18 months ago British Gas installed smart metres for gas and electric. Shortly after that I switched energy supplier to a different company. This company it transpired could not read the metres installed by BG, went through long protracted process providing them with serial numbers, photos, engineer coming out to resolve this. Naively thought this was sorted and they could read the metres remotely (whole point of smart metres). Kept paying my direct debit.
A year on finally got round to checking my account online (yes I know should have done this), the gas bill is 1,000 in arrears, nobody has contacted me during this period to say my DD was insufficient. And they can't read my metre all my bills are based on estimated readings.
Contacted supplier to say why has this happened, and they have told me, they can't read the smart metres only the supplier who installs these (BG) can take remote readings from smart metre it operates as a normal metre for them. But I can't take a reading, there is no reading on the display. So unless they send someone out I have to rely on estimated reading.
They are making out this is my fault, I should have been checking my bills online....but they still can't read my metre....I can't read my metre so is this my fault?
I am so angry about this, as spent loads of time last year speaking to them and BG to get this all sorted and am back to square one but with a huge bill that I now owe (although that is based on estimate to could be more could be less).
How is it ok for an energy supplier to install a metre that only they can read, the whole point is that you are supposed to be able to use any energy supplier. Not sure what to do about this, engineer coming out to read my metre but I don't know how he is going to read it as there is nothing on the display....