Massive refund on energy bill- check your readings!

[Silverbook]

Posting here purely for traffic, in case this is useful for anybody.
For the last 18-20 months I've been using a smart meter for energy readings. My dd has increased a few times and is roughly double what it was originally. I didn't really look into this because of the energy price rises.

Last month I was request to send manual readings so I did. Then I was asked to send a photo of my meter which I did. This morning I checked my app- I was £2900 in credit. I phoned to check and the smart meter had been sending inaccurate readings so I'm getting a refund.

Don't relay on smart meters!

@Bluetrews25

We are meter refuseniks as well.

It’s not an overpayment, bulb are getting is ready to flip us over to octopus so that’s x amount of months bills.

Especially for gas readings, the meter may only update infrequently (perhaps every 12-24 hours), or the actual smart meter doesn’t communicate with the energy company so they estimate readings. However you can also get situations where the meter reads completely differently to what the energy company say it’s reporting to them - we had this and, had a meter reader come round, we could have ended up with a bill for over £1300 for the difference between their readings (lower) and what the meter actually said. We had a meter check with an engineer and sent numerous emails to them with videos of the meter but they still wouldn’t accept there was an issue until they eventually agreed to replace the meter and we’ve had no issues since!

Have you got a load of adjustments going through ?

I sent reading from the actual meters themselves.

We are with Octopus, they send an email asking for the reading, DH does it, they generally reply with bill within the hour.

We’ve just had this. We were with a utility provider who was taken over by OVO. Apparently they didn’t tell OVO we had a smart reader and they were still doing estimates. Not as much as yours but definitely handy and thankful.

When I called they were quite clear there there had been overpayments, not reflective of true readings and the amount was being returned to my account.

I'm not clear on what you're asking? Adjustments to the direct debit? It's increased maybe 4 times in 12 months

fair enough, bulb are pretty good at sorting problems, I’ll miss them.

My credit was showing at £1900 last week but it’s sorted itself out now. Someone on another thread was trying to claim back the “overpayment”.

Go into payments on the app, scroll down and can you see a ton of credits on the same day ?

like this.

No

Oooh, will be checking today! Thanks for the heads up!

This is useful OP because the same happens to my parents. Luckily my dad thought to himself that the readings were too high for what they were using and checked the readings and it was way off. They got back a few bob as well.

Yet another reason not to get a smart meter fitted.

We have had a smart meter for a lot of years now and so far we have never had an issue.

Most of the time you only hear about where people have had problems, but the majority of people with a smart meter don’t have issues and therefore don’t say anything. That is not to say that people don’t have issues, but they are in the minority.

We only periodically check our meter readings against the bill as our meters have working fine, submitting fine and our bills reflect usage. Having been in the same property for decades we do have a fair idea as to what we use seasonally and annually. Plus with a smart meter, we can see from the in house display and provider/third party apps as to what we are using. None of these are mandatory, but can be really helpful if you want to monitor usage/cut back usage.

@Ihavedogs crossed fingers as mine are being fitted today! They're giving me £100 for having them so.. seemed a good idea

We had similar and ended up nearly £700 in credit . Defo worth checking .

@Rebel2023 hopefully they will work out fine for you.

When we first had ours fitted we did keep our eyes on things for a while esp using the in house display (IHD) but then had it unplugged for years. We have more recently got it back out due to the mega price increases as we needed to cut back. It was really helpful to be able to see usage via the display and provider app and we have cut our electric usage significantly. Now we have established our new base line, we just go about life as normal with just a cursory glance to the IHD.

Lucky you! Enjoy the money 🤩

There's definitel disconnect between their bills though: I was nearly £800 in credit after six months and they wrote to me saying they wanted to increase my DD from £200 to £300. When I rung, they told me it was nonsense.

My bill for January was £194, and I was being careful. I have a smart meter but can’t check the meter readings at source as the meters are inaccessible and I’m a wheelchair user.

This happened to us, we checked 2x and asked for a paper receipt before we spent the money. Of course after a few months they realised it in fact was a mistake.
That was a roller coaster so please triple or quadruple check.
we also went round all our friends telling them to double check their meter! it was very embarrassing when they told us we owe it all back

These smart meters ain't all that from my experience .

Had a pre pay meter in my old house and wanted to change to a credit meter , only way was to fit a smart meter apparently . OK new meter fitted still pre paid , just needs switching over to credit type their end EDF tell me . OK do that then , sorry can't be done i'm told . 18 months later with me threatening to report them to the ombudsman it's switched

Turns out that some meters that were switched cut the power off and couldn't be persuaded to turn it on again !