British Gas wrong meter 3000unit overpayment and no refund?!

A question about : British Gas wrong meter 3000unit overpayment and no refund?!

Hi all

Can I get some advice? please bare with me as this is a long tale as we're going back over 7 years.

Since moving into my property in 2007 I have been paying my neighbour's gas bill as the gas meter serial numbers connected to each of our flats have been mixed up, (The property was a new build at the time). I informed British Gas (BG), who I hold my account with, as soon as I realised with little success as I was informed this is a TRANSCO issue and I had no idea how to engage with TRANSCO as they don't deal with domestic customers. In Jan 2015 I raised a new complaint. This mixup originated when the building contractors provided wrong meter serial numbers to the gas companies.

Bills I have been receiving are very large and even though I make efforts to reduce my usage (which is low anyway) is in vain as my neighbour is the only one benefiting. I am a single mother, live with my 9 year son and work full time so I am rarely in the flat, however there are at least 2 adults and 2 children in my neighbour's flat who are there a lot. this has led to me paying very high bills which have become unmanageable.

My neighbour's gas account is not with BG either so this has been difficult to resolve. At one point due to difficulties my neighbour faced paying her bill the company she uses put a meter on the meter supposedly connected to her flat which inevitably was my meter and therefore caused even more problems. She had the pay meter removed and put on her correct meter (i.e. the one I've been paying for since 2007). So her provider corrected the mixup and BG hadn't thus we have both been paying for the one meter.

On my current complaint the meter I have been paying has been based on estimated bills even though I have asked and begged for BG to come to the property to 'take a reading' (the meters are freely accessible outside the property) and hopefully that way they could see the mix up as I wasn't getting anywhere by just talking to them. the units they had been billing me until Jan 2015 was 10516. The correct meter reading, the one connected to my flat was 7106 as of 22/02/2015.

Following my current complaint and with the benefit of a smart phone camera I was able to send irrefutable proof of the mix up, BG has now allocated by gas account to the right meter. great.

My query lies with my over payments the meter reading on my correct meter is 7106units and the units I have been paying for is 10516. on my gas account BG has posted payment reversal of all gas payments back to August 2013 which was a total of circa Ј1100 they then applied two one off gas charges of circa Ј800, thus now putting my account in credit by just Ј300. I don't understand what these gas charges (the two one off payments) are for. My argument is that having paid over 3000 units of gas I am due a refund of circa Ј1000 or at least that Ј800 plus interest and probably compensation. BG is saying the complaint is resolved and that there is no overpayment, and I think they think I should be grateful that my gas account is in credit by Ј300.

Can anyone help shed some light on this and help me understand what it is BG have done and what I can do next?

I hope this all makes sense, Thank you in advance.

CP

Best answers:

• Anyone? :-(
• Post is far to hard to understand .
  Suggest you take advice from CAB .
• Was your neighbours meter a metric meter and yours an imperial meter. One has 8 numbers on it, metric ..the other has 5/6 numbers imperial.Imperial units are 2.8 times more expensive than metric.
  Builders are always messing up meter serials..some johnny in a hard hat slaps in a load of numbers to the suppliers and then the fun begins. The neighbour receiving the dirt cheap bills probably realises something is wrong but of course wont do anything about it. The one getting billed too much usually does a usage check..very easy to do. Look at the meter when its not using anything, switch on a gas ring or boiler and observe the hundreths of a unit start to move, then you have the correct meter..Label it for any meter readers so they dont carry on messing it up.
  The problem now is to convince your supplier..if you have an imperial meter you may owe them !