Opening meter reads
If you have recently switched to us, we’ll email you asking to provide an opening meter reading five days before your switch.
You then have 10 days in which to send the opening read.
If we don’t receive an opening reading from you in time, an estimated reading will be used to open your account. This will also be used to produce your final bill with your old supplier.
Once we have received your opening reads, they are sent to an independent meter validation company as part of the standard industry process.
They’ll use historic meter reads and your expected consumption to calculate the expected read, with some tolerance ranges applied.
If the reading is within the expected range, it will be accepted. This then gets sent to your old supplier to close your account and to your new supplier to open your account.
But, if the opening reads differ significantly from what’s expected, it will be rejected, and an estimate will be calculated for both suppliers to use.
The whole process can take up to six weeks. This is from when we receive your readings, to a reading (either validated or an estimate) being sent to your old supplier.
If you disagree with the opening reading used because it is an estimate, we may be able to ‘dispute’ this.
We can only dispute the estimated reads if there is a big enough difference between your actual read and the estimate used. But it may not always be successful. If the difference between the reads is too small, we may not be able to raise a dispute. In this instance, we would use the estimated read.
If you do wish to dispute an opening read, you need to get in touch with us. We’ll ask you to give further information such as more reads and possibly a picture of your meter to help us resolve any disputes.
Read disputes can take up to 14 weeks, but don’t worry we will keep you updated with any progress.
Please note that the threshold for disputing reads is 250 kWh for electricity and 1200 kWh for gas.
If you have accidentally sent us the wrong meter reading, please email us with a photo of your new reading to [email protected].
