Landlord refuses access to electric meter and massive bill threats

SAC2334

Gerry1 said:

spannerzone said:

I'm waiting to hear back on progress with getting the landlord to give access (seems unlikely) and if British Gas and/or OFGEM can help at all.

BG have a legal right to read the meter, if necessary by forced access as a last resort.  It remains to be seen whether they'd agree to do that unless you'd been in serious debt for a long time, but worth exploring.

Ofgem don't deal with individual complaints.  At best they might refer you to the gov.uk page to which I linked earlier.

Once BG have got that Warrent , correctly dated , signed by the Magistrate, there is no agreement needed by the landlord .They will go in with a locksmith and Police will attend if needed .Problem is its mainly only British Gas spending money on warrents and locksmiths .My team mate was working on a contract for Scottish Power checking suspect bypassed meter reports  and at a team meeting he was told they were only allocated 20 warrents per year for that section .British Gas would get 20 in one week all signed up on Monday morning in one go at the local Magistrates .
That was Scottish Powers "Revenue Protection for South Yorks ..two meter readers emploed by G4S  with a weeks training and no real powers and no interest in stopping meter bypasses  . If anyone refused access to them that was far as it went and they left the property . And thats how all the other suppliers worked too .Only BG had an active  working Revenue Protection