British Gas want my dd to go from £75 a month to £520!!

Spoonie_Turtle

chubsta said:

The readings are via a Smart meter so are actual and not estimates. Clearly something has gone wrong somewhere as their own estimates are that I should only use around £50 a month!

Are they shown as smart/actual readings on your bills?  If you haven't checked then you need to do so, you can't just assume the smart meter is still communicating because suppliers lose communication with smart meters* all the time.

*Technically the communications hub not the actual meter(s).

markin

Flugelhorn said:

markin said:

And spend some of that savings on solar power to get £0 bills annually.

tricky to get gas through solar power

OK, I meant electric bills, But many do cut down on gas by heating the water tank with a solar diverter.

km1500

you could switch to eg Octopus and just pay each month for the amount you use by DD

Novice_investor101

BG told me to reduce my DD after my bill at the beginning of September. From £100pm to £58pm. I had £195 credit after the summer bill. But I know I use £55 of electric a month in summer & there’s the gas standing charge to add on of around £10pm. So that £195 of credit is never enough to cover 6 months of the actual winter gas use! I upped it to £117pm & I’ll track it myself to make sure I’m not building a debt, seeing as I only get a bill in March. 

chubsta

Spoonie_Turtle said:

chubsta said:

The readings are via a Smart meter so are actual and not estimates. Clearly something has gone wrong somewhere as their own estimates are that I should only use around £50 a month!

Are they shown as smart/actual readings on your bills?  If you haven't checked then you need to do so, you can't just assume the smart meter is still communicating because suppliers lose communication with smart meters* all the time.

*Technically the communications hub not the actual meter(s).

Yes, that was the first thing I checked! I think the problem may have occurred because the meter readings show an  'estimated' reading in the middle of all the other 'actual' ones, this reading was higher than the subsequent 'actual' one and showed a usage of almost 100,000 of kwh as it obviously couldn't cope with the subsequent 'actual' being lower and it is basing the increase on that single anomaly - that's my guess anyway as I can't see any other reason

19/09/2023	10265	126 kWh
19/08/2023	10139	102 kWh
25/07/2023	10037 (estimated)	49 kWh
24/07/2023	09988	99974 kWh
21/07/2023	10014 (estimated)	49 kWh
20/07/2023	09965	5 kWh
19/07/2023	09960	68 kWh

Anyway, I contacted BG, their assistant stated that clearly something was amiss but she was unable to fix it for some reason. her solution was to cancel the DD at her end and set another one up for the correct amount.

This morning I get an email from BG saying they have tried to take the DD but due to problems at their end they were unable to do so.

I have a feeling this is going to run and run...

molerat

You need to raise a formal complaint so that it goes higher up the food chain to someone who can deal with it.  It is obvious where the error comes from and is down to poor computer programming.  The simple fix is to remove either the 21/07 or 24/07 read and it will all go away.

chubsta

Still no resolution despite 3 phone calls, one of which I asked to speak to someone higher as their rep just said they would take the money and if I didn’t use that amount I would get it refunded, as if it’s ok for me to pay £5000 and hope I get a £4300 refund next year, each time being told they can see it is an error and they will change the dd back to £75 - it still remains at £520…

have now logged a complaint in their system but apparently that can take up to 21 days just to be read…

Robin9

Follow that up with a complaint by post as per their process.

chubsta

Still not sorted - went onto their online chat today and was told he can't help me and I should contact them on Monday! He didn't even ask what the problem was!

Have decided to move suppliers asap....

molerat

chubsta said:

Still not sorted - went onto their online chat today and was told he can't help me and I should contact them on Monday! He didn't even ask what the problem was!

Have decided to move suppliers asap....

Just get on and do it, you will likely be with the new supplier next week !