British Gas Billing Error

tilyymolly

Hello everyone. I am after a bit of advice.

British Gas has been billing my MIL using imperial instead of metric. I have checked her smart meter and it does say M3. They want her to pay £650 per month to cover the incorrect arrears. Her annual estimated usage of 20,000Kwh(high I know) has gone up to 63,000Kwh
I have phoned them a number of times, provided photos of her smart meter and even older bills that charged her in metres. They have said they are looking into it but what is a reasonable time to wait? It has been 6 weeks since the first contact and two weeks since I pointed out to them that they were using the wrong conversion.

I have the transcript of the complaint 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:11:10): So you are correct and I am really sorry for this situation' 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:11:44): I will go right away and raise this issue to our specialist team who will resolve this for you shortly 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:12:06): And I will send you an email about the progress 

Gerry1

Welcome to the forum.

Just shows how bad BG's billing system is: there aren't any imperial smart meters so it shouldn't be even possible to bill a smart meter in imperial.

One hopes that BG's new billing system will be better, but that remains to be seen.

In the meantime, make sure a formal complaint has been recorded and then go to the ombudsman upon receipt of a deadlock letter, or after eight weeks if they haven't sent one.

tilyymolly

Gerry1 said:

Welcome to the forum.

Just shows how bad BG's billing system is: there aren't any imperial smart meters so it shouldn't be even possible to bill a smart meter in imperial.

One hopes that BG's new billing system will be better, but that remains to be seen.

In the meantime, make sure a formal complaint has been recorded and then go to the ombudsman upon receipt of a deadlock letter, or after eight weeks if they haven't sent one.

Thanks for your reply. It was after reading this forum that helped me work out the error.
A formal complaint has been made.
It is the new billing system.

Gerry1

Bad enough that BG's creaky old billing system could bill smart meters in imperial, but it's absolutely unforgivable that the new BG system has such a serious built-in fault.

If only there were some sort of official regulator that could prohibit this predictable overcharging...

victor2

tilyymolly said:

Hello everyone. I am after a bit of advice.

British Gas has been billing my MIL using imperial instead of metric. I have checked her smart meter and it does say M3. They want her to pay £650 per month to cover the incorrect arrears. Her annual estimated usage of 20,000Kwh(high I know) has gone up to 63,000Kwh
I have phoned them a number of times, provided photos of her smart meter and even older bills that charged her in metres. They have said they are looking into it but what is a reasonable time to wait? It has been 6 weeks since the first contact and two weeks since I pointed out to them that they were using the wrong conversion.

I have the transcript of the complaint 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:11:10): So you are correct and I am really sorry for this situation' 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:11:44): I will go right away and raise this issue to our specialist team who will resolve this for you shortly 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:12:06): And I will send you an email about the progress 

Welcome to the forum!

I don't quite understand the problem, but agree with Gerry1 that it should not be possible for a new billing system to accept smart meter readings as if they were from an imperial meter.

However, imperial meters measured Hundreds of Cubic Feet (HCF), and metric ones record cubic metres (m3). So one unit on an imperial meter is about 2.83m3. If BG were taking metric readings as HCF, they would surely be overbilling. For example, 100m3 would be around 1,125kWh, but 100HCF would be 3,183kWh, with a correspondingly higher charge.

If the smart meter has been in for at least a year, can you get readings from it about 1 year apart from old bills? From that, people on here could give a good approximation to the actual kWh used.

An annual gas usage of 20,000kWh is indeed high, but 63,000 is hard to believe unless MIL lives in a draughty central heated castle!

tilyymolly

Thanks for the warm welcome victor2.

The gas is being billed in cubic feet which is 2.83 times what it should be. It is a smart meter that was installed in 2017.

It is not a problem with the reading. The readings are correct.  4 cubic metres of gas is being charged as 127Kwh when it should be 44Kwh.

tilyymolly

This is a recent reading clearly showing it is an imperial meter

tilyymolly

Metric not imperial.

victor2

tilyymolly said:

Thanks for the warm welcome victor2.

The gas is being billed in cubic feet which is 2.83 times what it should be. It is a smart meter that was installed in 2017.

It is not a problem with the reading. The readings are correct.  4 cubic metres of gas is being charged as 127Kwh when it should be 44Kwh.

So they have been billing MIL for more gas than she has used, and if anything, they owe her money?

But you said in your first post "They want her to pay £650 per month to cover the incorrect arrears." If BG accept they have got the meter type wrong, they should rebill at the correct (vastly reduced) kWh. Is the fact that they are not doing that the entire issue? If so, my apologies for not understanding.

If they don't sort it within 8 weeks of your formal complaint, you should be able to refer it to the ombudsman.

In the meantime, you should work out how many kWh MIL has been overbilled for, and the associated cost. Get as much detail lined up as you can if you do have to take it further.

tilyymolly

Yes, they are overcharging her. They set a DD of £650 which she has paid one month of. I have lowered it to £160 which by my calculations should be about correct.

But even though it was first queried 6 weeks ago and  confirmed it is incorrect, nothing has been done.

Confirmed in a chat that the billing was wrong.

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:11:10): So you are correct and I am really sorry for this situation' 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:11:44): I will go right away and raise this issue to our specialist team who will resolve this for you shortly 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:12:06): And I will send you an email about the progress 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:12:13): Please allow me 3-4 minutes 

Olive (12/06/2023, 14:13:55): Just to make you aware it is not just that date. All bills require correcting(Gas only) 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:16:06): I get your point and I have successfully highlighted this issue to our higher level 

Prasad (12/06/2023, 14:16:42): Which means your usage will be corrected along with the bills 

This for an 84 year old woman she is sick with worry. If I wasn`t here to help I don`t know what she would do.

victor2

I understand now!

Have you seen BG's complaints procedure?

https://www.britishgas.co.uk/aem6/content/dam/britishgas/complaints/we-are-listening.pdf

That says

If you’re still unhappy with the outcome of
your complaint or it’s taken us longer than
eight weeks to resolve, you have the right
to take matters further. You can do this by
contacting the Energy Ombudsman.

It's good that your are there to help MIL. You can keep pestering BG to sort it out, but continue to keep records of everything said, and be ready to refer it to the ombudsman if/when 8 weeks pass, contact details are in the document linked above.