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we are moving house and used to pay our gas bill every Quarter , we asked for the final bill and gave them a final reading, the total they gave was a mouth watering i£440 between dec and todays date previous bills which were estimated were £91 , the unhelpful bint at british gas said it was my fault for not giving meter readings and that they only come out every 5 years to check the meters , they didn't want to budge at all
has anyone else come up against this daylight robbery ?
And Bowles is onside, Swinburne has come rushing out of his goal , what can Bowles do here , onto the left foot no, on to the right foot
That’s there that’s two, and that’s Bowles
Brian Moore
With NPower and our winter quarterly bill has come in double any other winter bill we've ever had. I called them up to say there must be something wrong with the meter and then spent about half hour doing a verbal questionnaire. Then they told me it must be ... the cold winter/our boiler/the single gas fire, every fckin excuse they could come up with that didn't involve them.
Despite me telling them our consumption has been virtually the same as every winter and certainly not double the amount, they've since had the audacity to send me some shit energy efficiency report about low energy lighting and 'lifestyle change', the utter knts.
My plumber told me first step is call 0800 999 111 to check for gas leak. The bloke came down and said 'no leak, it hardly ever is, just the gas company trying to wriggle out of replacing our 1990 gas meter, which should not be relied on beyond it's first 20 years'. Said it's 99% certain it'll be a faulty meter, but they'll make me pay £100 to get it checked independently and I'll only get it back if it is leaking. Great.
Regards smart meters, avoid. In my first discussion with N Power I found out that despite the technology a smart meter wouldn't have been able to isolate the issue we had which made me wonder what the actual benefit would be to the consumer. The only real gain is for the power companies as apparently these things could be used in ways beyond actual gathering of gas use. Once they get us all on smart meters the information the gas companies will have at hand will enable them to manipulate price to an extent they'll be able to determine how much money they make before a financial year has even started. Don't think for a minute using less gas will somehow save you money in the long run, the price will be in their hands at the press of a button.
If you're using more than estimated readings then eventually it's going to catch up with you.
Best thing to do once you've moved is use some of the tariff comparison sites to find a cheap tariff and go on to monthly DD. It's a pain in the arse to do it every year (I've never stayed with the same provider since I started changing about four years ago) but I'm saving a few hundred a year in return.
In my last job at British Gas I worked on the Smart Meter programme for around five years. The software they bought to operate the system was the cheapest they could find, from a company in the States and was absolute tosh. I spent a huge amount of my time either correcting/improving their software or writing code to get around the issues it caused. At the time I left, nearly two years ago, they had installed one million smart meters. The meters work using a mobile phone GPRS sim card, they take a reading every 30 minutes and send all the readings for the day (48 - in theory) just after midnight every day to the computer system which then eventually provides that data to produce electric or gas bill. There were huge issues with both the meters - how many mobile phones do you know that can get a reliable signal where meters are typically installed such as locked away under the stairs or at the back of a garage? - and the computer systems. Loads of complaints from customers which were in the main hushed up. We had people with bills of over a million pounds etc. British Gas of course won't want you to know about that. At the time I packed in work I was certainly one of the most knowledgeable people in the country on the technicalities and drawbacks of the system - which I had continually pointed out to the management who naturally didn't want to know, they were very glad when I left. They are selling smart meters on the whole "green" premise, and telling you they will help you cut your bills, but the real reason they are being installed is to simply cut the costs of paying people to read the meters every three months. The only way to cut your energy bills is to use less energy or find a cheaper supplier. I could have had a smart meter right from the start, did I have one? No. Have I got one now in my house in the UK? No.
Been with octopus energy for past year and ovo before that. Easy to use, monthly direc debit based on my previous energy use, then get emailed once a month asking me to send them a reading of my meter. Takes 1 minute to do and means my bills are accurate and I have a good track of what energy I am using. If it looks like we are using more than the direct debit covers I’ll do a quick top up from my debit card. No more surprises and plenty of visibility for me as a customer.
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