Dead Gas Meter

Joes_Dad

In February when we had the cold snap we woke to find the gas boiler flashing with an error light. I tried to reset the boiler a couple of times but no joy so thinking the boiler was faulty I called the heating engineer but had to wait until the following day before they could fit us in.

Once the engineer arrived there was a bit of head scratching while he went through the fault finding process and in the end came to the conclusion the gas meter wasn’t supplying gas and told me to call British Gas and report a faulty meter.

British Gas arrived within the hour to replace the meter and heating was restored but I am left with a £95 bill from the heating engineer. I used British Gas online chat to complain and ask them to pay the £95 but they gave me a number to call but when I they didn’t want to know.

Is there anything I can do to get the money back?

MWT

It sounds like BG responded quickly and fixed the problem, not sure you can expect anything more than that from them…

WiserMiser

Oh, the joys of being cut off by a wonderful modern smart gas meter, with a battery failing because it's too cold? 🥶

luci

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6662390/dead-gas-meter

The heating engineer visited and identified the problem, so he should be paid IMO. If you had called BG and reported that your boiler wasn't working, you would likely have had a higher bill for the inspection and an "engineer" that didn't identify the problem.

Neil_Jones

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6662390/dead-gas-meter

Well if you have a gas oven or a gas fire (or gas something else) you could have verified where the problem was without needing to call the engineer, as the same meter problem would have stopped those working too, assuming you have such appliances.

The supplier is only responsible up and including the meter. Anything after that is your responsibility. As the boiler was not faulty and you've called somebody out to see to it, why should the supplier pay for that? Its akin to a water leak on a water pipe, getting somebody out to fix it and then trying to claim the water supplier is responsible when it was on your property.

Pay the £95 yourself and consider the matter closed.

SAC2334

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81948074#Comment_81948074

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81947910#Comment_81947910

More likely battery died .The batteries in both gas smart meters and older prepayment meters can last as little as 2 years in some cases .Ten years is average .Smart meters are supposed to alert the supplier but I m not sure they do given the number of dead gas meters I used to find on the job .

MWT

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81949563#Comment_81949563

Seems to be much less common with SMETS2 than with the previous generation, but if this is the case it should have been trivial to identify the meter was dead before calling a gas 'engineer'..

Ectophile

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81949588#Comment_81949588

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

If a gas boiler is flashing an error code, most people would think it's a fault on the boiler, not that they have no gas.

MWT

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81949681#Comment_81949681

The cost of calling in someone to look at it would motivate me to at least look at the meter first.

Not doing that and then expecting someone else to pay for that lapse is where this gets unreasonable.

Joes_Dad

Thank you for the comments and advice but the only gas appliance we have is the boiler as everything else is electric so no way to check the gas meter is or in this instance not supplying gas was to disconnect the meter from the main inlet which is what the gas engineer did as he is qualified to do that and proved the meter was faulty other than that how would the homeowner prove the meter was faulty or not?

ElwoodBlues

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81949563#Comment_81949563

So when smart gas meters run out of battery they cut off the gas? My friend had her gas meter go faulty - the display was blank, wouldn't come on by pressing the button, meter wasn't sending any readings anywhere, and no manual reading was possible due to blank display. But the gas kept flowing. Friend reported it as faulty to her supplier about half a dozen times. Each time they declined to believe her, and they asked her to send a video of the meter. She did this about 5 times and every time they lost the video. Eventually they agreed to replace the meter, but friend had a lot of free gas out of it.

My parents have the best smart gas meter though - every winter when the weather gets cold, the meter stops counting. Bloody brilliant - as soon as they start using their gas central heating the meter stops moving, right though til spring! They reported it to the supplier multiple times, but every time the supplier said "no, it's fine, we're getting readings coming through, it's all good". Obviously it wasn't, but free gas all winter even after repeatedly reporting the problem is a bonus. They've changed supplier a couple of times whilst this has happened (at least for the last 4 winters), reported the problem to all of them, but none of the suppliers accept that there's an issue, even though the usage pattern must look very odd - low usage though spring, summer and autumn, and then zero usage during the winter.

It's comical really, how much suppliers must be losing to duff meters.