To think this bill cannot be correct?

[MotherOfBleach]

I recieved a letter from my gas company telling me they owe me £500.

Which is excellent.

I'm beyond skint. I've already spent every penny and was looking forward to have a coat, more than one pair of pants etc.

They asked for an updated meter reading as they estimated my last one.

Their estimated reading was 1439.

My actual reading was 1435.

I filled in their online form and sat back and waited for my money.

They say I owe them £700

They've put my gas bill upto £76 per month which is almost three times what I was paying.

I feel sick. I cannot afford this. At all.

If is this correct I will need them to turn the gas supply off.

They've emailed asking for a photo of the meter, which I'm going send with a strongly worded email and request for my last actual meter reading.

We had one 2/3 months ago. There is no way I can have used that much gas in 2/3 months. We don't have enough house to use that much gas.

Either that meter reader did something wrong or there has been a mistake made with this bill.

Can't comment on gas, but 13p a unit for electricity is about the best you will get now. Unit prices went up 30% last year.

And do not go for a smart meter, it doesn't save anything. Just send a meter reading once a month.

@specialsubject

I agree that smart meters alone do not save you any money. What they do is allow you to understand your energy use and help you to make small changes that lead to savings. It is 100% how you use the technology.

If the issue with @MotherOfBleach Bills is under-estimation, do you not think that installing a smart meter and eliminating any estimated readings in future, will help to prevent any future unexpected bills?

I understand peoples sceptacism however having a smart meter myself I could not recommend them enough! No estimated bills with no effort on my part and I can see in real time how much I am using. What is the downside to this?

@Hobbs123 can anyone at the electric company see your real time usage too? So they can see when the house is empty? E.g. minimal consumption (fridge and lights) which remains steady may indicate no one is in the house?

There is a clock face! The meter has also moved up two numbers since I read it on Monday.

The cupboard is so dark it's very hard to see. I wrangled in a neighbour with a torch to help while I took the photo. I only saw the black numbers when I read it.

Is this good or bad? I'm so confused.

Excuse the messy cupboard. I have no money to have large waste collected so everything is just dumped in the cupboard.

@AnthonyPandy
Energy companies will only ever view this information when there is a need to discuss it with the customer e.g. a consumption dispute.

Trust me, the hoops that have to be jumped through just to view it when the customer asks, no one is going to be looking in what little down time they get from the day to day grind!

At a glance on an account it is just the readings used for your bills that are stored.

The Idea of capturing mulitple readings in a day is purely to allow the customer to view their usage patterns and make changes to help them save money. To set the meters to collect these reads we have to have the cutsomers consent; as a customer to have the right to request the meter is set to take reads through the day or only take daily or monthly readings.

@MotherOfBleach
Your meter looks fine. The reading of 1437 is correct.
You have an old Imperial meter. The energy company will use this photo to check their records are correct and you are being charged for an Imperial meter and on the correct meter serial number.
This will help them eliminate some of the more complex billing issues.

I wonder if it is that style of meter?
I used to live in a one-bed flat with storage heaters and a gas cooker. We had the same style meter as you.
We were with one of the bog standard commercial suppliers at the time and our annual expenditure on gas/electricity combined was £1300.
We moved to a bigger property - 3 bed, and changed supplier. We have gas central heating here and a gas cooker. We now pay £750 per year for gas & electricity. The meter is different and we're on a green tariff.

I seem to remember us having some similar issue (though with a lesser amount) when we were in the flat. In the end, we paid what they said we owed, and then they issued a refund of our overpayments, which meant that effectively, we'd only owed them about £150.

I had similar with British Gas years ago now. I was pre-paying, very long story short I went from being 'in credit' to something like £900 in debt. No one would answer the phone and I'd lose £10 of credit every time I rang and no one would ring me back.

In the end I got in touch with the energy ombudsman and they intervened on my behalf. Not before I'd paid around £600 of the bill on credit card though.

Unfortunately you have to give them 8 weeks to try to resolve any issues but here is the site anyway: www.ombudsman-services.org/sectors/energy/raising-a-company-complaint

Thanks Tazer.

I've had similar issues with British Gas and had to go through the ombudsman to get anywhere with them.

In my case they were trying to charge for me gas and electric for the entire building of 14 flats

Energy companies are assholes. All of them

I dont need a smart meter, I have a brain. I also have internet access so I can provide meter readings as often as I can.

With that brain and a science o level or two, i know what devices use most power.

I also switch supplier quite a lot - the smart meter tech is up to that.

What I don't have is mobile phone coverage....

....or proof reading - smart meter tech is NOT up to switching supplier.

With that brain and a science o level or two, i know what devices use most power

As do I and up until Christmas we had no central heating. It didn't work and my shitty LL kept tinkering with it instead of replacing it.

At one point he tinkered with it enough that it worked (woefully) for a week. I don't think I managed to spend £600 in a week. I could set fire to the entire house for less than that.

We heated the house by tumble drying towels. The house is small enough that the tumble dryer running makes a sufficient difference. The tumble dryer also does not run off gas.

That's an imperial meter- you can tell as it says ft2. We had an issue a couple if years ago - we have an imperial meter and they'd been charging us as if it was a metric one. They then tried to claim back thousands from the past 3 years. Eventually they agreed that they could only reclaim one year. Since then I think there was something in the news, and they weren't claiming past debt back?

Someone from SSE is looking into it for me.

They're still saying I owe them money, but they also can't understand how this is possible.

It seems some meter readings have been recorded in the wrong place and aren't showing up on my account where they should be.

She's going to try and track them all down for me.

They have refunded £30 to my bill to apologise for this
They've also kept the direct debit at £31 p/m whilst it's being investigated, which I am happier about and referred me to some kind of scheme they have for people on low incomes to help with fuel costs over winter.

We won't be using any fuel over the winter if this is correct. Discount or not we cannot afford this. We'll go back to using duvets

I'm with Scottish power. They took over £300 out my account once leaving me overdrawn. Said we owed £1500. Turned out to be completely wrong and they owed us. Took lots of phone calls though

@specialsubject
I dont dissagree that you and all the rest of us are capable of doing the job of a smart meter... we can all read a few numbers and phone/email/text it to our supplier. The smart meter simply offers this as a convenience.
I also agree that the technology is not capable of being transferred between supplier at the moment (although I imagine this will change).
A Smart meter is far from perfect for everyone but for people on a tigh budget it is a useful tool to help manage their energy. For people who find it difficult to read their own meter it allows them to have accurate bills. I simply dont feel it deserves to be poo poo'd as useless technology and I would recommend.

As for this instance, as budgeting has been mentioned, this is why I metioned it for @MotherOfBleach however this is an entirly individual decision :)

I hope that they get to the bottom of your bills @MotherOfBleach, I do agree there is definatly something wrong. @Ginmakesitallok is correct in saying that if this is a catch up bill due to an ongoing billing error, they can only bill you for the last 12 months of energy used, anything prior to this will have to be written off - This is known as Back Billing.

Good to hear they are looking into it for you.

What a strong reaction to smart meters specialsubject, if you dont want one don't get one but I think they have a lot of positives if only for the less well educated than you. If OP had one she maybe wouldn't have had the stress that she's currently having and would be more able to monitor when to have the heating on or what to switch off to at least keep warm.

Better education about power use has no downsides as far as I'm concerned.

Your meter looks like mine, which is old and confusing. I have been with British Gas for years and they offered me a better deal with their subsidiary Sainsburys. This is this years gas bills to date, produced quarterly showing gas and electricity cost separately but on one statement.
Gas
Readings Units. Kwh. Bill
30.10.16 was 7124
06.02.17 was 7277 153 4833. 158.47
05.05.17 was 7379. 102. 3222. 111.19

What I feel makes it difficult to understand the cost is the conversion of the units to kilowatt hours, and then the bill can be made up with a standing charge, the charge per kilowatt hour and VAT. You are given an average charge per kilowatt hour as a guide to your costs. If you divided the bill by the units you would see it works out at around £1 a unit.

You need to ask your supplier to send you a statement of your account showing all transactions set out as follows:

Date Bill Payments. Balance

This is for a 2/3 bedroom cottage in Cornwall with gas ch. It is understandable when customers find it difficult to calculate what they are using and to budget their bills

The posting has not allowed for the spaces I had left under each heading

Does your bill say your charged in ft or metres?

I bet their charging you metric for imperial readings, that gives you massive bills.

Energy companies are such cock wombles.

I had my 6 month council gas check yesterday that they do by law to check oven, fireplace and boiler and we spoke about smart meters as I said Eon keep sending me letters about changing to one.
His advice was to steer clear and he's on the trade! Said bills will actually be higher, if have a problem with the gas and they're called out to sort it that it might end up having to then be Eon that would need to do it due to the meter and could be left waiting for days and if bill isn't paid on time then they can just cut your gas supply off straight away through using it too.
He said he doesn't have one himself and had his gas company trying to tell him he needed one by law, but he knew this was incorrect being on the trade and he fought them and they ended up giving him a pay out of about £600!!
So I'm going to ignore the Eon request for smart meter!

I have a smart meter for both gas and electricity
I have no issues with it all
I have a 4 bed detached and my dd is £131 a month for combined gas and electricity

We have an electric smart meter and a gas meter like the OPs. We are retired, DH spends a lot of time in the house and feels the cold! Our combined bill with First Utility is £97 a month, for a three bedroomed semi.