Industry wide formula for gas consumption wrongly used

davebullie

Just received £1000 rebate from Octopus as they were using the formula for gas consumption incorrectly
In a nutshell I was supplying metric reading (cubic metres) from my metric meter but Octopus treated the reading as Imperial (cubic feet)
and were multiplying it by 2.83 in the mistaken belief they were converting it to metric
can't be the only one out there so check your meter especially if its metric  and then check your bill to see the formula is correct.
x1 for metric (cubic metres)  x2.83 for imperial (cubic feet)

victor2

davebullie said:

Just received £1000 rebate from Octopus as they were using the formula for gas consumption incorrectly
In a nutshell I was supplying metric reading (cubic metres) from my metric meter but Octopus treated the reading as Imperial (cubic feet)
and were multiplying it by 2.83 in the mistaken belief they were converting it to metric
can't be the only one out there so check your meter especially if its metric  and then check your bill to see the formula is correct.
x1 for metric (cubic metres)  x2.83 for imperial (cubic feet)

Mistakes like that do happen, and it is one of the first things people are asked to check when they post on here with comments like "my gas usage has just tripled!"

Then somebody else comes along and correctly says that cubic feet are smaller than cubic meters. To which the answer is imperial meters measure(d) Hundreds of Cubic Feet.

What_time_is_it

Do they have a different number of digits?
e.g. Cubic metres readings have 4 digits, and cubic feet readings have 5 digits?

MWT

davebullie said:

Just received £1000 rebate from Octopus as they were using the formula for gas consumption incorrectly

They were using the formula entirely correctly, what was wrong was the meter type being incorrectly shown on the central database as imperial...

We see this sort of thing reported on here many times a year, it is usually the result of the original supplier not updating the database correctly when they replace a meter, but updating their own systems so the bills are correct, until the customer switches to a new supplier who is required to follow the information on the central database...

Glad you have got it sorted though...