N Power Faulty Meter

[george_h]

Can anyone point me in the right direction to find out who is responsible for faulty gas meters. My son has recently moved into a rented house and his gas supply is with npower. He thinks his meter is faulty because he has used about £40 of gas in one week with only a cooker and gas fire. N Power say that if he wants his meter checking it will cost him £60 for them to come out. Surely this can't be right when the meter belongs to the gas company anyway.

 

Can they enforce the charge?

[blacksheep1979]

Npower aren't the cheapest providers out there - might be worth swapping and if you mention you are going to swap because of this they may pull their finger out.

[buzby]

Hang on - rather than assume the meter is 'faulty' has he kept a log of daily readings to calculate things for himself? Take a daily reading at the same time each day for 7 days, and scale it up for whatever period the bill is for. Calorific values make it difficult to directly relate to units Vs charge, but at least the unit consumption will be easy to check.

[george_h]

Yes Buzby, He has started to keep a log and what worried him is that we worked out that he spent £3.40 on gas whilst out at work all day with no heating, gas cooker of gas fire on. N Power at first said he must have a leak but coming home to a house that has been shut up all day then I think a gas leak would have been obvious don't you.

 

As for changing supplier, he can't do that unless he pays up N power but if he does then he may well be paying n power for gas that he hasn't used.

[buzby]

Two thoughts on this - (1) Turn everything that consumes gas ON, taking a reading before and after the passage of 5 minutes (all cooker burners, CH, fire etc etc). This consumption figure should be first multiplied by 12 (to get the hourly rate) and again by 7 as an estimate of maximum possible consumption per day. IF the units already consumed are less than that shown for the bill, then there could be a leak - or someone has taken a feed off the pipe AFTER the meter.

 

(2) If this consumption figure is actually more than the the amount Npower require, then it would be fair to assume it IS just standard consumption, and that with gas prices rising anyway, the charge just reflects this.

 

There can be an option to switch to a pre-pay meter, but this should be avoided if at all possible as this brings more problems, and doesn;t resolve the iriginal issue, unless the meter was faulty. Providing the amound owing remains disputed, there should be no adverse action until the myster is resolved, however it might be useful to speak with a neighbour to see if there is a correlation in cost.....

[blakey1]

hi there, i worked for npower for over 1 year dealing with meters and accounts, they claim there is a charge of 60 pounds but they only levvy that charge if the meter is actually ok and 9/10 they dont charge. the gas meter belongs to transco and the npower advisor is only a 3rd party however transco wont deal direct with customers any more so unfortunately your stuck with ringing npower if you still have no luck write to the customer complaints dept on the back of the bill and they will get things moving quickly . i would strongly advise leaving npower as they are very very bad.. trust me i left as i didnt want any thing to do with them mind you britsish gas aint too clever either.