British Gas appear to have charged us in hundreds of cubic ft gas rather than cubic ft gas for 5+ y

lucyr103

Hiya, I’m new to the forum but looking for advice on how to proceed, how we might be able to escalate a complaint/claim back money owed.

We live in a two-bed flat which we moved into in Feb 2019.

Over the course of our time here we have been frequently perplexed in sudden spikes in our energy bills from British Gas (for example going from £80/month to £220/month suddenly and then at one point to over £400/month). When we have raised queries with British Gas they have either: a) said they would look into it and never called us back until we run out of steam/time pursuing them or b) adjusted the amount for one month, then it has reverted to the huge amounts again after a couple of months, or c) put it down to the energy crisis.

A year ago (July 2023) my partner made a breakthrough with them when they admitted that our gas meter was very old, and had probably been replaced at some point but that this had not been correctly registered at the supplier side. They asked us to read the information on a yellow label on the meter, but the writing had faded. They said they would try to resolve things, and my partner said he would try to contact our property’s previous owner to ask when the meter had been changed. We were not able to contact the previous owner (we had already been living here 4 years), and British Gas never made any headway.

Earlier this year I decided to try to get to the bottom of it by having a smart meter installed and made an appointment. The engineer didn’t turn up - and they gave us £30 compensation for our troubles, then in June announced that they would be hoiking our direct debit payments to £438/month from August.

At that point (26 June) my partner called again and spoke to someone who realised that our gas meter was measuring usage in cubic feet, not cubic metres. They said that this could be the cause of the problem, and advised us to install a smart meter as soon as possible, take final meter readings and then call back. The meters were upgraded on 18 July.

(An additional complication is that in June/July 2023 British Gas migrated our account across to a new system at their side.)

We are now in no doubt that we have been overcharged. My partner has gone back through all our past bills and seen that, for instance, our gas has been calculated as 11,000 kWh at one point for a period over the summer where we don’t have heating on.

The meter that was uninstalled by the engineer (when we had the smart metre installed) is definitely measured in cubic ft. But my partner believes now that we have been charged in hundreds of cubic ft (which is a common gas measurement) rather than in cubic feet or cubic meters.

The trouble is we are back to having our calls ignored, someone told him yesterday they would look into it and call at 4pm. They didn’t. We both have full time jobs and small children. We can’t take time off to keep chasing them when they avoid us. What can/should we do to try to get our money back?

BarelySentientAI

I don't know of any meter that reads in cubit feet.  It's way too small a unit to be useful.  They all used to read in hundreds of cubic feet and now read in cubic metres.

What makes you think your old meter measured cubic feet?  If it was just the installer, they use that as shorthand to determine whether it is an imperial or metric meter - saying "metres or feet" is much faster than saying "metres or hundreds of feet".

Reed_Richards

Before you got your new smart meter you must have been submitting the readings yourselves.  You should have been asked for readings in 100s of cubic feet.  You may have made a mistake and given 100 times the readings you were asked for.   123456 cubic feet is 1234.56 in hundreds of cubic feet.  If your meter read in cubic feet then it was up to you to divide the reading by 100 and submit those numbers, the ones before the decimal point, so a reading of 1234 in my example.  

lucyr103

It's to do with the calculations. Is it usual then that a 2 bed flat could use 11,000 kWh of gas over 2 months, running on a couple of 10 min combi boiler showers a day (everything else is electric and we don't switch on the central heating)? Or is it possible there could be a leak somewhere that we haven't smelled? I just don't understand how we can have used hundreds of pounds of gas in this way other than a miscalculation? We do give meter readings when asked, and have had meters read professionally over the years.

lucyr103

Thank Reed Richards. We were never specified the measurement to read the meter in so it's possible that we were just giving the numbers and not calculating it down to cubic feet. We literally just gave them the reading on the meter and assumed they knew how to use it correctly.

Reed_Richards

Yes, I think that's very possible.  But your gas bills, if you looked closely at them, should have shown you how they were processing the numbers you gave them.  So if you gave them a reading of 123456 as cubic feet then the bill would say that your reading was 123456 in hundreds of cubic feet.

When your old gas meter was removed then a final reading should have been recorded and passed to British Gas. British Gas should see that this final reading did not tally with the readings you had given them previously.    

lucyr103

This is our old meter. We literally just gave the readings from it

BarelySentientAI

lucyr103 said:

Thank Reed Richards. We were never specified the measurement to read the meter in so it's possible that we were just giving the numbers and not calculating it down to cubic feet. We literally just gave them the reading on the meter and assumed they knew how to use it correctly.

Then you've probably done the right thing - give them the number off the meter (without anything after the decimal or the red numbers), and let them work it out.  That's what all the "how to read your meter" guides say.  Do you recall whether there were any numbers in red and, if there were, were you submitting them? edit: just saw your photograph - were you giving only the white numbers or the red ones too?

If you did accidentally submit the extra digits that you weren't supposed to - then it's more "I accidentally told BG 100 times more usage than I should have", rather than them charging you wrong.  I would expect that to be picked up by a meter reader though (as you say some have visited), because the reading they took would be miles different from the ones you have given, so that might not be likely.

The metric vs imperial meter thing introduces an error of about 3 times (2.83) - but you say they've accounted for that already?

Once we know if it was a reading error or a consumption thing, then you can plan how to complain best.

Reed_Richards

Your old gas meter is reading 0511 hundred cubic feet.  That's the number you should have given British Gas.

Edit:  And in case you don't believe me, here is British Gas telling you the same thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V3v6bVDOHk

victor2

lucyr103 said:

This is our old meter. We literally just gave the readings from it

So would your reading of that be 511?

Was there a period of estimated readings due to you not providing them?

Look at your old bills and see what readings were used. It could be that they were catching up after some low estimates. You should have a card or sticker on your new meter saying what the last reading was on the old imperial meter, and suibsequent billings showing the calculation for a metric meter without the adjustment for imperial.

tim_p

do you have any previous readings as that meter has surely been round the clock