Electricity meters

Many, many months ago - perhaps even as many as 16 or 17 months ago - we had a new electricity meter fitted.  This was mildly irritating because it is a very small meter and it is right up against the ceiling in the lounge room, thus rendering it almost impossible to read. The Builder has to stand on the couch and then stand on tiptoes to be able to read it!

Even more irritating was that, a month or so after it was fitted, it became clear that the day and night meter readings had been transposed on the British Gas web account.  I rang them up.  Spoke, eventually, to a perfectly charming young man who said he would fix it.

A month later I went to put the meter readings in. The web page said I had them the wrong way round, did I really want to continue?  I knew I didn't have them the wrong way round so did continue and rang British Gas.  Spoke, eventually, to a perfectly charming young woman. She agreed to fix it.  Didn't.

This went on for a few months until I got fed up of ringing them up, listening to long lengths of Muzak and explaining the whole story all over again.  I stopped ringing them and just put the meter readings in electronically.  Correctly.  And every month the computer would ask if I really meant it, and every month I said I did, and every month someone or some machine at British Gas "corrected" my readings.

Every now and then, meter readers would come because I was getting the meter readings the wrong way round.  The meter readers would agree with me that I wasn't and go away.  Someone or some machine at British Gas "corrected" their readings too.

This month I got fed up of it all and, when I went to put the monthly readings in and was challenged yet again by the computer - I filled in one of their web comments forms.

I should have done this before!!  It generated almost immediate action.

I got an email asking us to take two readings, one hour apart at a time when we were using electricity.  We did this and emailed them in.   I then got an email telling us that the matter was being handed on to the specialist problems and complaints team because we had "twisted readings".  (Oo-errrr - you don't want twisted readings and definitely not bitter and twisted readings!!)

And today a very charming man rang me up and said that he had fixed the problem, re-calculated all our bills going back for the past twelve months but that they are not legally allowed to re-calculate bills that are more than 12 months old unless they owe the client money (this has worked significantly in our favour because we actually owed them money).  And, as compensation for all the trouble I had had, I could choose between £25 off the electricity bill in three months time, or £50 off the gas bill in six months time.

I have no plans to change supplier.  And if someone wants to contribute £50 towards the winter gas bill, then I am certainly not going to complain!

Interesting, though, that they acted very quickly on the web comment.  They didn't act at all on any of the phone calls