Martin Lewis 'reminds' British Gas, OVO, EDF, Octopus customers to complete vital task this weekend
Martin Lewis has warned British Gas, OVO, EDF, EON and Octopus customers to take a meter reading before the October 1 price cap kicks in. The Ofgem price cap, taking bills to £1717, will hit on Tuesday October 1, with households urged to act beforehand.
On his BBC Sounds podcast, where he chatted to mortgage expert Monty and co-host Adrian Chiles, Mr Lewis said: “Reminder that it’s Meter Reading Week. It used to be Meter Reading Day but I managed to crash most of the big energy firms by doing so.”
Mr Lewis warned: “Now I say it’s Meter Reading Week because it really doesn’t make much difference. If you don’t do a metre reading and you pay by monthly direct debit your usage is estimated and it’s your energy firm that using an algorithm will decide how much was before the price went up and how much was after.
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“If it estimates too much after the price went up, you will pay more. I’m not suggesting that they’re trying to diddle by doing that, more you might just fall foul of the algorithm. You might also gain from it. The way to make it totally fair is to give a metre reading within a few days on either side of the 1st of October.”
Money Saving Expert founder Martin continued: “Most firms you can do it a day or two before and a couple of days afterwards and backdate the metre reading as long as it’s an honest one. If you’ve got a working smart metre, working being the operative word, you don’t need to do this because your smart metre is sending in metre readings anyway.”
He explained: “In that very specific case, it’s the act of topping up that tells the metre what you should be paying. If you top up before the 1st of October your metre will be told the current rates and it will not be told the new rates until you top up again so the longer you can run not topping up on or after the 1st of October, the longer you will usually stay on the lower rate.”