An Estimated Meter Reading Is a Loan You Did Not Ask For

There is a short answer about meter readings and a useful one, and they are not the same. What follows is the useful one.

How estimates happen

Where a supplier has no actual reading, it estimates consumption from historical data for the property or from typical usage profiles. That estimate can be too high or too low, and it is corrected whenever a real reading is finally recorded. An estimate that has been low for months produces a catch-up bill, which people experience as a sudden unexplained increase.

An estimate that has been high builds a credit balance, which is your money sitting with the supplier rather than in your account. Bills usually indicate whether each reading is actual or estimated, and that marking is the most useful thing on the page.

Reading the meter

Digital meters display the reading directly, sometimes cycling between several values, and the bill states which one is needed. Dial meters are read left to right, taking the number the pointer has passed rather than the one it is nearest.

In a small flat, meters with day and night registers have two readings, and submitting only one produces a badly wrong bill. Photograph the display along with the serial number, since the photograph is dated evidence and takes no longer than writing it down. Submit on roughly the same date each month, which makes the sequence comparable and highlights any error immediately.

Smart meters and what changes

A smart meter transmits readings automatically, which removes estimates for as long as the communication link works. Links do fail, particularly in buildings with poor signal, and the meter then reverts to needing manual readings. Check occasionally that your bills still say actual rather than estimated, since a failed link is otherwise invisible.

In-home displays show consumption in near real time, which is genuinely useful for identifying what in your flat uses the most. Availability, functionality and switching implications of smart meters vary widely between countries and even between suppliers.

Moving in and moving out

Take a photographed reading on the day you take possession and again on the day you leave, without exception. That reading is the boundary between your liability and somebody else's, and it is the only evidence that establishes it.

Notify the supplier promptly at both ends, since a delayed notification is how people end up paying for a previous occupant. Provide a forwarding address so the final bill reaches you rather than becoming a debt you never saw.

Where a landlord holds the accounts, get the readings recorded anyway, because disputes about utility charges are common at the end of a tenancy.

Spotting an error early

Compare consumption with the same period a year earlier rather than with last month, since usage is strongly seasonal. A sudden rise with no change in behaviour points either to a faulty estimate, a faulty appliance or a leak on a water supply. Check the readings on the bill against the meter itself, since transposed digits are a genuinely common error.

Check that the meter serial number on the bill matches the meter you are reading, particularly in blocks where meters are grouped. Crossed meters, where two flats have been billed to each other's supply, do happen and are found exactly this way.

Tenancies differ, and whatever your own agreement says beats anything written generally.

Getting it corrected

Submit an actual reading first, since the majority of disputed bills resolve themselves at that point. If the bill is still wrong, complain in writing with the readings, the dates and the photographs attached. Ask for the account to be recalculated rather than for a goodwill adjustment, since the former is a correction and the latter is a favour.

Many countries limit how far back a supplier may bill for unbilled consumption, so check whether such a rule applies to you. If the supplier will not resolve it, an energy ombudsman or regulator exists in most markets and the process is normally free.

The takeaway

Photograph the meter on the first day, the last day and once a month in between.

Do the ten-minute version tonight rather than the proper version never.