our latest electricity bill....... hilarious!

[Ja1983]

Got the dreaded letter through this morning, didnt even look at the amount, just took a reading and rang them (scottish power - need i go on?) the initial estimate was for £465, for the quarter, based on 2 people in a 3 bed mid-terrace!

the revised reading was a tad higher, it took 10mins for me to get him to tell me the revised amount... kept saying its significantly higher than estimated.....







....advised i recheck the reading, so i did (same figure) and he still wouldnt give me an answer... asked to arrange for an engineer to come out and read it before they reissue the bill...






finally got him to give me a ball park figure, so that i could budget for a worst case, assuming the meter wasnt at fault etc.....







you ready for it?







£15,000!!! (yes - fifteen thousand pounds) :lol:



yep! `er indoors leaving lights on and hair straightners plugged in has apparently used more electricity than a football stadium* when i stopped laughing i said you`d best send an engineer out!

looking forward to next saturday!

will keep you updated, but i have suspected a faulty meter for some time now, after the £500 bill just before xmas, and another £250 after that (3/4 and 4/4 for last year - first one disputed after we found they had been estimating our bill for 18mths based on an empty house!)

apparently they will have it tested (free to us if there is a fault, if not this costs another £90) and will estimate the usage back to when we moved in, and refund the difference - might just pay for my new toy!!! :)

*quote - from scottish power guy!

[Disco Matt]

We have had more or less exactly the same experience with our gas supply. British Gas seem convinced that we used more gas last summer than we used in the previous year 

£3000 adrift, according to them. The meter is clearly wrong, as there is no way our gas usage could have shot up by that much. The main appliance running from it is the heating, and that's shut down in summer!

[Ja1983]

fingers crossed common sense will prevail, but i`ll keep updating this as it progresses!

[SteveGoodz]

nPower billed us for about £400 for the 40 days it took to move the account to British Gas when we moved in last May.

Bill is still in dispute as BG haven't managed to send the meter readings to nPower yet ~ exactly 12 months to the day later  :D

[V8MoneyPit]

If it's a faulty meter, it's nothing to do with Scottish Power. It will be Siemens, or someone like that who own the meter.

Our experience between work and home is that Scottish Power are pretty good. British Gas are by far the worst at just about anything (price, billing, efficiency, etc). NPower were pretty dreadfull too, when we were with them.

At home, we are now with Scottish Power. I enter meter readings and generate my own bills on line so I know exactly how much it will be.

The only issue I have with them is the way they take more money than necessary on the direct debit. Every so often I have to call them and they send out a cheque to clear the balance.

[Ja1983]

If it's a faulty meter, it's nothing to do with Scottish Power. It will be Siemens, or someone like that who own the meter.

my main with SP is the customer service... i told them that i suspected a fault with the meter last year, but they insisted the meters are very unlikely to be at fault........ quite frankly the customer services team (all bar one i`ve spoke to so far were rude, arrogent and generally very unhelpful!

still makes me laugh... £15,000!

[V8MoneyPit]

my main with SP is the customer service... i told them that i suspected a fault with the meter last year, but they insisted the meters are very unlikely to be at fault........ quite frankly the customer services team (all bar one i`ve spoke to so far were rude, arrogent and generally very unhelpful!

still makes me laugh... £15,000!

Unfortunately, that seems to be par for the course with 'Customer Services' these days  :roll: The moment a huge team of people are sat in front of phones for 8 hours a day, they seem to loose all sense of common courtesey and the personal touch. They are probably nice people normally, but are like pre programmed robots at work!!

I think you should frame that bill though  :lol:

[Disco Matt]

The main problem with most services seems to be an attitude of "the meter/our computer is never wrong". Callcentres don't help either as they enable the company to fend you off continually.

Virgin still owe my brother around £20 after he cancelled the broadband at his old flat two years ago. Despite repeated phone calls on his part he hasn't seen a penny of it, and I've read of several other similar cases. The only conclusion you can come to (based on the evidence) is that they expect people to give up and let them keep the money. Wonder how much of their profits that accounts for? It's not so much the amount as the principle of the thing - if he'd owed them so much as 50p they'd have had debt collectors after him, meanwhile he's expected to accept them refusing to refund money that isn't theirs.

[Rich325]

Hi.

This doesn't fix faulty meters, but you may be able to save money by switching suppliers.

Just start at  www.switchwise.com . Average savings £150 a year and some people can save up to £350 and even more if you change from paying bills to monthly direct debit.

Hey why not?   :dance:

[thermidorthelobster]

I once received a bill from Orange for 0.00p.

So I sent them a cheque for zero pounds and zero pence  :D

And they cut me off 

My father has an ongoing problem with Tiscali Broadband.  His broadband connection is down for about 50% of the week.  Tiscali are adamant that there's nothing wrong with their bit of it, because their computer says it's fine.  But the fact remains that his hardware has all been swapped out at least once, and there's still a fault.  It's a bit like the Land Rover dealers who will swear your truck is in perfect condition, because Testbook says nothing is wrong, even though there may actually be flames coming out of the truck as they're telling you it's fine.