Joe H

Apr 25, 2025

Don't Bother - Didn't Hold Supplier to Account and Now Have Unmetered Gas Connection

Asked Energy Ombudsman to support after British Gas installed a non-functioning smart gas meter and refused to do anything about it. The agreed that British Gas had not been cooperative and insisted (rather vaguely) that they would need to "make reasonable attempts to communicate with the smart meter", as well as pay small compensation and send a letter of apology. British Gas replaced the meter (and the completed the other remedial actions) and reported to the Energy Ombudsman that they had resolved it. This was accepted by the Ombudsman as fact, despite nothing related to the gas meter was proven to be working yet. I pointed this out to our case handler who repeatedly went back to British Gas, but was easily fobbed off with pathetic excuses from them and clearly wasn't reading our comments properly. Eventually, she informed us that 'smart meter technology has limitations' and 'we'd have to wait for the technology to improve' - We already have a smart electric meter, and the gas meter is in the cupboard next to it! We live in a modern house. By this point, the uncomissioned smart meter had completely ceased to function - it does not display anything, we can not even submit manual meter reads, and our gas connection appears to be completely unmetered. I pointed this out to our case handler (and told her we had exhausted all online support in trying to get the meter to display), who only replied with generic user instruction from British Gas. When we pushed to get the meter reading issue resolved, we were advised to open another Ombudsman case as apparently repairing a non-functional meter 'was not one of the remedial actions for this case'. This was told to us two-months after the case had been marked as 'resolved'. I don't know in what world it is acceptable to leave a customer with an unmetered gas connection, but that's the position the Ombudsman has left us in. Four months after reporting our issues to them and we are now in a worse position than when we started. We have spent the last two months on estimated meter readings and were basically told that having a working gas meter was not part of the remedial actions for this case (which was raised for a non-functioning smart meter). I also don't know why if no more action was going to be taken against British Gas, our case handler dragged it out for a further two months before telling us that! It's utterly farcical and utterly disgusting.