I’ve done a terrible thing… what to do now

[Odetojoy]

Hi,

about 9 months ago I was really struggling financially. My dad had just died and I was in a very bad place.

I knew that I hadn’t been paying enough for my electricity and I was being badgered for a meter reading. Stupidly I submitted a lower reading. I’m ashamed of this and know it’s illegal.

im now in a better position and want to sort this. Do I just enter the actual reading now? I’m also considering just calling them up and being totally honest about what I did.

what should I do? Please don’t judge me - I know how bad this is

You will probably be paying more for the electricity, prices are likely to be higher than when you used the electricity.

As you will have already suffered a financial penalty why would they bother reporting you?

Zilch. Just put the correct reading in and leave it. They’ll send you a current bill, pay it, move on.

Let's face it, if you put a reading in that was wrong, and in their favour, they would not be quick to correct it. It's about 99% done by a computer - and even anomalies don't get spotted in the same way as by a human.

But again, if you get rebilled from your now accurate reading, that is the time to call them up to arrange to pay, over time if you need to.... and, as I said (British Gas) there is the YouPay WePay scheme, which is brilliant, and not widely known about.

You're totally overthinking it, just the way that basically honest people do if they've had a mad moment and done something dishonest. They just want you to pay for what you've used. Enter the correct reading, and pay what you owe. That's it.

No actual human being sees these numbers, or compares them, or thinks about it in any way. If they query it - which they won't - you give them a new reading which will be slightly higher than the one you've just given them. If they say you seem to have used loooooads since the reading you gave - which they also won't - you shrug. What can you do? You can't travel back in time and check that old reading, can you?

It might trigger the system to send you a meter reader to make sure your reading isn't wildly wrong, but the meter reader won't know that's why they are being sent, or have access to your previous readings (I used to read meters).

British Gas once billed me for 3 years worth of gas and electricity in one monthly statement, minus about two years worth of direct debits. I had to go through all the statements, add up the bills and direct debits, and then phone them up to explain that they seemed to have lost all memory of about twelve payments that had been made, and I couldn't possibly owe them £1400. That was fun 😂

Just enter the correct reading. People make mistakes all the time. You will get a correct bill, in my experience about 35 seconds after you put the metre reading in, then either pay or part pay and set up, amend your DD. Then stop worrying about it. You were in difficulty circumstances and sometimes we just do the things we need to do in the moment.

Yes please don’t worry about this. All that happens is they get their money a little later. You haven’t stolen anything, you’re still paying it.

People probably misread their meters often. It's not like you're trying to get out of paying indefinitely. Enter the new correct reading, and if the new payment is going to be an excessive amount, you'll just have to pay what you can in installments. We actually did this once by mistake, literally missed a digit off, so it looked like we used ££££s less than we had, and they credited our account thinking we'd been overcharged the year before 😂 we were so confused as knew we shouldnt be in so much credit, checked the meter and realised there was some dirt covering the last digit on the meter. We just submitted a new reading once we'd realised the mistake and they corrected what we owed their end. Don't worry op.

Sorry - deleted

Zero. They can’t prove you didn’t make a mistake. All they’ll care about is that you pay.

You need to start a new thread.

prob best to start a new thread, lovey x

Stick to your story and do not move from it.
No explanation of any sort other than, "sorry, it was a mistake".

Absolutely say nothing else.

I'm glad things are getting better for you, OP.

Don't panic. Resist your temptation to tell them the 'story'. Instead, just simply submit the current, correct reading. They will then bill you based on this.

They really will not care if you pay, especially if you pay in full! If this happens again, give them a call and ask for a payment plan. Many people do this.

Think of this another way - lots of people leave properties vacant for months, before returning - so, they will have low periods followed by a high reading.

And don't do it again! 😏

@Odetojoy I've worked in energy for years. It's not illegal. Just give the actual read, nothing will flag up as it'll be higher than the incorrect read you gave.
You don't have to pay it in one go if you can't, you can ask for a payment plan. And it's a licence condition for the supplier to agree to a reasonable payment agreement.

Don’t worry OP, that’s not a terrible thing. Submit the reading, pay the bill off and start afresh. I did the same once unintentionally - I have no idea what I was thinking at the time but put numbers in wrong (shortly after giving birth is my only excuse). It got sorted without any issue.

I used to work for an energy company and dealt with the meter readings.

It was normal to receive incorrect meter readings. Even the official meter readers often got them wrong. We could just correct them or discard them on our system.

Receiving a higher than expected meter reading may trigger something in their system as it looks unusual. For us, this was just to manually confirm that it was correct before we billed the customer. If we weren't sure we'd ask for a photo of the meter read.

Please don't worry about this. You have the money to pay it off so it isn't a problem.
Submit the meter reading. Pay it off.
That's it. Don't tell them you deliberately submitted a lower one the next time.
They might query this new meeting reading if there's a massive jump in usage - ie. have you read it correctly.
Watch any estimated bills next year because they will use this year's usage to estimate so it will be a lot higher than your actual usage. You can ask them to lower the estimate if it's too high.

If you’re paying the bill, they honestly won’t care. You’ll be fine OP.

Oh bless you. People give wrong meter readings for all sorts of readings. For ages my meter was wrong and I was sent bills for £2000! In the end, EDF sorted it (after much complaining from me), and I owed £100 :-).

Please don't worry or even think more about it. Just submit your current reading and it will be OK.

Good luck, I hope things have generally settled for you now.

This is an absolute non issue.

Enter the correct amount now, pay your bill, forget about it.

Absolutely 0.

Legally, the power company has to read your meter at least once every 2 years, and there is no legal obligation for you to submit a reading in between (there may a contractual one but that's a different matter and largely irrelevant).

Absolutely worst case scenario - utility company cancels your contract and sends you a final bill. You get a new provider very easily. You will not be without power for any period of time.

Mist likely scenario (so likely I'd bet a large sum on it) - you submit current accurate reading, your bill is adjusted to reflect this, you pay it.

I cannot for the life of me think they’ll contact the police at all

youre going to pay it? Like don’t worry. Just pay it job done

Don't explain anything to anyone! Enter the new reading and take it from there - under no circs come out with 'I lied'. They lie to us all the time, they overcharge us all the time, they rip people off to pay their shareholders - you owe them money, but you don't owe them fuck all in terms of moral explanations.

They won't report you. Our energy company forgot to update our gass readings properly after installing our smart meter. When they finialy did we owed them about £800, DH said sod that we aren't paying that in one go and just upped our DD to pay it off over six months. The energy company never actually said anything to us.

Just put in the correct meter reading and pay it off. I mean they will have noticed at some point as they still read meters, but I'm sure as a one off they would just assume its an error.

They aren’t going to care as long as it gets paid. Not a chance in hell of them ‘reporting’ it.