Metric/Imperial meters and overcharging

bytesplicer

This post is just a warning if your energy bills are unexpectedly high (well, higher), and applies if you've recently had your gas meter replaced, though actually might be good to check anyway as some people this has affected have been overcharged for years, and the issue is well known, and ongoing; I've seen cases going back as far as 2007.  I'll start with what to look for, once that's explained the rest is a bit ranty and explains my own particular dealings with the energy company and the ombudsman.  I'll just say at this point that I'm disgusted that the energy companies (yes, all of them) are taking advantage of this known issue at a time when the costs are already insane.  I'm also dismayed that Ofgem and the Ombudsman are fully aware of this and have done absolutely nothing to get it fixed.

The issue is imperial vs. metric readings on your gas meter.  The gist is when your bill is calculated if you have an old imperial meter your unit usage is multiplied by 2.83 to convert from feet cubed to meters cubed, which the newer meters use and which your bill is based on.  If you're recorded in the 'national meter database' as having an imperial meter when you actually have a metric one, your gas usage will be falsely multiplied by 2.83, resulting in a gas bill almost 3 times what it should be.  There have been a few posts on here about this issue, and if you search on this you'll find various newspaper articles going back over a decade, including the 'biggest' ones in 2016 when Ofgem wrote a letter to suppliers to sort this out.

So if you suspect this is happening, because you've had a meter replaced or your bill is even more ridiculously high than you think it should be, check you meter and compare the units used on your bill.  If your meter says 'm3' and your bill says 'ft3' (you will probably see the 2.83 number in 'how your gas usage is calculated on your bill) then you are probably being overcharged.

What really annoys me about this in my own case is the energy companies, Ofgem and the Ombudsman are all fully aware of this issue.  There was a large case in 2016 where Ofgem wrote to the companies to sort it out.  It still hasn't been.  When it happens, as it did to me, the energy company took me around in circles, telling me to test my appliances, saying everything was in order, without ever bothering to check for this known issue.  They would have happily continued to overcharge me but I was lucky enough to discover the issue myself.  From what I've seen online, this is typical, with some people not only getting massively overcharged for years but then being taken to court for non-payment.  Once the fault is found to be with the energy company, they use the mechanism of how this works (a national database of gas meters) to blame previous suppliers, and get away with repaying the money (sometimes) and light compensation from the Ombudsman (called a 'good will' payment) if you push the issue.  During my own complaint to the ombudsman the company was asked to pay the 'higher end' of this, which turned out to be £250, which is laughable really as both the Ombudsman and the energy company know full well they are making far more than this out of the overcharging than they will ever have to pay in goodwill payments.  My complaint to the Ombudsman, for reasons I'll get into below, concerned the fact that the energy company was deliberately using this mechanism to overcharge me.  The Ombudsman wouldn't even look at this initially, instead slating it as a 'customer service' issue (I'll get into the details below).  Despite being awarded £250 I appealed the decision, asking that additionally the energy company needs to explain the various red flags that came up during my case, and actually take steps in preventing this issue happening to others, which as the guy at the Ombudsman said, could be as simple as taking a photo of the meter when they take an initial reading.   My appeal was dismissed, the energy company didn't have to explain anything, nor did they have to change any procedures, and I am confident right now there are many people who, on top of the massive energy price rises we're seeing right now, are also being charged nearly 3 times what they should for gas, and probably think it's part of the 'cost of living crisis' when it's just a simple rip-off.

My case began in June 2021 when I switched supplier.  For reference I'd had my meter replaced in early 2019.   The problem started when I was trying to submit meter readings through the company website.  My meter had 5 digits but the online form would only accept 4.  I contacted the company about this and they 'manually' added my readings for me, without explaining why this was occurring.  I made queries as to why this was happening, including why all their estimates were 4 digits and even the manual reading they had taken were also 4 digits, they didn't answer.  Later I found out one of the distinguishing features between metric and imperial meters is one of them has 5 digits and the other has 4.   In fairness they did ask me my meter number, or rather they told me the one they had, which is the only one I knew of, so I agreed that that meter was mine.  If I'd known better, and connected this with the 2019 meter replacement, things may have gone differently, but this is no excuse for them as I had been supplying photos of my meter which clearly showed the details they needed to work out the issue.  Going forward, I continued to have problems entering meter readings.  Beyond the 5 vs 4 digit issue, every time I submitted readings, my online transactions list became a total mess, with seemingly random credits and debits all over the place, making it difficult to actually see what was going on.  Electricity seemed fine, it was always to do with gas, often the charges and credits would stretch back months to the opening of the account.  I complained about this, and they fed me lines about not putting the readings in at the correct times.  I said that surely if a reading isn't in 'on time' then an estimate is used, and can see no reason for these consistently obfuscated bills.  They promised to sort it but it just kept on.  I started to suspect, and mentioned, that this seems like something that would be done to cover up overcharging.  I had several arguments (over email) with multiple staff members over many months, without resolution, each time being forced to 'close' the complaint.  Each time I mentioned the 5 vs 4 digit readings and why their system seemed broken, but they never answered as to why.  As it got near to Christmas 2021, our gas bills started to shoot up alarmingly, much more that it had on previous years with another supplier on a similar tariff.  Again I queried this, citing the obfuscated bills and weird meter reading issues.  Everything was normal they said.  In December, they provided no bill at all, and didn't take out our Direct Debit, then come January came a huge gas bill leaving our account about £500 in debit (including the money they forgot to collect in December).  I queried this, saying this was completely abnormal, again citing the weird readings and chaotic billing, and asking if there was a problem in their system.  They said it was probably my boiler or appliances and I should check everything.

In March 2022 I found the problem myself, by chance reading a forum post about someone who had had a similar issue, and found it to be that they were being charged 2.83 times their gas usage because of this metric/imperial mix-up.  Their supplier had run them a similar merry chase, blaming their appliances and not doing anything to get to the bottom of the problem until the customer found the issue themself.  I immediately checked and found this is exactly what was happening in my case.   We'd been charged £90/month for gas over the Christmas period when our usage was actually just over £30/month.

I presented this to my supplier, and their first reaction, which angered me because I didn't understand why, was to start asking for my meter serial numbers.  They then confirmed that my previous supplier had not updated the national database correctly when my meter was exchanged in 2019, i.e. it was the previous suppliers fault.  I asked if I had been overcharged on gas, and they wouldn't answer, saying they had to run some checks.  I looked at my archived bills from the previous supplier, and saw that after the meter replacement they had overcharged me for 4 months on the old meter number, then corrected for the new meter number, so it seemed that they had correctly updated the number.  My supplier then assigned me a handler for my case who assured me this would all be sorted after she got back from her holiday, another month down the line.  I asked again if I was being overcharged and she said she didn't know as she wasn't an expert on meters, but she had never heard of this issue happening before.  I did some research on this and found out not only that this happens quite regularly, but her own company was actually the one in 2016 who had come forward to the ombudsman saying that they'd been overcharging customers in this way.  The idea that she nor any of the other advisors I'd talked to hadn't seen or didn't know to check for this issue was astonishing, and coupled with the fact that none of the 5 advisors I had talked to answered my questions on 5 v 4 digit meter readings, which would have quickly led to finding the problem, made me suspicious that either they'd all been lying or the company hadn't bothered informing them or training them to deal with this situation.  With the strange chaotic billing, the lack of acknowledgment of my question (not even a "I don't know") and the fact that they'd denied knowledge of this known industry wide issue, I started to really think it was deliberate.  Looking further I saw that the estimates they'd been providing on my bill were actually accurate in that they were what I should have been billed had this incorrect 2.83 multiplier not been in effect.  As the estimates were the only clear thing on the bill because of the aforementioned flurry of transactions they were the only indication I had of usage.  On my bill from halfway through the year, it showed I'd been charged so far for over 10,000 kwH of gas usage, next to it was my yearly estimate which was 8,000 kwH, so apparently I'd already used more gas in half a year than they estimated I was going to use in the whole year.

I submitted all of this as evidence to the ombudsman, but they didn't think any of it was suspicious.  Even 5 different advisors completely ignoring my question about meter readings was just dismissed as coincidence.  The chaotic billing and incongruous estimates were also dismissed, as was the issue being well documented enough to make the national press in 2016.   The energy supplier even hid one of my emails to them from evidence in which I explicitly stated the meter had been replaced, which would have been a massive clue as to the issue.  It was just all a case of bad customer service.  My questions to the ombudsman regarding the fact that they haven't answered any of this, or had to change their procedures, was just blanked.  My statement that right now many people out there are being overcharged because of this, and both they and the energy companies know it, was ignored.

So I've written this long rant to get it off my chest, I feel really annoyed that they're getting away with it, and the ombudsman in my case seemed little more than a mechanism of insulating the energy company, rather than holding them to account.  I wonder how many people have lost their home, or even their lives, because of this, it makes me feel a bit sick.  Maybe there are only a few people, but according to the articles I read, a million meters are replaced every year, if only a small percentage are affected this is still thousands if not tens of thousands of customers.  This certainly seems like something that could be easily fixed, but the suppliers instead opt to allow it to continue while the Ombudsman turns a blind eye.  This is my way of at least having something on record somewhere as I feel the ombudsman didn't do their job.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading, you ooze stamina as someone somewhere once said.

SAC2334

bytesplicer said:

This post is just a warning if your energy bills are unexpectedly high (well, higher), and applies if you've recently had your gas meter replaced, though actually might be good to check anyway as some people this has affected have been overcharged for years, and the issue is well known, and ongoing; I've seen cases going back as far as 2007.  I'll start with what to look for, once that's explained the rest is a bit ranty and explains my own particular dealings with the energy company and the ombudsman.  I'll just say at this point that I'm disgusted that the energy companies (yes, all of them) are taking advantage of this known issue at a time when the costs are already insane.  I'm also dismayed that Ofgem and the Ombudsman are fully aware of this and have done absolutely nothing to get it fixed.

The issue is imperial vs. metric readings on your gas meter.  The gist is when your bill is calculated if you have an old imperial meter your unit usage is multiplied by 2.83 to convert from feet cubed to meters cubed, which the newer meters use and which your bill is based on.  If you're recorded in the 'national meter database' as having an imperial meter when you actually have a metric one, your gas usage will be falsely multiplied by 2.83, resulting in a gas bill almost 3 times what it should be.  There have been a few posts on here about this issue, and if you search on this you'll find various newspaper articles going back over a decade, including the 'biggest' ones in 2016 when Ofgem wrote a letter to suppliers to sort this out.

So if you suspect this is happening, because you've had a meter replaced or your bill is even more ridiculously high than you think it should be, check you meter and compare the units used on your bill.  If your meter says 'm3' and your bill says 'ft3' (you will probably see the 2.83 number in 'how your gas usage is calculated on your bill) then you are probably being overcharged.

What really annoys me about this in my own case is the energy companies, Ofgem and the Ombudsman are all fully aware of this issue.  There was a large case in 2016 where Ofgem wrote to the companies to sort it out.  It still hasn't been.  When it happens, as it did to me, the energy company took me around in circles, telling me to test my appliances, saying everything was in order, without ever bothering to check for this known issue.  They would have happily continued to overcharge me but I was lucky enough to discover the issue myself.  From what I've seen online, this is typical, with some people not only getting massively overcharged for years but then being taken to court for non-payment.  Once the fault is found to be with the energy company, they use the mechanism of how this works (a national database of gas meters) to blame previous suppliers, and get away with repaying the money (sometimes) and light compensation from the Ombudsman (called a 'good will' payment) if you push the issue.  During my own complaint to the ombudsman the company was asked to pay the 'higher end' of this, which turned out to be £250, which is laughable really as both the Ombudsman and the energy company know full well they are making far more than this out of the overcharging than they will ever have to pay in goodwill payments.  My complaint to the Ombudsman, for reasons I'll get into below, concerned the fact that the energy company was deliberately using this mechanism to overcharge me.  The Ombudsman wouldn't even look at this initially, instead slating it as a 'customer service' issue (I'll get into the details below).  Despite being awarded £250 I appealed the decision, asking that additionally the energy company needs to explain the various red flags that came up during my case, and actually take steps in preventing this issue happening to others, which as the guy at the Ombudsman said, could be as simple as taking a photo of the meter when they take an initial reading.   My appeal was dismissed, the energy company didn't have to explain anything, nor did they have to change any procedures, and I am confident right now there are many people who, on top of the massive energy price rises we're seeing right now, are also being charged nearly 3 times what they should for gas, and probably think it's part of the 'cost of living crisis' when it's just a simple rip-off.

My case began in June 2021 when I switched supplier.  For reference I'd had my meter replaced in early 2019.   The problem started when I was trying to submit meter readings through the company website.  My meter had 5 digits but the online form would only accept 4.  I contacted the company about this and they 'manually' added my readings for me, without explaining why this was occurring.  I made queries as to why this was happening, including why all their estimates were 4 digits and even the manual reading they had taken were also 4 digits, they didn't answer.  Later I found out one of the distinguishing features between metric and imperial meters is one of them has 5 digits and the other has 4.   In fairness they did ask me my meter number, or rather they told me the one they had, which is the only one I knew of, so I agreed that that meter was mine.  If I'd known better, and connected this with the 2019 meter replacement, things may have gone differently, but this is no excuse for them as I had been supplying photos of my meter which clearly showed the details they needed to work out the issue.  Going forward, I continued to have problems entering meter readings.  Beyond the 5 vs 4 digit issue, every time I submitted readings, my online transactions list became a total mess, with seemingly random credits and debits all over the place, making it difficult to actually see what was going on.  Electricity seemed fine, it was always to do with gas, often the charges and credits would stretch back months to the opening of the account.  I complained about this, and they fed me lines about not putting the readings in at the correct times.  I said that surely if a reading isn't in 'on time' then an estimate is used, and can see no reason for these consistently obfuscated bills.  They promised to sort it but it just kept on.  I started to suspect, and mentioned, that this seems like something that would be done to cover up overcharging.  I had several arguments (over email) with multiple staff members over many months, without resolution, each time being forced to 'close' the complaint.  Each time I mentioned the 5 vs 4 digit readings and why their system seemed broken, but they never answered as to why.  As it got near to Christmas 2021, our gas bills started to shoot up alarmingly, much more that it had on previous years with another supplier on a similar tariff.  Again I queried this, citing the obfuscated bills and weird meter reading issues.  Everything was normal they said.  In December, they provided no bill at all, and didn't take out our Direct Debit, then come January came a huge gas bill leaving our account about £500 in debit (including the money they forgot to collect in December).  I queried this, saying this was completely abnormal, again citing the weird readings and chaotic billing, and asking if there was a problem in their system.  They said it was probably my boiler or appliances and I should check everything.

In March 2022 I found the problem myself, by chance reading a forum post about someone who had had a similar issue, and found it to be that they were being charged 2.83 times their gas usage because of this metric/imperial mix-up.  Their supplier had run them a similar merry chase, blaming their appliances and not doing anything to get to the bottom of the problem until the customer found the issue themself.  I immediately checked and found this is exactly what was happening in my case.   We'd been charged £90/month for gas over the Christmas period when our usage was actually just over £30/month.

I presented this to my supplier, and their first reaction, which angered me because I didn't understand why, was to start asking for my meter serial numbers.  They then confirmed that my previous supplier had not updated the national database correctly when my meter was exchanged in 2019, i.e. it was the previous suppliers fault.  I asked if I had been overcharged on gas, and they wouldn't answer, saying they had to run some checks.  I looked at my archived bills from the previous supplier, and saw that after the meter replacement they had overcharged me for 4 months on the old meter number, then corrected for the new meter number, so it seemed that they had correctly updated the number.  My supplier then assigned me a handler for my case who assured me this would all be sorted after she got back from her holiday, another month down the line.  I asked again if I was being overcharged and she said she didn't know as she wasn't an expert on meters, but she had never heard of this issue happening before.  I did some research on this and found out not only that this happens quite regularly, but her own company was actually the one in 2016 who had come forward to the ombudsman saying that they'd been overcharging customers in this way.  The idea that she nor any of the other advisors I'd talked to hadn't seen or didn't know to check for this issue was astonishing, and coupled with the fact that none of the 5 advisors I had talked to answered my questions on 5 v 4 digit meter readings, which would have quickly led to finding the problem, made me suspicious that either they'd all been lying or the company hadn't bothered informing them or training them to deal with this situation.  With the strange chaotic billing, the lack of acknowledgment of my question (not even a "I don't know") and the fact that they'd denied knowledge of this known industry wide issue, I started to really think it was deliberate.  Looking further I saw that the estimates they'd been providing on my bill were actually accurate in that they were what I should have been billed had this incorrect 2.83 multiplier not been in effect.  As the estimates were the only clear thing on the bill because of the aforementioned flurry of transactions they were the only indication I had of usage.  On my bill from halfway through the year, it showed I'd been charged so far for over 10,000 kwH of gas usage, next to it was my yearly estimate which was 8,000 kwH, so apparently I'd already used more gas in half a year than they estimated I was going to use in the whole year.

I submitted all of this as evidence to the ombudsman, but they didn't think any of it was suspicious.  Even 5 different advisors completely ignoring my question about meter readings was just dismissed as coincidence.  The chaotic billing and incongruous estimates were also dismissed, as was the issue being well documented enough to make the national press in 2016.   The energy supplier even hid one of my emails to them from evidence in which I explicitly stated the meter had been replaced, which would have been a massive clue as to the issue.  It was just all a case of bad customer service.  My questions to the ombudsman regarding the fact that they haven't answered any of this, or had to change their procedures, was just blanked.  My statement that right now many people out there are being overcharged because of this, and both they and the energy companies know it, was ignored.

So I've written this long rant to get it off my chest, I feel really annoyed that they're getting away with it, and the ombudsman in my case seemed little more than a mechanism of insulating the energy company, rather than holding them to account.  I wonder how many people have lost their home, or even their lives, because of this, it makes me feel a bit sick.  Maybe there are only a few people, but according to the articles I read, a million meters are replaced every year, if only a small percentage are affected this is still thousands if not tens of thousands of customers.  This certainly seems like something that could be easily fixed, but the suppliers instead opt to allow it to continue while the Ombudsman turns a blind eye.  This is my way of at least having something on record somewhere as I feel the ombudsman didn't do their job.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading, you ooze stamina as someone somewhere once said.

Its amazing just how plain stupid some suppliers are that they can t come up with the possiblity of a meter exchange gone wrong when someones usage suddenly almost triples after decades of remaining stable almost exactly in line with 2.8 times .
As a meter reader I d come across these every now and then.In each case the occupier had a battle with the supplier and not got to the bottom of why they re billed so much all of a sudden .
Call centre staff only have to ask how many digits does their gas meter have to rule out possibility of a meter exchange gone wrong .
OP is not overdoing the drama as one lady in 80 s I met with a meter mix up was so scared to put the heating on in cold weather as her summer bills were horrendous too .
 Fortuantely I got on the phone to BG to get this all ended on her behalf . She got a small compensation I found out next time I called plus all the excell billing reimbursed 

 .

bytesplicer

SAC2334 said:

Its amazing just how plain stupid some suppliers are that they can t come up with the possiblity of a meter exchange gone wrong when someones usage suddenly almost triples after decades of remaining stable almost exactly in line with 2.8 times .
As a meter reader I d come across these every now and then.In each case the occupier had a battle with the supplier and not got to the bottom of why they re billed so much all of a sudden .
Call centre staff only have to ask how many digits does their gas meter have to rule out possibility of a meter exchange gone wrong .
OP is not overdoing the drama as one lady in 80 s I met with a meter mix up was so scared to put the heating on in cold weather as her summer bills were horrendous too .
 Fortuantely I got on the phone to BG to get this all ended on her behalf . She got a small compensation I found out next time I called plus all the excell billing reimbursed 

 .

I think I read about the case you mention while my Ombudsman complaint was on the go, really bad, well done for sorting it for her.  I don't know if it's stupidity, it certainly seems deliberate when it just keeps happening and they fight it each time.  i mean i learned some people get undercharged because of this but if you do the math all things being equal they will still profit as multiplying by 3 grows far quicker than dividing by 3 shrinks.  I personally think they aren't telling their call centre staff or training them to deal with meter mix-ups, only way I can explain 5 advisors ignoring my questions about 5 v 4 digit readings.

jimjames

Ours was round the other way and only noticed when new metric meter was fitted so we'd been paying 2.8x less than we should previously.

Reed_Richards

Way back, I think it was in 2003, I changed supplier and my new supplier started billing me as it my gas meter was imperial, even though it had always been metric.  My previous supplier had billed me correctly.  Fortunately I quickly spotted the error and got it corrected.  

pete-20-11

Reed_Richards said:

Way back, I think it was in 2003, I changed supplier and my new supplier started billing me as it my gas meter was imperial, even though it had always been metric.  My previous supplier had billed me correctly.  Fortunately I quickly spotted the error and got it corrected.  

Same happened to me, new supplier was British Gas. They were billing as if it was an imperial meter but it wasn’t, took a bit of effort to get them to sort it. 

hoofy

I've just had this happen to me and I only discovered it because I had not turned the heating on for the whole month of October...brrrrr.  When my monthly bill came, based on actual readings at the end of Sept and end of Oct, I was shocked to see I had spent £180 on gas which had only been used for cooking and heating my water. I then started studying bills and I was lucky that I manage my mothers account so I could compare my bill with her bill, side by side. We had both used around the same amount of units, but her units were being counted as 1 unit per 1 m3. My units were being counted as 1 unit per 2.83 m3.

Here's a screenshot of both bills. I you look in the top left corner of mine you will see it says my meter type is imperial and it was when I saw that when I sussed out the issue, because my meter is a smart meter, all be it one that no longer communicates because I have changed supplier.



I have been told by my supplier that they will re-do all my statements and also go back further to my previous supplier who went bust and re-do all their statements too and send them to me in around 3 weeks time.

If it wasn't for all the hype over the price increases of gas I probably would not have tried to keep the heating off for all of October and I probably would never have noticed I was paying almost treble for gas and have been doing for the last 3 years at least.

QrizB

hoofy said:

I have been told by my supplier that they will re-do all my statements and also go back further to my previous supplier who went bust and re-do all their statements too and send them to me in around 3 weeks time.

If it wasn't for all the hype over the price increases of gas I probably would not have tried to keep the heating off for all of October and I probably would never have noticed I was paying almost treble for gas and have been doing for the last 3 years at least.

I'm glad you noticed and that's a good outcome!

KerrBearrxo

Doesn't surprise me at all. They make mistakes just like everyone else. One thing to mention too is this wasn't done on purpose it was just pure incompetence and it's actually hurt them as well because some people were undercharged for energy and Ofgem has stated they cannot recuperate the losses from the customers they have to write it off.

bytesplicer

KerrBearrxo said:

Doesn't surprise me at all. They make mistakes just like everyone else. One thing to mention too is this wasn't done on purpose it was just pure incompetence and it's actually hurt them as well because some people were undercharged for energy and Ofgem has stated they cannot recuperate the losses from the customers they have to write it off.

It's kind of you to give them the benefit of the doubt, but in my opinion they're definitely doing it on purpose as opposed to just being incompetent.  This is a well known issue and yet when it is raised they will argue with the customer for months rather than just doing a simple check.  In my case they actually told me to either come up with a reason my bill was so high despite modest usage, or stop complaining.  As for being undercharged somehow balancing things, the direction of movement for meter exchanges is from imperial to metric, meaning the mistakes are more often not changing billing from imperial to metric, meaning a 2.83 overcharge factor.  Not many people if any are going from metric to imperial, but even generously assuming a 50/50 split of over/under charging, the gain to the energy companies from one person being overcharged by 2.83 rapidly outweighs any loss from another person being undercharged by 2.83 simply due to the nature of how multiplication and division works.  With that 50/50 split the energy companies are still making a stack of free money until the customer notices and they correct it.  If they were actually losing money overall I guarantee the problem would be fixed in a flash.

[Deleted User]

Be careful, you're accusing people of fraud on a public forum.