Can My Power Meters Be Wrong?

[ganesh]

I know I like my house warm and we definitely use a lot of electricity, but my power bills (gas and electric) have inexplicably risen from £120 pm to £580 pm! This seems absurd, and it happened a few months ago and we only realised when we went overdrawn and looked at our standing orders. When we questioned it they just said they adjusted the standing orders to bring it more in line with our usage after the meter reading (and therefore) estimated usage, and that the reading was accurate (and we checked it is correct) Something is obviously wrong somewhere and they at least agree it is high for a 4 bed modern double-glazed bungalow. we persuaded them to come and check the meter in a couple of weeks, but can it actually be wrong? I'm sure we must be powering a nearby industrial estate using this much! It's crazy!

[Svejk]

you could cancel your DD's till this is sorted. It will make them get it sorted, quick. Its far too much to pay even if you had underpaid. They'll have to come to a more reasonable schedule of repayments.

[ganesh]

This weekend we will turn everything off and see if the meter is still going round!!!!

[ganesh]

Well at least they are going to come and check it and even they say it is unusually high. It is so much money and I know we should have noticed it sooner but I am very worried.

[jackthehat]

Most suppliers seem to work on a 'yearly' turnaround.

We're with British Gas and they talk about our 'annual fuel plan' or somesuch. If it looks like we are going to use more gas than our £ 40 pcm DD (gas only) they contact me to say they are putting it up. I always use the on-line facility, where I can view their predictions of our gas consumption, to re-adjust it back down to £ 40 pcm.......and find that it evens out over the summer/winter split.

We are with BG for our electricity and chose to have a pre-payment meter installed. The tarrifs foe these are sligtly higher than normal meters, but even so, the two of us pay about £10 pw for electricity.

[ganesh]

Yeah so you are spending roughly £80 pm on power which is more or less what I thought was average.

[jackthehat]

Correct.
We have a big house, and although there are only the two of us, we have a fair bit of electrical equipment.......

We used to have one of those American Wardrobe 'fridges but discovered that it gobbled up a huge amount of power.....our electricity consumption dropped by a third when we got rid of it, even though we got a smaller separate 'fridge and freezer to replace it!

[ganesh]

Yeah we have an American fridge but we've had that for the past 10 years!

[Misky]

We had the same sort of problem - the readings were correct but we had a tester meter instaled for a month by Npower, and our meter in the house was found to be running more than twice as fast as it should have been. The meter was eventually replaced and the payments were refunded to us from the last acceptable reading. Our payments are less than a quarter of what they wanted to put them up to. Good luck - it takes a while, but it's worthwhile keeping on at them.

[factor-fiction]

Forget for a minute what you were paying and what they are asking you to pay now. Look at the bills over a period of ideally a full year, using actual readings not estimates, and see how much they are charging for that full year. if they are saying you used £over 4000 worth then that can't be right. If they are saying you have been underpaying and need to pay £580 a month for a limited period- say the rest of this year, then that could be right.
Have you had a bill setting out the calculations?
Ove rwhat period do they want £580 a month?

[ganesh]

Misky- that's just what I was hoping I would hear! Hopefully npower will do the same for us because I'm not prepared to think that our consumption has rocketed like this, and we have to pursue it. Thanks for the glimmer of hope!

[Old_Geezer]

Not going to hurt to insist on a check.

If you can not agree then there is always the ombudsman. (Although they are supposed to be independent rather than fighting your case.)

[ganesh]

they will have been taking £580 for 5 months , and we still owe them money. We HAVE paid£4500 in the last year, so I am convinced something is wrong.

[Misky]

Ganesh, hopefully when they come out to see you in the next couple of weeks it'll be to leave a meter check. They might try to charge you for this service but we just told them we would only pay if the meter was not found to be faulty. Good luck - if this is the problem, at least you'll get a wadge of cash back in a few months!

[ganesh]

They don't give a reading every month factor, so I cant do that, all I know is their latest reading is accurate, they have taken that amount from us in the year to date, we were only here a few months before that and we were paying £120. We could not have underpaid THAT MUCH and we are still 'in debit' and they are not changing the d/d.

[diddlydo]

We pay a DD of £120 per month for dual tariff - that's a 4-bedroom house and we have the heating on all day in winter.

[factor-fiction]

Yes, if you've paid £4500 in the last year and they say you still owe money something is definitely wrong.
I misunderstood your initial post and assumed that it had only recently gone up from £120 to £580pm, but you ust have been paying teh higher rate for

[boxtops]

Ganesh, get them out, we are in a four storey town house and my DDs are only £120 pm....

They should send you statements each quarter (paper or online) and if your usage looks wrong, that's when they tell you that they will be putting up your monthly payments. They must have done this, they can't NOT tell you.

[ganesh]

Yeah boxtops they are coming out next week, I think they send details every quarter but we missed the last one 'somehow' and have only realised the payments, my bad, I know! We're going to look at it all this week-end and see exactly when it all 'went wrong'.

[jackthehat]

We had our 'fridge/freezer for about 10 years, too........we noticed a distinct increase in our consumption towards the point where we got rid of it.

Have a look at how fast your meter is operating, and then switch the appliance off and have a look at how fast your meter operates then.....this is what prompted us to dispose of it.

[boxtops]

we're with edf for electricity, and they gave us a free ecometer, so we can see exactly how much we are using without having to go and check the meter itself. It's a good device - if it goes yellow or red, we think "what's on?!"