Trying to understand British Gas Electricity Billing for Home Use

Bigun28

After my last energy firm went bust, I was moved to British Gas.  I live with my wife in a 4 bed detached house with oil central heating, well insulated, no tumble dryer or electric heating or electric car etc.  So BG just supply our electric for everyday use, which I've calculated from my meter readings to be around £140-£150 a month (based on current charges today, standing charge and VAT)

BG made an error when I started because their contract with me said that they would put me on a Economy 7 tariff, but they actually switched me to a single rate tariff, which I didn't discover for some months.  Despite me having a smart meter from my previous company, BG say that they can't read that if the other company has installed it.  So I'm now in a dispute trying to recover the additional charges that I paid for the period. 

Somehow through all this since last year, I've accumulated a debt of nearly £450 with BG, despite every bill they sent to me (and then subsequently cancelled because of the dispute) saying 'Good news, you're spot of with your payments'.

I was previously paying £130 per month which I upped to just over £170 per month direct debit with the energy cap rise again, which should have covered the £140-£150 usage now that I calculated, but recently BG tried to put my direct debit up to over £1000 per month, because they calculated that I will be nearly £3000 in debt to them in 5 months time. 

When I pushed back and said that there was no way I was using nearly £12,500 of electricity a year for just 2 of us in a standard home, they relinquished the £1000 direct debit but then more than doubled my current payment.  But as it stands, according to their website, I will still be over £2000 in debt to them in 5 months time, and the suggestion is that my direct debit should be nearer £900 per month to cover this.

I can't understand how such massive figures are being calculated by them.  I've given them all my meter readings so that we are both working from the same figures, but when I challenge them, they just say, that's what has been calculated.  I think my only choice is to cancel the direct debit and just pay for what I use because at the moment the stress this is all causing is ridiculous and they are not willing to discuss anything.

[Deleted User]

What do you think your meter readings are?

What are the meter readings on their bills?  Are these marked with any letters or words?

What is the estimated usage written on their bills?  Has it changed?

QrizB

Regarding Economy 7, as you've got oil CH I'd be surprised if the difference in tariff is a huge amount. You might even be better off with a single rate tariff.

Also, we've seen before that BG have problems with E7 and smart meters.

maisie_cat

Do you know how many kWh you use a day/week/year split between the two meters?
Are you providing meter readings frequently or at the very least when they ask quarterly?
We have two meters but are better off on a single tariff because the house no longer has storage heaters.
We heat our house with biomass, have an electric shower and use 7-8 kWh per day of electricity, of which 1 kWh is night use.
When we moved to BG I gave them meter readings weekly so that the algorithm could work out our use and come up with accurate DDs and forecasts. It does seem to work because we are £9 in credit.

Bigun28

[Deleted User] said:

What do you think your meter readings are?

What are the meter readings on their bills?  Are these marked with any letters or words?

What is the estimated usage written on their bills?  Has it changed?

This is where the problems started.  My night meter reading was stuck for 6 months because they put me on a single rate tariff instead of the Economy 7.  When they finally realised their error, they put me on the correct tariff and then tried to fiddle the meter readings to compensate and reimburse me for the night time usage I had used during the previous 6 months, usage that had been recorded against the day rate charge.  So they reduced my actual day read and then bumped up a night read.

But that then stopped me from entering any accurate future meter reads as they would have been wildly different, and would have generated a massive bill.  So they corrected it back to the actual readings I gave them and were trying to work out a way to pay back what they had overcharged me during those 6 months.  So they tried to fiddle the meter readings again and we were back to square one again.  Hence, the bills kept getting cancelled because they were trying to use the wrong readings.

All the way through I was giving them the actual meter reads, and I have a spreadsheet full of them with all the costing calculations etc.

Finally, they tried to say that I hadn't used anything on the night rate for those 6 months, despite the fact that I proved that I had been heavily using it before being transferred to British Gas, and again heavily using it after they put me on the correct tariff 6 months later.  So it made now sense that I stopped using for exactly those 6 months.

I've now raised it to the Ombudsman because of this fiasco, and BG tried to submit all the old cancelled bills as their evidence, which I've now pulled apart in my responses because all the meter readings were wrong.  The problem I think I have is that they are using the fiddled meter readings in their calculations for debt and future direct debit payments, but still, even using those shouldn't generate the need for a £900 direct debit per month.

The problem I have now is that the BG Customer Services just look at my account and say 'the computer says it should be this - end of', and no matter how hard I try, I can't get them to see sense.

macman

Why is your night rate usage allegedly 'heavy', given that you don't have electric heating or DHW?
I can't see why you want to be on E7, unless you are nocturnal.
Without some idea of your historic annual kWh usage on each register, it's not really possible to say what the annual/monthly cost should be set at. Do you have old bills preceding BG that you can calculate from?