Gas Meter Stopped Working

MRH8888

Hi all,

We moved in to our property in October 21. We are on a fixed tariff with British gas for gas and electric. We recently had a look through our bills as it appeared we were paying a lot less than others. There are only 2 of us in the property, so we don't use a lot of energy and the only gas appliance we have is the boiler.

We noticed that the current gas meter reading (our gas meter is in a box outside the property), is the same as it was when we moved in the house; i.e. we haven't been correctly billed for usage. Has anyone else had any similar issues? And is it our fault if we have only just noticed the issue?

Any info would be appreciated.

EssexHebridean

Have you not been providing meter readings to British Gas?  Are you being billed on estimated readings? 

MRH8888

We have a smart meter which is set to update every 30 mins. We didn't realise have only been paying the standing charge till the last week.

pochase

Does the bill show your usage as "estimated" or as a real usage?

Can you read the usage direct on your smart meter or is it broken and does not show any details?

MRH8888

Real usage. I’ll have to get back to you on that. Just at work at the mo.

macman

So your meter is transmitting the usage data OK, but the data itself is incorrect as it's not recording any usage...
Contact BG and ask them to replace the meter. Your usage will be estimated. No idea how back-billing would apply or not in this instance, someone else will no doubt offer a view on that. But generally estimated billing will work in your favour.
You must be the only household in the country who hasn't looked at their gas bill in 2.5 years. The gas boiler may be your only gas appliance, but if you have gas CH and DHW then that will still account for up to 80% of your total energy usage.
PS: I'm assuming the meter was broken from the time you moved in and has never advanced at all?

MRH8888

macman said:

So your meter is transmitting the usage data OK, but the data itself is incorrect as it's not recording any usage...
Contact BG and ask them to replace the meter. Your usage will be estimated. No idea how back-billing would apply or not in this instance, someone else will no doubt offer a view on that. But generally estimated billing will work in your favour.
You must be the only household in the country who hasn't looked at their gas bill in 2.5 years. The gas boiler may be your only gas appliance, but if you have gas CH and DHW then that will still account for up to 80% of your total energy usage.
PS: I'm assuming the meter was broken from the time you moved in and has never advanced at all?

Correct, and correct! We're first time homeowners and have genuinely not really looked into how much our bills should be/are etc. We just usually use the smart meter as a reference. That is what my thoughts were, they may estimate our usage in the past however many months. Citizens advice states that they wont be able to go back further than 12 months, but that is dependent who is at fault.

The meter hasn't changed at all, like i say we only firgured that out looking at every bill since we moved in. I'll get on to BG now. fingers crossed! 

EssexHebridean

macman said:

So your meter is transmitting the usage data OK, but the data itself is incorrect as it's not recording any usage...
Contact BG and ask them to replace the meter. Your usage will be estimated. No idea how back-billing would apply or not in this instance, someone else will no doubt offer a view on that. But generally estimated billing will work in your favour.
You must be the only household in the country who hasn't looked at their gas bill in 2.5 years. The gas boiler may be your only gas appliance, but if you have gas CH and DHW then that will still account for up to 80% of your total energy usage.
PS: I'm assuming the meter was broken from the time you moved in and has never advanced at all?

We had someone pretty recently who reckoned they'd not looked at their bills in the past 6 years...! 

diystarter7

macman said:

So your meter is transmitting the usage data OK, but the data itself is incorrect as it's not recording any usage...
Contact BG and ask them to replace the meter. Your usage will be estimated. No idea how back-billing would apply or not in this instance, someone else will no doubt offer a view on that. But generally estimated billing will work in your favour.
You must be the only household in the country who hasn't looked at their gas bill in 2.5 years. The gas boiler may be your only gas appliance, but if you have gas CH and DHW then that will still account for up to 80% of your total energy usage.
PS: I'm assuming the meter was broken from the time you moved in and has never advanced at all?

Hi

When we had paper billing we looked every three months, but now, I thing we get a bill a year and that the only time we look at it.
I'm lost with those online checks etc
Not for me these pretend smart meters that are causing so much trouble/problems.

Thanks

EssexHebridean

MRH8888 said:

macman said:

So your meter is transmitting the usage data OK, but the data itself is incorrect as it's not recording any usage...
Contact BG and ask them to replace the meter. Your usage will be estimated. No idea how back-billing would apply or not in this instance, someone else will no doubt offer a view on that. But generally estimated billing will work in your favour.
You must be the only household in the country who hasn't looked at their gas bill in 2.5 years. The gas boiler may be your only gas appliance, but if you have gas CH and DHW then that will still account for up to 80% of your total energy usage.
PS: I'm assuming the meter was broken from the time you moved in and has never advanced at all?

Correct, and correct! We're first time homeowners and have genuinely not really looked into how much our bills should be/are etc. We just usually use the smart meter as a reference. That is what my thoughts were, they may estimate our usage in the past however many months. Citizens advice states that they wont be able to go back further than 12 months, but that is dependent who is at fault.

The meter hasn't changed at all, like i say we only firgured that out looking at every bill since we moved in. I'll get on to BG now. fingers crossed! 

Well the supplier has a duty to try to ensure that they receive an accurate reading every 12 months I believe -  I'd say you have a reasonable basis to say that there was no reason for you to be supplying reads - as after all, you would have assumed that the meter was doing that, so you may be in luck on the 12 months thing. 

And no - as you say, as first time homeowners you "don't know what you don't know" after all - you only learn from experience, and by asking questions. 

[Deleted User]

diystarter7 said:

Hi

When we had paper billing we looked every three months, but now, I thing we get a bill a year and that the only time we look at it.
I'm lost with those online checks etc
Not for me these pretend smart meters that are causing so much trouble/problems.

Thanks

You are at it again. Don’t conflate a few posts on this forum outlining some meter problems with there being a widespread issue with smart meters. 

As of the last report, there were 29.4M smart meters deployed of which 25.6M are operating in smart mode. The reasons for the difference are as follows:

Smart meters can temporarily operate in traditional mode for several reasons including:

• customers switching to suppliers currently unable to operate the meter in smart mode,

• meters being unable to communicate via the wide area network at the point of reporting,

• customers having their meter installed in traditional mode,

• installed meters yet to be commissioned (e.g., in new build premises).

A large chunk of the 3.8M meters not operating in a smart mode will be SMETS1 meters yet to be moved to the DCC Network.

In sum, over 50% of UK consumer households now have smart meters.