Does anyone ever get their gas meter

[George]

read?

once a month my electric meter gets read but never the gas meter,been in this house 3 years now.

[Lobster]

For sure. I think all utility co's do it once a year minimum.

Presumably you're paying a bill? Is it based on your own readings or some wildly inaccurate estimate by the gas co?

(You don't have a gas meter in an outside cupboard, do you, which gets read without recourse to the customer?!)

David

[George]

Pay my gas bill online and submit readings once a month

[nightjar]

There should be an annual safety inspection, which is normally carried out when it is read.

Colin Bignell

[Mike the unimaginative]

Lobster wrote in news:9YaKi.33920$ka7.3719 @newsfe4-gui.ntli.net:

Meter on the outside wall - note on the door by the doorbell - they *still* put a bl**dy card through the letterbox to tell me when they want to come back to get in to read the meter.............

[Dave]

"nightjar .uk.com>"

I'm now 50 years old, lived in houses (4 in total) with gas supplies all of that time, and *never* have any of the meters ever had any sort of annual inspection whatsoever.

Dave

[Frank Erskine]

A former colleague of mine had a house built, and gas laid on by the Gas Board. In at least 15 years he never had a bill despite informing them on numerous occasions. He used to calculate his consumption and set aside the money in his bank account, but a bill never came. He subsequently retired, so I never did find out if they eventually realised that he existed :-)

He certainly wasn't trying to avoid paying.

[nightjar]

That doesn't mean they are not meant to happen and, as I noted, it happens when the meter is read. It is a very quick visual inspection, so if you have had your meter read, it had probably been inspected too.

Colin Bignell

[Alan]

In message , nightjar wrote

I used to get those letters telling me that if I didn't allow access for the 'safety check' then the company will apply for a court order. When the man then came around to do his safety check he was on the premises for no more than 30 seconds and most of this time was spent recording the meter reading. I doubt if the meters readers are CORGI accredited and competent to do any safety checks.

Recently the meter readers seem to call around once during a working day and then if they get no reply will return at around 7pm in the evening or at the weekend.

[Brian Sharrock]

Concur: I'm _slightly_ older than that, but lay claim to about fifty years of 'householding'. I've never had any sort of annual inspection of the gas meter. About a decade ago, the meter was changed for a modern 'odometer' style meter ( there are white characters displaying the cubic footage consumed). And _once_ ; yonks ago, when the gas main was renewed down the road for the new-fangled yellow pipery the gas supply to every house in the road was turned off and on reconnection a man came and checked that the pipes were purged and boilers, hobs etc were lighting correctly [he was in the house for about five minutes, tops].

BTW; both the electricity and gas meters are read, at different times and by different readers, quarterly

[Huge]

Grief. We get our 'leccy meter read about every two or three years.

We don't have mains gas. And I shall *never* do business with BG again after the way they stitched us up when we moved house last.

[Steve Firth]

That often, eh? I can't recall seeing a leccy man in years.

YMYA.

But we already knew that.

[clot]

Snap, they've moved into the Dodgy Dealer territory for me. I closed two accounts with them as a result.

[clot]

I'm amazed at this. It will change - for years we had been on one reading per annum for water and estimated reading for the half year. Our electric and gas were on half yearly readings with quarterly estimates. Now, sensibly, we have the gas and electric read together. I suspect it won't be long before the water is read at the same time by the same company. This makes particular sense where the meters are "inboard".

[nightjar]

...

More than 30 years ago, one of the Electricity Boards was working on a digital meter that would send its readings back down the power lines. It was also designed to take readings from other meters and send those. It failed partly because of Trade Union opposition and partly because no other utility was interested in cooperating.

Colin Bignell

[RobertL]

Some gas contracts are unmetered (fixed price regardless of amount used). My father used to have one. but maybe these were a ploy to get people to change supplier.

Robert

[David in Normandy]

British Gas were unbelievable last time we moved house within the UK. I told them we were moving, new address etc so they sent us a final bill to the old house. I promptly paid it by cheque. A couple of weeks later they sent me a cheque re-funding the amount I'd just paid. A week later they sent me another more stropy demand for payment, so I sent them another cheque paying it off a second time. The following week they sent me a letter saying they were going to take court action to recover funds due to none-payment!!! I sent them a very sarcastic letter and eventually got a stock reply (badly addressed) saying the account had now been settled, but no apology.

[Rob Hamadi]

I've had those a couple of times. Oddly, in both cases it was when I'd finally got around to taking a reading and informing BG, after years of estimated readings due to their meter readers only coming round when I was at work.

-- Rob

[Mark]

I'll bit the "safety check" amounts to a quick sniff for gas leaks.

M

[clot]

Sadly this does not surprise me.