British Gas bill for £900 and saying I used 3000kwh in 1.5 months!

[RumHam]

We were switched to British Gas a couple of years ago after our old electric company went bust. We usually pay around £200 odd every quarter for our electric. We just got a bill through for £900 which has used up my £600 credit and left me in -£300 arrears.

I will include the numbers for the last few bills for context. They are saying our use has jumped from around 500kwh to 3595! It's impossible we have used approximately half a year's worth of energy in that time! None of our energy habits have changed and we have no new appliances. The only change is that we have been moved to the new BG billing system. We were moved in Sept 2024 and apparently we started to use £150 worth of electricity in one week on September 22nd. Then the rest was from 1st Oct to 14th Nov.

Here are the numbers

29th Nov 2022 - 25th March 2023
kWh = 600
Cost = £297.33

26th March - 23rd June 2023
kWh = 395
Cost = £192.61

24th June - 23rd Sept 2023
kWh = 376
Cost = £173.26

24th Sept - 23rd Dec 2023
kWh = 530
Cost = £203.74

24th Dec 2023 - 23rd March 2024
kWh = 546
Cost = 213.50

24th March 2024 - 23rd June 2024
kWh = 426
Cost = £164.60

23rd June - 21st Sept 2024
kWh = 364
Cost = £140.05

22nd Sept - 14th Nov 2024
kWh = 3595
Cost = £887.17

Meter reading
Sept 2024 - 0018313
Nov 2024 - 0021343
Now Dec 2024 - 0024785

My smart meter and the BG website say we are using around 13kwh a day and spending £3-5 on electric which seems right. Where did 3595 come from?! We've contacted BG. One caller said it was definitely an error and will be fixed within a week and another said they can't be sure if it's an error and we've to keep taking readings and call them back in a week and they'll get an engineer to check the meter but it's very rarely a faulty meter apparently. We asked if it could have anything to do with the switch over to the new billing system as we've heard some stories but they said it's doubtful.

I'm worried sick. I can't sleep or eat over worrying about this. I've never had this kind of problem before.Thank you in advance for any advice you can offer.

Thank you everyone for your replies. I really appreciate every single one and will go through them all and reply soon. I'm in such a state over this bill.

I suffer badly with MH conditions and this has just been the cherry on the cake of a bad MH time and then for it to happen just before Christmas, I feel absolutely sick.

I'm dreading using an electricity at all and been eating snacks so I can cut down on the cooker usage. I know it's silly, I was already in a bad place before all of this and now it's consumed pretty much every thought I have. I've got an emergency CPN appt on Thursday and my hubby and mum are great supports.

There would never have been a good time for this to happen but why do things like this always seem to happen around Christmas time?!

Thanks again everyone

While I look through old bills, we have taken readings multiple times over the last 24 hours if that is of any use?

I'll add them just to see if they look out of the ordinary to anyone. I'm a noob when it comes to all of this and my brain is just in crisis mode and can't compute all the numbers

16/12/2024

8:36am - 24777.9 kwh

7:46pm - 24784.3 kWh

11:42pm - 24786.5 kWh

17/12/2024

4:13am - 24789.4 kWh

10:26am - 24782.5 kWh

*Apologies, last figure should be 24792.5

A friend had this with EDF - faulty meter. For 2 years he reported a faulty electric meter to EDF. Each time they dismissed him. He had CT Clamps installed and proved their meter was recording more electric than being used. Had to go to ombudsnan to prove it.

BTW Octopus are far better than BG.

I was with British gas and my smart meter wasn't sending the correct info to them.. noone told me so I was paying bills of 90 a month thinking these were based on accurate figures then got hit with a huge bill when I submitted a reading myself as I'd be underpaying by 90. Your 200 per quarter is really low so I am curious if similar could have happened.
I complain.. they offered 100 off. I took it to the ombudsman and got most of it wiped out. They made me send readings 1 week apart and calculated a refund on that. I left British gas after. Useless company

I was wondering that - or whether there has been a mix-up with meter numbers as I’ve had meter-cross issues with every single flat I’ve lived in

Tbh that sounds exactly what has happened to me! Our meter seems to be accurate atm and saying we are using 14kwh per day and use around 400 a month but in our old bills it would say we used anywhere from 300-600 kWh over 3 months so I think they have been getting low readings from the meter for a while and now it's catching up. We paid similar prices in our old flat 5 years ago and we keep up to date with the once or twice meter readings that they themselves come out to do so we assumed that was accurate especially as smart meters are meant to relay to them every half hour, I think.

*One or twice a year meter readings. Definitely been checked more than just once or twice since we moved in five years ago lol

I was wondering that too about the serial number on my smart meter matching up to my bills and it does. Matches perfectly. I think it's either an error from switching to the new billing system or I've been under billed for a while and it's catching up now. All my bills were estimates despite having a smart meter all this time and having the meter checks done by them. I never even clicked until this happened. I just read the number and paid. I've learned a lot from this now and will be watching everything like a hawk now

Hi OP, there was a news story a few months ago re. customers being billed incorrectly after being moved to the new British Gas platform:

https://www.itv.com/news/2024-09-04/new-british-gas-billing-system-leaves-angry-customers-with-multiple-bills-a-day

Would it be worth reaching out to the ITV News team?

I've downloaded the Loop energy app and synced up my meter to it. It is accurate to what I'm getting on the BG website. I could see my usage for the months they said I used 3000+ kWh and no, we didn't. It an average month and a half of 400+kWh so I think maybe we had been under billed for a while and that's it been straightened out now and that £900 was a back bill. Still waiting on confirmation from BG, though but it seems to be adding up to that.

Ideally you should be checking your meter reading matches your bills every month. Sounds like a catch-up bill.

I had a similar situation and I pointed out that I was in a tiny flat with hardly any electrical appliances. I suspected one of the other flats was tampering with the meters. I didn't pay it but it was a nightmare at the time.

How far in arrears do you think they are billing you? If it is more than 12 months they can't.
Even if it is a legitimate bill you should be able to negotiate payment terms at the very least.

Yes, they can only backbill up to a year. We were underpaying because of their incompetence, I did tell them several times, they did fix it within the year, just. Our debit amount was about £700 shortfall and we are paying it over the next year in higher monthly direct debits rather than a lump sum

Is this an input error (by someone at BG)?
Should 0024785 be 0021785?
If they've said there's issue then hopefully they'll fix it soon!
We are electric only and our readings definitely increase in winter time but not by that much!

I agree Octopus are great much better than British gas.

I looked at other companies and the only one that may be worth moving to is Octopus, the others looked equally incompetent as BG

If it's not one thing it's another!

On our old contract with the old company that went bust, we had a duel fuel plan so paid for gas and leccy on the one bill. We've just realised that while switching to BG, we didn't switch our gas over to them either! Hubby thought it was for both when he switched. He never looks at bill breakdowns, just the price so assumed it was for both. I've just looked at the bills and wondered how he never noticed it when the only gas mentioned on the page was the BG name!!! So for 2 years, we've not paid for gas but clearly been using it and had gas readings done.

He's calling up tomorrow to deal with that. He's kicking himself now and said it happened during the pandemic and when loved ones died and he just never read into anything deep enough when we got switched. I'm fuming but at least he's admitted his part of it and it's my fault too, we both live in the house and should be just as responsible as each other for things like this. I'm angry at myself too. Absolutely dreading the bill of what that will be but needs must. Hubby is a Scrooge with heating so hopefully it won't be too bad lol.

Least we've found out everything now. In an odd way, it's a relief despite a huge bill probably coming our way lol

It's really easy not to look at utility bills now. Our gas and electric are online, so I don't really look at them. Our water bill is twice a year by post and I wouldn't normally pay attention. But we got a bumper bill a few weeks ago. The layout of the bills is weird as it doesn't have the brought forward amount from the previous bill, so it wasn't easy to tell that it was wrong. I think that's deliberate. Our charges for 6 months had been added on twice. The first time I called them, the woman in the call centre refused to believe that their system could he wrong and wanged on about leaks. They then sent me a "how did we do" survey, which got a "terribly" response from me. To give them credit, I got a call back from someone else, who walked me through our last few bills, thinking I'd say, "oh yes, I didn't understand your stupid billing format". But then he could see we'd been charged twice and he sorted it out. No idea if that meant other people had also been charged twice, as system errors aren't usually a one-off.

I should probably learn a lesson to check all of our utility bills.