Electricity Meter Increased by 5000kwh
Discussion
I had a similar issue a few years ago, between meter readings (3 months) my reading jumped by 20000 KWH, this was a digital meter. Getting this sorted with the electricity company (EoN) took months. Initially they claimed I must have used the electricity and had to pay.
Strangely, all of the bills previous to this one worked out at approximately 20-25KW/H per day, and following the reading the meter continued to read 20-25 KW/H per day (We read the meter EVERY DAY for a couple of months). The Electricity board even installed a second "check meter" in the supply after the first one, and this read almost exactly the same as the original over a 2-3 month period.
Eventually (6 months later) one of the technical guys at Eon did some calcs and worked out that in order to achieve such a reading we would have had to use approx 40amps of continuous power throughout the whole period between the two readings, and this would have been near impossible as the largest breaker we have in the fuse board is 32amps and the likelihood of 2 devices sucking that much power was not really feasible.
Eventually they dropped my usage by 24999 KW/H and wrote the bill off. They based the refund on calculated daily usage both before and after this bill. It did take almost 8 months to get this sorted out though, and that consisted of regular phone calls / technical visits and meter swaps. On numerous occasions we were threatened with disconnection and legal action for an unpaid bill and we had to tand our ground.
Strangely, all of the bills previous to this one worked out at approximately 20-25KW/H per day, and following the reading the meter continued to read 20-25 KW/H per day (We read the meter EVERY DAY for a couple of months). The Electricity board even installed a second "check meter" in the supply after the first one, and this read almost exactly the same as the original over a 2-3 month period.
Eventually (6 months later) one of the technical guys at Eon did some calcs and worked out that in order to achieve such a reading we would have had to use approx 40amps of continuous power throughout the whole period between the two readings, and this would have been near impossible as the largest breaker we have in the fuse board is 32amps and the likelihood of 2 devices sucking that much power was not really feasible.
Eventually they dropped my usage by 24999 KW/H and wrote the bill off. They based the refund on calculated daily usage both before and after this bill. It did take almost 8 months to get this sorted out though, and that consisted of regular phone calls / technical visits and meter swaps. On numerous occasions we were threatened with disconnection and legal action for an unpaid bill and we had to tand our ground.
KaiserDahms said:
After telling the company that I won't pay that bill and that I want to raise a complaint they've now cleared the bill and are going to install a new meter. They'll work out the average usage from what I've provided and bill me that.
Drop your usage slightly (turn off lights etc when not in use) and hopefully they'll bill you less. Generally speaking the person calculating it doesn't care less and will happily manually bill less for an easy life. I had this with EON a few years back but with Gas.
I then monitored the meter daily for a few weeks before we suddenly saw a massive spike, it was the equivalent of 5 months gas usage over night, they still tried to say I much have used it, but in the end they fitted a new meter and knocked £4000 off the bill.
You do wonder about these companies sometimes.
I then monitored the meter daily for a few weeks before we suddenly saw a massive spike, it was the equivalent of 5 months gas usage over night, they still tried to say I much have used it, but in the end they fitted a new meter and knocked £4000 off the bill.
You do wonder about these companies sometimes.
This is pretty interesting stuff, and not isolated incident as several people here have had the same "issue"...
Faulty meter or foul play by the companies? How many are they doing it to who dont notice and just pay the bills...
On one hand doesnt seem worth it, what if they got caught out.... but if the default answer is "install a new meter" the hundreds of thousands paying hundred of times their actual usage.....
And with smart meters.... jeebus... the opportunity for fraud is rife...
Ok, taking off my Christmas tinfoil hat now.
Faulty meter or foul play by the companies? How many are they doing it to who dont notice and just pay the bills...
On one hand doesnt seem worth it, what if they got caught out.... but if the default answer is "install a new meter" the hundreds of thousands paying hundred of times their actual usage.....
And with smart meters.... jeebus... the opportunity for fraud is rife...
Ok, taking off my Christmas tinfoil hat now.
ILoveMondeo said:
On one hand doesnt seem worth it, what if they got caught out....
When renovating we had to move the gas meter (& what a total rip off that was, got that bill reduced after telling them where to go! No wonder people move them illegally)). Thankfully I took a picture of the meter before Mr British Gas took it away. Fast forward a few months and a bill drops through the letter box claiming we own £75! I call them up & explain I have a picture of the meter with the last reading, we can't have used any gas as the picture clearly shows the meter on the ground disconnected! They didn't even ask for the picture & wrote the bill off. This only happened on the gas meter swap, electric was fine.(British Gas again). I bet in most cases they get away with it...Hi, an update on the situation. The power company have now change their mind about fitting a meter and charging an average of daily use. They are going to install a check meter and see if the meter is reading incorrectly or not. I have explained to them that it has read what I expect correctly since that spike however they are saying it's impossible to only use 2-4kwh a day and that the uk average is 20kwh and that I must have used an average of 53kwh a day. I have protested this and got a rather snotty reply back saying I must have been away when the meter readings were low and that the high readings were when I was living there...
A complaint has been logged and will be nearing the 40 day mark soon. The account details are in my landlords details so they're not going to pay and I'm not going to pay and the landlord is more than willing to take the company to small claims court as she's had problems with them in the past and found they usually give up before it goes that far.
I shall update you all on what happens when I hear back after they've inspected the check meter.
A complaint has been logged and will be nearing the 40 day mark soon. The account details are in my landlords details so they're not going to pay and I'm not going to pay and the landlord is more than willing to take the company to small claims court as she's had problems with them in the past and found they usually give up before it goes that far.
I shall update you all on what happens when I hear back after they've inspected the check meter.
KaiserDahms said:
...they are saying it's impossible to only use 2-4kwh a day and that the uk average is 20kwh and that I must have used an average of 53kwh a day.
I use between 7 and 14 per day: That's for a 4 bedroom house with energy saving bulbs, 3 full sized people, electric oven, only one TV but it is habitually left on all evening and a significant chunk of the weekend.Sheepshanks said:
OFGEM say the median figure is 9kWH per day.
Where did you get that figure? I've tried looking at ofgem and can't see it. One point that the energy company has suggested is that for the last decade the meter has been undereading the usage and for some reason it decided to pick up the unregistered usage. No real way to prove this of course as it's going back years and if the equipment was unreliable I of course should not suffer due to that.I checked the circuit breaker to see the what the fuses were. but soem seem very high so doubt the figures I have would indicate an amp usage higher than what the fuses could handle. Tried doing some maths to work out if the kwh usage would indicate a high amp figure that wouldn't be possible but I'm getting different figures all the time. Can someone explain how I could work it out if it's possible
Edited by KaiserDahms on Wednesday 10th February 21:21
KaiserDahms said:
Where did you get that figure? I've tried looking at ofgem and can't see it. One point that the energy company has suggested is that for the last decade the meter has been undereading the usage and for some reason it decided to pick up the unregistered usage. No real way to prove this of course as it's going back years and if the equipment was unreliable I of course should not suffer due to that.
I checked the circuit breaker to see the what the fuses were. but soem seem very high so doubt the figures I have would indicate an amp usage higher than what the fuses could handle. Tried doing some maths to work out if the kwh usage would indicate a high amp figure that wouldn't be possible but I'm getting different figures all the time. Can someone explain how I could work it out if it's possible
thats basically the biggest load of horsesI checked the circuit breaker to see the what the fuses were. but soem seem very high so doubt the figures I have would indicate an amp usage higher than what the fuses could handle. Tried doing some maths to work out if the kwh usage would indicate a high amp figure that wouldn't be possible but I'm getting different figures all the time. Can someone explain how I could work it out if it's possible
Edited by KaiserDahms on Wednesday 10th February 21:21
t I've ever heard from an electricity suppy co and believe you me that's saying something, as a sparky i've had to have some serious run-ins with a few distro co jokers looking to strike a customer up.a meter is basically a very simple device measuring current, a coil picks up a proportional fraction of the current you're drawing which powers a motor that turns the dials, they can go "out of calibration" and under/over read but they don't just decide one day to add a load of back charges!! That is physically not possible!!
Most probably a faulty meter and a dial's slipped or something, possibly been tampered with in the past but thats not your prob.
Edit
Do you have this is writing?
Edited by hairyben on Wednesday 10th February 22:30
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