Seems like the best place for it....so here goes.
I have read about other people getting wildly wrong estimations on their electric meter readings so I decided to check ours today.
Our bill says (the bill was sent on the 18th with their estimation taken on the 17th Aug)
Last Reading 3928 (25 April) Today Est 5341 (17 Aug)
Todays real reading 5287 (23 Aug)
Lets assume the 25th April reading was totally correct as its prob too late to dispute that and it was probably taken by a British Gas employee anyway.
So they estimated our usage from 25 April to 17 Aug was 1413 units. It was 114 days between 25/4 - 17/8 so they estimated we used 12.39 units a day The actual amount we used between 25/4 and 23/8 (today) is 11.78 untis a day (1413/120)
So the actual amout we used in the period they charged us for was 114*11.78 = 1342units So we were overcharged 71 units. Have I done that right?
It seems we are on a tariff where the cost goes down after we use 281kWh so
71*6.678p = £4.80So I am thinking we were overcharged by £4.80 - I have submitted my reading to British Gas - it seems like they will adjust the amount
Now I suppose my real question is...
We have a person who comes every few weeks/months to take the reading anyway - so say he takes a reading of 1000 one month. In between then BG estimate we used 2500 units - taking our reading to 3500 - we pay for the
2500 units. If the man comes back the following day after we pay our bill and sees the meter is 3000 we will know that we have overpaid 500 units.My quetsion is will he give the reading back to BG so they can reset on their computers that we paid too much and allow us to have that many units back free or will they try and do something sly so we have lost our money based on the wrong estimated? (hope that makes sense!)
If the man comes every 3 months and takes an accurate reading and send sit abck to BG which they adjust their computers with and refund us - what we pay shoudl always reflect was we use right - just that we may pay too much certain months but we should get back later...
Hmm, can't wait for the gas bill to arrive!