Smart meter error

abbiecat4

Hi first time posting so hope this is ok.

My daughter was with British gas for electric and gas in her previous home( moved out in feb this year)

Smart meter fitted for electric.

Several times over a 2 year period advised owed over £1000 and when contacted them always resolved ? And advised their error .

At the time of leaving the house she provided all meter readings. She has now received a bill for over 2K. She is obviously challenging this .There is lots of misinformation from British gas such as

• We never had any meter readings for 2 years( never been advised of this in 2 years and previous bills have indicated actual readings)
• An engineer visited and read the meter..never happened!
• On her app, limited account information available , no meter readings and advised not available to her

We have obviously escalated this with no resolution as yet. My question is what are our next steps ?

-Legal advice ? Does Martyn Lewis have any template to challenge such things

-ombudsman?

+ Can they pass debt to debt collection when case is open and being disputed

Sorry alot of information?!! But so frustrating

Many thanks to anyone with constructive advise

anniecave

Was the gas bill on a completely different account with separate payment details? Or was it a combined account for both gas and electric (just with a smart meter for one and not the other)? What payments were made against the disputed energy account over the 2 year period? Does she have proof of the payments?

Could have been a working meter but that never was connected to the DCC to work as smart, hence the app didn't work… maybe…

Has she already complained to British Gas? What have they said?

FrugaiMacDugal

Does she have photies of final meter readings?

Reed_Richards

I could be wrong but it seems to me that in the last year or so there have been more posts about incorrect billing from BG than from all the other supply companies put together. Try a search on "BG billing" and you will see what I mean.

QrizB

@MWT can we possibly save this thread for the OPs problem and not get distracted by RelievedSheff who has their own thread?

@abbiecat4 welcome to the forum.

I have a few questions which will help us all understand what's going on here.

My daughter was with British gas for electric and gas in her previous home( moved out in feb this year)

Had she been with BG for many years? Had she previously been receiving accurate bills from BG with correct meter readings?

Or had she switched to BG relatively recently and these problems have existed ever since she switched?

Smart meter fitted for electric.

If she also had gas, was that via a traditional meter?

At the time of leaving the house she provided all meter readings.

Does her final bill use the meter readings she supplied? Or are they different?

We never had any meter readings for 2 years

Did your daughter provide meter readings during this period? Were they used by BG? Do you still have records of these readings?

While you might expect a smart electricity meter to send readings, a traditional gas meter will rely on your daughter reading it and sending those readings through to BG.

On her app, limited account information available

Can she log on to her account on BGs website? Are her bills for the past two years available there?

My question is what are our next steps ?

Are you claiming that the final bill is wrong? Or is it correct, but you think back-billing hasn't been applied correctly?

Can you provide more detail of the bills received over the past two years, the meter readings used and the money charged/paid?

FreeBear

First step, download the bills so that you have a copy stored locally. Print them out if you can and put the in a folder.

Check each reading and make a note of the letter beside it - a for actual, e for estimate, and c for customer readings. That will give you some clue as to whether BG are making up the numbers as they go along.

Once you have actual numbers, come back and we can advise further.

Qyburn

Harking back to the tread title, what was the actual (or suspected) error with the smart meter?

Bigphil1474

Unlikely. BG do gas and electric as two separate accounts, and you have to switch between them on the app to see the readings and billing for each. We're with BG and I've no idea why they do it that way but they do.

Suspect it could be a problem with the readings not being sent from the gas meter (via the electric meter). We had similar issues at our old house. We were with Sainsburys energy at the time and we didn't get billed for gas for about 6 months. We ended up having to submit gas meter readings over the phone each month until they could get the online system to allow us to submit them online. Fortunately we made sure our monthly payment was enough to cover what we expected the gas and it all worked out in the end when we moved out.