study and I have some savings but paying this up front would wipe them out. I will need to figure out some way to deal with it. My name is still not on the account because all of my attempts to talk to SSE ended with them refusing the engage with me because my name is [My name] not 'The Occupier' which sort of underlines the comically stupid nature of it all. 

QrizB

GeoffreyDee said:

I'm going to sound ridiculously naive here, which is unfortunate ...

Don't sweat it, we were all young once.

• Your previous reading of 05560 - is that one *you* took, or is it one of SSE's estimates?
• The current meter reading of 09098 - you took this one personally, and have a dated photo?
• When you moved into the property (October 2019?) and took over the energy accounts, what was the opening reading? Is that shown as an Actual reading or an Estimated one?
  
• Next to the meter, is there a sticker that says when it was fitted?
  

And finally for now ...

• You also have an electricity account? Do you have readings for that, too?