Martin Lewis advised people to take their energy meter readings on March 31 ahead of the energy price cap increase. However some people couldn't send their figures as power companies experienced system crashes, while others simply forgot.
But sending yours a day or two late isn’t something to panic about, the founder of MoneySavingExpert reassured the public. Martin said: "If you were to do it tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, just doing it around now reduces the wriggle room for a problem with estimates. A day or two out isn’t the biggest panic in the world."
Energy bills jump explosively from today (April 1) as the price cap is raised by nearly £700 per year. The rises will affect anyone who's not on a fixed rate tariff. Despite Martin's advice to send meter readings by March 31, companies - including British Gas, EDF, Scottish Power and SSE - were unable to cope with the number of customers trying to submit meter readings ahead of the price cap being lifted today.
Martin posted an update on his Twitter page to advise people on what to do if they didn't manage to submit by today, reports GloucestershireLive. He said: “It’s really frustrating. “This shouldn’t have happened and we [Money Saving Expert] are alerting Ofgem to the problem.
"Just make sure you’ve done one in the last few days or in the next few days and you should be pretty close to being charged the right amount. If you can’t send it through online or their phone lines are too busy, some of them do allow you to email a photo of your meter to allow for a meter reading.”
He had previously advised households to provide a meter reading so they can avoid their energy usage being overestimated by their provider. The idea is that you can tell your energy provider exactly how much gas and electricity you used before the price cap increased today. You can get more money news and other story updates by subscribing to our newsletters here.
This means any energy used up until March 31 will be charged at a lower price, rather than the higher rate kicking in. For those on a default tariff who pay by direct debit, the Ofgem price cap is going up by £693 from £1,277 to £1,971 from April 1.
Prepayment customers will see a bigger jump, with their price cap going up by £708, from £1,309 to £2,017. Complaints about submitting a meter reading appeared as early as 8am yesterday with most energy providers experiencing issues. Almost all the problems are that customers cannot log in or use the energy companies' websites.
E.on responded by sparking a bizarre Twitter row after it sent a tweet blaming Mr Lewis for its website crashing and "bringing down Britain". The message was subsequently deleted with E.on apologising for "any offence" caused.
