Anyone here with British Gas?

[Guy At Charnock Richard]

Long story short, I've got a smart meter yet they are still giving me eye watering estimated bills which eventually get rectified down the line when they create a bill from an actual reading. However having to pay a monthly bill of £210 when in reality I owe £95 is bang out of order. Do they think I'm here to offer 0% loans to them or something?

Unfortunately they are totally uncontactable via phone because I haven't got all day to wait in the damn queue. Is there anywhere else I can take this complaint - some kind of onbudsman / regulator or something?

[Lance]

Cancel the direct debit. That will get their attention.

on the other hand, maybe submit a reading?????

[Guy At Charnock Richard]

Cancel the direct debit. That will get their attention.

on the other hand, maybe submit a reading?????

I don't pay by DD - I pay by debit card. I have flagged this with them before & they've told me that the estimated reading will stop but it never does. That said, the only comms I seem to be able to have them is via a chat app with somebody in a far flung corner of the globe so I have little faith in anything ever been actioned there

[WTFH]

Submit a reading.

And switch to DD payments, it's cheaper.

If you are actually overpaying then there will be a credit on your account when they get a real reading. Then they will recalculate.

[Guy At Charnock Richard]

Submit a reading.

And switch to DD payments, it's cheaper.

DD might not be a bad idea. As for your other point, can't see the point of the smart meter which is set to submit a reading ever 30 minutes if they are going to keep clobbering me with these staggering estimates. What sort of frequency should you submit a reading?

[Guy At Charnock Richard]

If you are actually overpaying then there will be a credit on your account when they get a real reading. Then they will recalculate.

They just shouldn't be doing this - some of us have monthly cash flows to think about

[Mordac]

It's not just British Gas, we're with Shell and they put our DD up from £120 to £220 p/m. Even I can work out that's more than 54%. I submit a reading every month and it hasn't gone down. I suspect they're all sitting on millions in overpayments, and Ofgem, being a spineless bunch of useless feckwits, done have the balls to call them out.
I don't (and won't) have a smart meter because they appear to be anything but smart.

[WTFH]

DD might not be a bad idea. As for your other point, can't see the point of the smart meter which is set to submit a reading ever 30 minutes if they are going to keep clobbering me with these staggering estimates. What sort of frequency should you submit a reading?

If you're not prepared to submit a reading yourself, I can't see the point in complaining! (And I'm not sure why YOU have chosen to configure your smart meter to submit every 30 minutes, I'd probably only go for once a day)

I normally submit a manual reading once each month. Only takes a few seconds to read the smart meter and type it in to the website for the supplier I use.

[TestMangler]

It's not just British Gas, we're with Shell and they put our DD up from £120 to £220 p/m. Even I can work out that's more than 54%. I submit a reading every month and it hasn't gone down. I suspect they're all sitting on millions in overpayments, and Ofgem, being a spineless bunch of useless feckwits, done have the balls to call them out.
I don't (and won't) have a smart meter because they appear to be anything but smart.

I've got one in one of my shops and I still get estimated bills every quarter that are 3-4 X the actual bill. What's worse is that when you try to use the automated meter reading thingy, it won't work for smart meter readings so you spend hours on hold trying to submit readings. My other shop, same elec supplier, has old style meter. They still over estimate massively, but it's a two minute job to submit a reading by phone to an automated service.

As you say, anything but smart.

[WTFH]

It's not just British Gas, we're with Shell and they put our DD up from £120 to £220 p/m. Even I can work out that's more than 54%. I submit a reading every month and it hasn't gone down. I suspect they're all sitting on millions in overpayments, and Ofgem, being a spineless bunch of useless feckwits, done have the balls to call them out.
I don't (and won't) have a smart meter because they appear to be anything but smart.

And is your account in credit at the minute or not?

Nice to see how it's the smart meter, Ofgem and the supplier who are at fault for your choice. Did the rate go from £120 to £220 in one jump? If so, a smart person would look at changing suppliers.