SSE confusion

Janeybabe

I got my gas bill yesterday & am utterly baffled. For YEARS my annual usage has been around £300-400 but they are now estimating that I will use over £3000 of gas in the next 12 months so have trebled my direct debit.

I have gone through the last 12 months of bills and despite me sending them regular meter readings they have charged me for nearly 30,000kwh of gas over the last year. Using my meter readings I have worked out that I actually used around 10,000kwh of gas so they have over-charged me by around £1500 (for the past year).

I actually switched my boiler OFF in March of this year so my usage over the next 12 months will be considerably less than the 10000kwh I used last year.

I am going to be calling SSE tomorrow to discuss this (tried today but it's a skeleton crew on a weekend and you can only really log emergencies or make payments by the automated system) but is there any chance of me being refunded the £1500 overcharge? By my calculations and the ones on here (Martin's energy cap calculator) my monthly payments should be around £84 a month. Not £264. 

Any tips for getting this sorted?

[Deleted User]

Are the readings on the bills for the last year marked as E, A, C, S or M?

If there’s an actual billing mistake, or they’re using estimated readings that you can replace with actual readings, then of course you’ll get any overpayment back.

Janeybabe

[Deleted User] said:

Are the readings on the bills for the last year marked as E, A, C, S or M?

Some have an E against the meter reading even though my actual reading is next to it, others have no letters against them. My electricity bills have S on them but the gas ones don't have anything other than the E next to their reading with mine at the side of theirs.

Robin9

Also have a look at the meter - is it marked m3 or ft3. Note the serial number

Now look at your bill -  m3 or ft 3 and serial number.

Janeybabe

It is the same serial number but no M3 or FT3 on the bill (any of them). It is a FT3 meter. I have a meter point reference number on the bill which is different to the serial number, no idea what that is 

stewie_griffin

What’s the date of your last bill, what readings are used and what are your readings today. Is your account currently in credit or debit?

Janeybabe

stewie_griffin said:

What’s the date of your last bill, what readings are used and what are your readings today. Is your account currently in credit or debit?

Date of last bill was 4th October and covers July 2022-September 2022. I gave a meter reading on the 29th September of 8557 which is on the bill, right next to "Reading last time - July 2022 - 8527 (E)". The reading I gave 'last time' was actually 8512 in June not July. The account was £65.79 in credit before the bill which now stands at £64.31 in debit but they're upping the direct debit to £264 a month to cover their estimation that I'll use over £3000 of gas by this time next year.

Janeybabe

There is a huge discrepancy on the Jan 2022 bill where they have estimated both my reading & the reading last time (despite me having given actual ones & I have a record of these). They estimated I'd used 678 units of gas within that quarter but I'd actually used 232 units based on my actual readings. Every bill between December 2020 and July 2022 state that my annual usage projection is between £300-£400. Now all of a sudden it's over £3000 and I can't fathom out why because my usage has actually decreased due to me switching the boiler off so we have no heating.

[Deleted User]

So you’ve used 4500 ft3 of gas between your actual readings.  That’s about 1500 kWh in three summer months.

From that I’d expect more than 10000 kWh annually, but probably not 30000 kWh.

What readings did you use to get your 10000kWh estimate?

Janeybabe

Going through the bills they have charged me for 734 units of gas since January 2022.

My readings for January 2022 to now were 8272 - 8557 which is only 285 units.

I work that out to roughly 9187kWh using the calculation on the bill that they have provided to convert units into kWh.

Janeybabe

Sept 22 - 8557
June 22 - 8512
March 22 - 8501
Dec 21 - 8269
Oct 21 - 8222

They're my actual readings.

SSE's readings for the same period are close in parts but way out in others:

Sept 22 - 8561 (E)
June 22 - 8527 (E)
March 22 - 8512 (E)
Dec 21 - 7752 (E)
Oct 21 - 7705 (E)

All the bills have their estimations and my readings but they have charged me on their estimations and not on my actual reading.