Metre readings

dburton

Hi

My Mother who lives on her has 3 storage heaters and has economy 7 heating she currently pays £370 a month to British Gas and they have just put the DD up to £760 a month as they have said she is under paying. I have since looked at her bills and her day readings are a lot higher than her night readings. She has a smart metre and in the mornings when her storage heaters are on she uses around £7 of electricity and by the end of the day it goes up by another £2 to £4 so total £11.
would I be right in thinking they have mixed her day night readings up

These 2 bills are readings from an old metre and a new one they installed

any input would be greatly received as I have had to cancel her DD as she can’t afford the extra costs

dburton

sorry this is the older bill

MikeJXE

To pay that much for energy is criminal

Scot_39

In general - it is often best to assume - any bill based on estimates could be wrong - under or over actual.

They can quickly snowball into £100s/£1000s

Have you any idea if those estimates - were on old meter - are on new meter - approximately correct. (That is even if were swapped over)

On new bill - start and end readings both say estimated - but its a smart meter - so why ?

First Step

BG are I believe one of the suppliers - who has a habit of deleting old bills from online records when corrected following a challange - so if dont already have statements - at least going back to new accounts system swap - log in and download as many as you can that you dont yet have / them all.

Sanity Check Jan estimates

Try to get some real readings from the meter - for both registers.

And try to see which rate is active at the time take the readings. Some IHD's might give the registers separately - others only give total. So sadly often means using the meter itself.

Ideally taking a set morning / night / morning - for both registers - whilst the heating is still active - should let you know what register the heavy (if manual) NSH is being recorded against.

Some meters will even tell you which register is currently active - so if its not obvious - let us know her meter model make and model ? (The top 2" will be the comms hub - the meter is the lower bit with buttons and a LCD display)

Take those meter readings and compare say Jan 16 + add 2 months - so 1300/200 pm - to the respective estimates - based on 3m estimated usage.

On line / App - maybe easier if mum unable to read meter - and provide even more insight

Again if you have access - can you see any history or readings on-line - or again - if your tech savy - on say BG's mobile app ? In theory it's her account etc - but if you have her permission …

Which might be easier if your not local - than getting meter readings if mum unable.

The app may be best way to get 1/2 hourly use and cost estimates from the meter to see when heaters active. And daily and monthly totals - to compare to billing.

Reed_Richards

I have just looked again and realised that even though your mother has a smart meter, her readings are still all estimated. That's ridiculous. It's not that British Gas are taking readings the wrong way round, they are just inventing readings the wrong way round.

QrizB

I have since looked at her bills and her day readings are a lot higher than her night readings.

As Scot_39 correctly highlights above, there are no meter readings anywhere on either of those bills. Only estimates.

Once you've made copies of all herexistong bills, the very next thing to do is to read her meters and submit some Actual meter readings to BG.

Also, near the new smart meter there should be a card or a sticker showing the closing readings from the old meter. When you look at the bill covering the meter changeover period, check that these Actual readings were used on that bill as the final readings for the old meter.

Reed_Richards

The big problem your mother has is that she has a total debit of £540.50 which needs to be paid off. The likely cause of this debit balance is that BG finally got a reading from her old meter when it was removed and found that they had been underestimating her usage. You need to negotiate with BG a direct debit payment that will pay off this debt over a reasonable period of time, perhaps over two years. But please base your negotiation on her actual usage as shown on the meter, not estimates. And if your mother really is a high user of electricity, you need to find out why.

Robin9

@dburton When the old meter was changed there would have been a sticker left on the meter - if the change goes back a long way that might be a card. On that sticker there will have been the old meter readings and the new (usually 00000.0)

Have you a bill from that time showing the meter change with those readings .

When was the meter changed - its possible the change didn't get onto the database - check the meter serial number against the latest bill

QrizB

When was the meter changed - its possible the change didn't get onto the database - check the meter serial number against the latest bill

The meter serial numbers on the bills are different. The newer meter serial begins 24 which is consistent with a 2024-manufactured smart meter. Also the newest bills have estimated meter readings that are low enough to suggest they started at zero fairly recently.

dburton

many thanks for all your help

I have spoken to BG and the person I spoke to seems to think the day night are the wrong way as the storage heater use more kWh

EssexHebridean

You still need to ensure that they are given the actual readings though - and also flag up to them that there is a no-communicating smart meter that needs attention!