British Gas - Variable DD - Incompetent

PennineAcute

I moved into my new home in May with BG and went onto monthly DD.  They were, IMO, overestimating my usage and I was accumulating a high credit, especially on my gas, upto the end of August.

In June, I had smart metres fitted, and the gas has never communicated with my IHD.  Electricity meter is working fine.  BG say that it is a common fault and that they are waiting for their technicians to work out a solution.

My Issue

As they were overestimating my usage, at the beginning of September I moved over to monthly variable direct debit.  I was told that as my gas meter was not communicating, to give them a meter read on the 1st of each month.

1st October, I gave an online reading of 20 for my gas meter.  Two days later, my bill was produced and I noticed that the gas reading was estimated at 20.  Foolishly, I ignored this, as their calculation was accurate.

1st November, I gave another another online reading, for the gas, of 66.  Two days later my bill was produced with an estimated gas reading of 46.  A descrepancy of 20.  I contacted them and they cancelled all bills from 1 September and said they would issue a new bill.

14th November, I had not received my new bill, contacted them again and a new gas and elec was issued.  They assured me that the issue around estimated billing would stop.

1 December.  I give them an online reading of 146 and await my bill.  I have just logged onto my account and noticed that a bill has been produced, but not available for download.  The gas bill is for £45.43.  I have looked at my readings and notice that again my gas bill is estimated, with a reading of 129.

I am now going to have to spend time, which I do not really have, sorting out this mess. 

How the heck do I stop them from issuing me with estimated bills?  All I want to do is accurately pay for the energy I use each month.

ariarnia

my first thought is maybe the 1 of the month is to close to the bill date for the system. i know that's the day they told you to send a reading but i can see your electric meter has readings on about the 28th each month. i can't tell which electric readings are from you and which are from the smart meter (i'm guessing your sending some readings because i can't see an obvious pattern) but if the electric readings are going throu okay then the first thing i'd try is sending gas readings on the same day to see if that fixes the problem. 

PennineAcute

Electric are auto read - my electricity smart meter communicates.  Just not my gas smart meter.  They just ignore any gas readings and do an estimate.