I haven’t paid for any gas for 3 years. How to get out of it?

[Gastheif]

I know I have been unreasonable, looking for advice.
had a smart meter fitted 3 years ago since then and despite the company sending out meter readers all bills I have received for gas say £0 usage.
I want to get out of this situation, ideally without having to pay it back and before the price hikes mean that I may have a debt I can’t even afford, also before government help starts.
if I switch supplier, do you think this will fix itself?
WWYD?

The meter reading is zero.

It is possible to switch, I did last week

The OP unplugging the separate little smart meter display device they give you will not affect the functioning of the meter.

We didn't have ours plugged in for a bit when we were working out where to put it but I could still look up my usage in my account on the provider's website.

The shop analogy doesn’t make sense. How can you steal something that the company says is £0

Family members had this for well over a decade with a new build. They tried to sort it numerous times, keeping money aside and after about a year of this, gave up.

Once a gasman called to the door and they thought the time had come but turned out they were looking for a different house and needed directions.

The eventually sold the house to a new owner who was delighted with the information. No idea if it was ever sorted.

I have a flat I am renovating atm. I am familiar with electric key meters and card meters but never considered they did PAYG gas. Never ever seen it before.

I haven’t used any gas as the boiler was condemned on site.

I had a new boiler fitted and they came to test it only to be faced with a payg gas metre. I had a file with keys and paperwork the previous owners had left behind and I handed him a British Gas Card but that didn’t work.

i have tried and tried to contact BG but even going through the set up a new account either asks you for your account number or says it isn’t taking on new customers.

I have had to go down the route of saying I completed on the flat last week and they are sending me a new card out but no idea who they think is responsible for the daily standing charge that has been racking up on the meter.

As they won’t allow me to take ownership any earlier than the current day.

They turned ours back to zero for a few months. We got a goodbye email which wished us well in our new home. Then a welcome to your new home email when they turned it back on.

i have got to the point that I really can’t be bothered trying to sort it out any more.

All those who haven’t had this happen to you and think you just ring up and you get it all sorted I can tell you , if it happens again I won’t bother.
Life is too short to be arguing with someone that you are with their company and they insist you are not.

All that trying to do the right thing has brought me is a lot of stress and expense (outside of the bills)

It's still theft of a resource, regardless. You don't get a freebie because you didn't get caught on camera stealing a chocolate bar.

That said, I, too, have the same issue. I've had my meter basically not work since November, it just randomly stopped sending readings despite working for two years. The electricity I can report, because Bulb know the meter has issues but despite trying, cannot reboot it to work.

My gas provider, however, keep getting a reading of what I had used circa November 2021. And each reading is the same. I cannot even manually send in a reading, because the website says it differs too much from the last and is inadmissible. Then I go through the same process of getting some intern who says they'll look into it and refer up if they can't reboot the meter, after I send them a photo of the actual reading I can't input on their site.

Repeat that five or six times since.

Now I'm quite happy to just leave it be, given I haven't gotten anywhere, my IHDs don't register what I use and the smart meters are basically kaput.

Bank a sensible amount, keep quiet and if they work it out you owe a years worth of bills...which you'll have either put aside or you'll work out a payment plan on. I'd like to see a few small people have minor wins right now given everything that's going on. Don't stress, just be warm.

Well good luck to the supplier trying to bill you for anything nevermind 12 months worth. Put some money aside just in case and carry on as you are. They've sent someone to your house so they know they are supplying you.

I can well believe the stories people here are sharing about trying to sort out similar issues and getting nowhere.

My friend had this situation too, the house he purchased and lived in for 8 years was never charged one penny . He did raise it with his energy supplier to no avail and eventually gave up raising it as he was terrified of the bill. He was.scared to put the house on the market though when his family expanded hr sold the house, and was expecting a huge bill _ He has never received it and the new occupant is not being charged either . Its almost like the house does not exist or the meter is not hooked up somehow to provide readings.

Yep we also had this, though it was years ago now. Applied out payments but no charges were put against the account.

Only got it sorted when I told them I was switching supplier as they’d driven me to a breakdown over it all. They blamed their systems and gave me a hefty discount on what we owed.

I worked for an energy company for 7 years. The meter exchange details will not have updated correctly on your account on THEIR systems, you WILL BE ABLE to claim under the EU back billing code - lucky you!

You'd be even luckier if you were to turn a blind eye for as long as possible, they will only ever be able to bill you for 12 months, and every penny is a prisoner atm!

I should also mention DONT MOVE SUPPLIER as your account will flag and they will manually investigate and if they do happen to fix your account, tell them you worked away for 3out of the 12 months so the house was empty. They will adjust usage to reflect lesser amount 'used' and if they refuse, write a complaint. A manager will likely approve within hours!

They can't charge for more than 12 months back bill so long as it was their mistake...

www.ofgem.gov.uk/check-energy-back-billing-rules

I've lived in my new build.for 3 years and it was set up for eon, for some reason I've never been charged for gas either (seems to be a common issue). I am just leaving it until I move or get a bill. I read about the fact they can only bill you for 1 year and hoping by then the prices might start to fall. I really cannot find it in myself to feel bad with the ridiculous profits they are making currently

This happened to me altho not a smart metre not sure what metre it was. I did phone up plenty of times but they kept Insisting I was on pay as you go the fella came to read my metre every couple of months and I never heard anything I stopped phoning them an never payed anything I had 5 years of free gas.

I haven’t read the full thread, but PP are correct. From the point they work it out they can only bill you for 12 months. I would advise being ready to pay 12 months at any moment, but otherwise it is their problem - and I would certainly not alert them to this problem. In the meantime, enjoy a lovely warm house on them - and also courtesy of the rest of us, of course, but I am willing to contribute my few pennies for the enjoyment of knowing someone who got free heat and stuck it to the man (but don’t go crazy: even just 12 months can cost a lot). Be prepared for the moment they work it it out… And make sure they know that you know your rights. One year. That’s it.

(I know, I am not very moral…)

This happened to me but with electricity. The house did not pay any electric bill for 13 years in total. 10 years previous owners and 3 years me. I tried everything under the sun to sort it out and eventually after 3 years I got it sorted but we were moving and only had to pay from the day they discovered no payments had been made to the day we moved out which was 3 weeks.

A round to yours for winter!

I spoke to my supplier today and was again told an engineer will call me in five days and a ticket has been raised for this.

Someone then called me to say it won't be five days because, reasons, but I am on the list.

Then the same someone said that they can't give a timescale for the engineer calling me or for it to be repaired as there are currently no engineers for my area.

They said I could raise a complaint if I wanted to so I said yes, of course I want to complain.

They took my complaint details, raised rhe complaint, said there is no timescale for when it will be resolved and that it might take several months.

Then they told me that raising a complaint automatically cancels the call from the engineer.

Can I recall the complaint until after the engineer has been in touch? No, I cannot.

So now the engineer is cancelled and instead I have a complaint with an unspecified timescale.

Great.

Half an hour later I got an email asking me for manual meter readings. Sent these through and was then emailed to say that the complaint has been closed because I can just send them manual meter readings from now on, totally ignoring the fact that the issue with my meter is that it is not measuring consumption so my meter reading has been stuck on the exact same reading since 20-fucking-20.

So now I have no complaint, no engineer booked, and my supplier seems to think it is all resolved.

Oh, and they're reducing my direct debit by £80 based on my most recent meter readings

We had this.

They'd failed to register our meter when they upgraded it. We sent readings, they came and read it. But we never got billed. Took us ages to sort out (around a year after we realized). We didn't have to pay it back, wasn't even suggested we might.

Lucky people on here with non - functioning meters..
Like the meter equivalent of “ Winning the lottery”.

@cecilthehungryspider
See my previous post where npower charged me for TWO years.. poor innocent lad working there told me over the phone..

They tried that with us, we took it to tribunal and won.