Well so far the new meter does seem to be working correctly: It is set to R2 during the day and changes to R1 overnight. As the weather has been warmer we did not have any heaters on overnight but on a daytime test yesterday the heater I tried did not heat up at all so I will assume (at the moment) that the timer switch (this one is now built into the new meter, not a separate dial as before) is working correctly with our storage heaters so they do not engage until it changes to the R1 rate overnight.

I have been jotting down the the day and night readings the new meter has been giving so I will have something to compare when we do have the heaters running.

Regarding telling BG the heaters have been on all the time: I will have to see what they say when they revise the bills (I have already told them I had figured that fact out after discovering the fixed dial) but I would have thought that as all that extra peak hour usage was entirely down to a fault with the suppliers equipment and not our heaters themselves we should be in no way liable for the additional charge: Given how the heaters are designed to work when the suppliers equipment is working correctly we would have no idea there was a problem unless we turned one on for the first time in a while during the day (generally, you don't even bother until the late evening for that), then noticed it was heating up soon after. When turning one on at night as is normal, having it warmed up by the morning then just leaving it expecting it to work as it should, you would never know it was still taking up a charge during the day as well (not unless you monitor the meter readings regularly).

But as I said before, they have indicated they will be looking at past bills (when the meter and timer was last known to be working correctly) for the revisions. If they don't and do try to insist we have to pay for the additional usage the fault has caused, I will certainly take the matter further.

To MS Kelly,

I bet you are sick of reading these!

My advice, contrary to what someone else has suggested to you, is to try to play down the fact that your storage heaters have been on 24/7.

(If they think you have been using a lot of current during the peak time, they will feel more justified in charging you for it.)

Other than that, everyone else's advice has been good.

James

To MSKelly

Just a little word of advice, don’t let anyone confuse you over the time switch issue. Now, without seeing the electrical layout I am making an assumption here, but it sounds to me like you have a dual tariff meter and then an independent time switch for your storage heating.

Depending on the age of the metering equipment, the two are not necessarily directly connected for meter reading purposes. There could be an inbuilt timer in the meter itself which switches between the two readouts if all your electricity is charged at the lower rate during off peak hours.

The other separate timer with the 24 hour dial should switch on and off your storage heating. Now, it would appear that from what you have said, the separate time switch is stuck in the on position, hence your storage heaters working during the day too. It is possible that (and again I haven’t seen the installation) the separate time switch could be responsible for the changeover of the tariff reading, this again depends on the age of the installation.

I think you have mentioned it, but please be sure to have both the meter and time switch investigated.

With regard to the billing issue, if you have doubts over the accuracy of an estimated revised bill, you may wish to consider requesting deferring the bill until another twelve months have passed with the new metering equipment in place, this would give you an as reasonably accurate consumption figure as possible. If this was then compared with historical records an average usage could be determined.

Subject to exactly when the supply was changed to BG, all companies are required by law to keep accurate records for not less than 7 years.

Best of luck

It seems our meter is set a little differently: R2 is the day reading and R1 is the night. I would assume (or hope) whoever reads the new meter will realize this and record the figures correctly when they come (if they don't I guess I'll be on the phone again...)

Good to see you have the main problem sorted, good luck on the billing side.

The meter clock is set to GMT and dosent change when the clocks go back and forwards. The read on the display defaults to whichever rate is being recorded at the time, i.e. when it's 00:30 meter time the reading will show the low rate (R2) and will switch on the 5th terminal to allow power to the storage heating (accompanied by a clunk in the meter).

Thank you for the information, it confirms what I had thought about the heaters (these are all still fitted btw).

The engineer came yesterday afternoon and fitted a new meter. As you indicated this new one has the timer built in (you press a little button to pull up the different readings on the LCD display).

After it was installed I turned on one the heaters, left it for an hour and no heat, so I could see the Eco 7 switch was not engaged in the day. Though the meter has a little sticker saying '"2 rate 000 0700", I checked to see just when it did switch over and it was at 01.30am. It presumably switches back at 08.30 which sounds about right for our area: As far as I know the eastern times for the south essex region are 00.30 to 7.30 in the winter and 01.30 to 08.30 in the summer.

Now it's just waiting for BG to come back with the revised bills. I did tell the last felllow I spoke to who booked the engineer about any extra usage this winter coming from the storage heaters being on all day and they indicated they will look at past winter usage (when the dials were both working) when making the revisions. Factoring in our being wrongly charged a single reading rate for nearly 3 years as well I would hope to see a considerable reduction in the amendments.

I am a meter engineer who predominantly works for BG and stumbled into this forum looking for something else. Whilst I'm no billing expert I can see you have a problem that I have encountered before.

Firstly, it looks like your clock on the timer has stopped in the low rate area, this timer type is designed to switch the meter to low rate and switch the supply to the storage and immersion heaters at the same time. If the storage heaters are switched on it is the elements that will be heating the house through the day and not the bricks! This will significantly increase the amount of electricity being used and will make it difficult to correctly 'guestimate' a correct reading for billing.

As said earlier I have seen this before, and you need the meter changed ASAP. The new meters have built in clocks so the old one you have will go. This fault is extremeley rare (I've only seen two in the last 3 years) make sure that the next time you speak to BG that you mention that the heaters have been on all the time, they tend to be pretty fair when they come up with a figure, and this may help them.

If storage heaters are no longer fitted it is possible that the electricians doing the work disconnected the supply to the clock when the heaters were taken out....this is a lot more common than the clock going U/S. When the clock loses it's supply it has a mechanism within it to keep the clock working (a back up in case of power cuts). This eventualy runs out and the clock stops, could be on high or low rate, this may be what has happened if no storage heaters are fitted.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you get on with the visit today, be interesting to know what has been done.

Just to update:

BG had not got back to me so I phoned them again today.

The representative was very helpful and agreed right away that we should have been on an Economy 7 tariff from the start. At first he indicated the engineer due to come tomorrow had been canceled but on trying to re-book one he found he was able to get the appointment booked in again for tomorrow, when it would normally have been a longer wait.

He told me the meter will be taken away for testing and the timer switch would be seen to as well (the issues with both have been listed for the engineer), and that we should be hearing from them once the meter has been tested in regards to amendments to our bill (though I suspect that if the timer switch is the sole cause for the stuck dial the meter itself will likely pass any tests?). I also asked to confirm that the Eco 7 rates will be immediately applied to our current tariff and be back-dated through all our past bills in the amendments too (I said that we will insist on that) and he confirmed they would.

So hopefully this can be sorted out quickly and amicably. As a precaution though I have told my parents not to accept any amendments on the bills until I have done the maths on them myself (Excel is quite a nifty tool). It's not that I don't trust the representative I spoke too, it's just that I know he wont be dealing with/working out the actual amendments, and what that person/s might do I cannot say.

Thanks for the replies.

I have registered my parents account online and have been able to access thier bills back to March 2007. The bills do go back as far as June 2006 but I cannot access them (I assume they do not hold them that long). As far as I know this would be in line with when my parents switched over.

Trying to figure the bills out has proved somewhat confusing: they are a bit all over the place. This is no doubt in part due to a few being based on estimates rather than actual readings, but there are also discrepancies in how much was power was being used and when. For instance, the spring bill (march to June) of 2007 has us using around 1800 units in total. The Spring bill for the same period in 2008 has us using over 4500. As these figures were derived from estimates I can understand there being a margin for error, but that does seem over the top. What is also clear is BG never put us on an Economy 7 tariff. We have been paying a single reading rate throughout on the figures taken from both dials (so them being 'low' or 'normal' has no bearing on what we have been charged)

Going by 'actual' readings, rather than the estimates, I have been able to isolate the following facts: Our actual reading on the 'low' rate dial at the end of March 2007 was 48275 and the actual reading taken at the end of September 2008 was 58092. So this means we used approx 9800 units in that 18 month period on that dial. The 'normal' rate dial was read at 86353, but stopped at 93704 sometime in March of 2008 (thereafter all our power has gone onto the other dial). So in total, for that 18 month period we used 17168 units (with something like 9000 units of that being eligible to be charged at the eco 7 rates)

According to our last bill (actual readings) of March 2009, we have used 9155 units in the last 6 month winter period. As these are all on the one dial I do not know how much should have been at the low rate, but going by the Winter bill from the previous year (unfortunately based in part on estimates) we had used 7522 units in total (4462 on the low dial and 3060 on the normal).

Clearly, not only has the meter/timer fault led to us unwittingly using more electricity than we would have over this winter, I can see that BG not putting us on the correct tariff for our heating system when they took over has also been a costly error, one that goes back nearly 3 years!!

red-devil09:

Some good points there except I would put a few points differently. Firstly the total usage is accurate except its all on the low rate register. However previous years cannot be an accurate guide to the estimate because as the original poster has twigged, the storage heater supply would have been permanently energised (and it was a particularly cold winter). Luckily the energy stats on the heaters have prevented meltdown. You use the word "agree an accurate estimate". Absolutely, but the housholder has to be a party to any "agreement" and that is difficult for uninformed householders.

And the unanswered question is not why the time clock has definately stopped but why BG are billing a single rate tariff (and at the high rate).

There is more than one issue going on here.

red-devil09:

Hi,

Ive just read through your post and admit this is a bt of a nightmare for someone who doesnt know how to check these things. There was a few things you raised however that i thought id like to add to:-

You can request all previous copies of your BG bills and recieve them within 14 days, so that you can see for yourelf exactly how the account has been billed.

With the issue of the meter, although there is without doubt a fault, it is not BGs fault that it has gone on for this long. The meter readers also do not work for BG, however if they had spotted a fault they would have just told your parents to call BG - theyre job alone is to read the meter for face value without question.

It sounds like the timeswitch on the meter is faulty to me. unfortunatly again, BG cannot be held accountable for this, but they can arrange for the Meter Operator to replace it as soon as possible - this should resolve the issue and restart the meter registering correctly.

The only reason they will have used last march for a start point will be because that will be when the last recorded readings were taken before the reads become obviously wrong. The only way to go forward is to compare the usage for the same periods of previous years and agree to an 'accurate estimate' reading so that your parents can be billed fairly and then move on with a correctly registering meter.

With regards to the meter exch appointment, i agree this does seem coincidental, this appointment is actually raised by the meter operator.

One last thing, this is in no way meant to be 'rubbing salt in the wound', but this is why it is so important to take more ownership of reading our own meters on a monthly basis - BG arent mind readers and unless are made aware of a fault they cannot fix it.

Hope this gets sorted asap for you, keep us updated!!

R

Yep, good point.

If it was a new supply (I did see that mentioned) and thats the last point they had the proper read then they will have gone on a 70/30 basis especially if the supplier has no history. For example, one bill, or even just one firm read then after that it remains at that. If theres nothing to work with then they apply this as a billing basis and this is actually covered as an industry billing guideline.

They have indeed been likely to go back to before the read, used that and established estimated 'actuals'

(The only way to go forward is to compare the usage for the same periods of previous years and agree to an 'accurate estimate' reading so that your parents can be billed fairly and then move on with a correctly registering meter.)

Good luckx

Hi,

Ive just read through your post and admit this is a bt of a nightmare for someone who doesnt know how to check these things. There was a few things you raised however that i thought id like to add to:-

You can request all previous copies of your BG bills and recieve them within 14 days, so that you can see for yourelf exactly how the account has been billed.

With the issue of the meter, although there is without doubt a fault, it is not BGs fault that it has gone on for this long. The meter readers also do not work for BG, however if they had spotted a fault they would have just told your parents to call BG - theyre job alone is to read the meter for face value without question.

It sounds like the timeswitch on the meter is faulty to me. unfortunatly again, BG cannot be held accountable for this, but they can arrange for the Meter Operator to replace it as soon as possible - this should resolve the issue and restart the meter registering correctly.

The only reason they will have used last march for a start point will be because that will be when the last recorded readings were taken before the reads become obviously wrong. The only way to go forward is to compare the usage for the same periods of previous years and agree to an 'accurate estimate' reading so that your parents can be billed fairly and then move on with a correctly registering meter.

With regards to the meter exch appointment, i agree this does seem coincidental, this appointment is actually raised by the meter operator.

One last thing, this is in no way meant to be 'rubbing salt in the wound', but this is why it is so important to take more ownership of reading our own meters on a monthly basis - BG arent mind readers and unless are made aware of a fault they cannot fix it.

Hope this gets sorted asap for you, keep us updated!!

R

I don't think we have that: Next to the main meter is an enclosed box of a similar size with a large dial that has 24 number settings, and a sort of brace/indicator type thing with two points at around where the Economy 7 hours should fall (1 and 7). Seems safe to assume that is the timer control and switch and if so it is definitely set mechanically.

Further to working out just how much we have really used it occurred to me that as the timer switch isn't working then anything set to activate on that switch would in fact be always on if the switch on the appliance itself was left on. To test this I turned on a storage heater in our spare bedroom this morning (this one hasn't been used for over 3 months so it wont have any charge), then checked an hour later to see if it had come on. This confirmed my suspicions as the heater was indeed putting out heat when it should not have started to take any electricity until the early hours of tomorrow morning.

So apart from paying single rates on our economy 7 usage for at least one year (can you find out your older bills if you register with them online?), this also means whenever we have left our storage heaters on during this last winter (I would say that 3 have been left on for a long spells during this time) they have been connected and taking electricity all of the time!! No wonder the bill was high!!

Needless to say, as this additional usage outside of eco 7 hours is entirely down to a mechanical fault with the suppliers equipment I will be demanding they amend their figures accordingly.

It's possible you have a "teleswitch" which controls the switch between rates (but not the meter reading!) by radio signal.

Thanks for the advice. When dealing with them I will try to keep a level head (it wasn't easy when they said the revised bill was going to be more than the one I had complained about, but I managed it then so hopefully can do so in future)

Regarding the switching of supply my parents have only ever changed when being canvassed by other suppliers telling them their deal was the cheaper one. In this case a BG rep would have told my parents they had the better deal. As far as I know these canvassers do have to take into account any of our existing tariffs before making any such comparison or they are simply breaking the law (a case of deliberately false/misleading advertising), as a non-storage/economy 7 system set-up (or non-electric) would obviously run cheaper on this single rate.

With that in mind BG taking over our supply but ignoring/failing to impose our pre-existing tariff had better have a good reason.

This still does not explain why our meter is down to the one dial though, unless that is something that can be adjusted by the supplier without touching the meter itself. I would guess that is a timer fault, though given what rate we have been charged at the last year anyway that doesn't seem to have made a difference.