Faulty meter?

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28 Oct 2009
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Aberdeen
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Hi folks,

looking for some advice please. A few years ago my wife invested her redundancy money in a small 1 bed flat which she rents out. The property has electric night storage heaters and is fitted with a dual rate meter.

Since May the property has been empty and the electricity turned off at the main fuse boxes (day & night) and all appliances, inc storage heaters, off at the wall switches.

My wife today received a bill for £216. We’ve just checked the meters and it would appear the flat has used 1084 day and 303 night units since May - this is with both (day & night) fuse boxes main switches OFF and all appliances OFF at their wall switches.

The meter is in “meter box” located outside the flat in a communal hallway....

8058AF26-8429-4D7A-9BD1-9964814F4F27.jpeg


Are we right to assume the meter is faulty?

Any advice on how should we proceed would be much appreciated.

Many thanks.
 
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It does sound a bit odd, have you checked the readings, is it estimated?
 
Check the Meter I D numbers.
May be another flat getting your bill and your getting theirs !!
 
Crystal hall may have the key. The old reading may be estimated. Or, if you haven’t submitted regular meter readings, the supplier may have assumed the consumption is the same as last time and estimated the reading.

Check the meter reading on the bill against the actual. Or look at the bill, if the meter reading has an E at the end then it’s an estimate.
 
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Thanks for the replies.

Sorry I should have been clearer in my OP, the bill was not an estimate. We have photos of the meter which we took tonight and photos when the last tennent moved out in MAY.

The electricity usage quoted in the OP (1084 & 303) are the difference between the (day & night) readings we took this evening and the readings from photos we took in May.

Only thing we can think is either someone’s stealing our electric (no visible signs of suspicious wires) or the meter’s faulty.
 
Any sign of inhabitant being in the flat ,squatter ? Did you change locks when tenant left ?
 
The flat is unoccupied, we visit it at least once a week (insurance requirement while vacant) various days/times.

There are NO signs of anyone using the flat ie the bed cover does not have wrinkles, the kitchen appliances are still clean with no crumbs/debris/food.

The water is off at the mains too. Have ordered an amp clamp to check the current through the fuse, meter & fuseboxes.
 
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Have a look next week to see if meter readings have changed.
Contact the supplier to challenge the charge if the meter numbers at your property match those on your bill.
 
When our properties are empty the old tenant is taken off the system [assuming their bill has been settled], when new tenant takes over we give our info and so far have only had to pay for units used, without a rental cost. However one of the properties counts a fixed number of units in lieu of rental. I suspect there has been debt in the past and I've asked for the meter to be changed a couple of times but without registering as a customer the energy companies will not deal with me. They'll happily take the money when offered though.
 
Those ampy meters display a solid red LED when there is zero load being drawn. Yours is not doing this.

How often does the LED pulse on the meter?

The connections all look correct in the picture. A clamp meter will be helpful to see if any load is being drawn, which I suspect it will be. It is unusual for a meter to fail so dramatically and on both tariffs.

Either this is not the meter for your flat, or the cables between here and your your flat also supply something else.

There’s an estate of retirement flats near me. 4 flats in each block, and in every block the landlords power is nicked off the supply to one of the flats.
 
Thanks for the info, the LED is definitely flashing but I never took much notice of it. It flashed once or twice while I was taking the ‘photos so maybe every 90 seconds but it could be as low as every 10 minutes - I’ll pay more attention next time.

The only thing we’ve done differently this time is turn the electricity off at the mains, when the flat has been vacant before we left the electric on and the bills were about £30 a quarter (most of this was the daily standing charge the rest was for heating the water and lighting when we were cleaning the flat).

There’s no landlord, all the flats in the block are privately owned. The meter boxes are beside the front door to each flat so it’s unlikely that it’s the wrong one (unless someone has deliberately swapped them over but that could end up costing them more?).

Only other thing I could think off was the intercom/door entry system and the (time switched) lighting in the communal areas but that shouldn’t be anywhere near 4.5kW a day.

Thanks again
 
As RF says

Look at the other meters which have a solid red light. This could be yours !
Unless other flats empty
 
Those ampy meters display a solid red LED when there is zero load being drawn. Yours is not doing this.
My immediate thoughts too, RF!
My hunch is the meter in the photo is not theirs.

I had a similar conundrum where a flat owner was complaining to (the then) Norweb about his HUGE bill. Turned out when I investigated that the flat was paying the bill for the restaurant and the restaurant was paying the miniscule bill for the flat.

The restauarant owner was not a happy bunny showing me the meter; he must have known he was on to a good thing....
 

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