Using gas whilst away, how is this possible?

A good point from ​@costeek. 
 

My smart meter is showing £0.21/hr usage when everything is turned off, I even shut the boiler off since yesterday. 

Didn’t use the hob, no hot water and with the boiler off it doesn’t fire up randomly. 

£0.21/hr is £5.04 a day, surely standing charge isn’t that much. 

That’s like £151 a month without using anything. 

I called the emergency gas line but they said if you don’t smell anything or any hissing noise there isn’t a leakage and could be that the meter needs recalibrating. What if the leakage is outside or underground somewhere? 

Also who compensates me for this non-usage, I wonder how long this went on for…

Just fyi, all appliances turned off electricity is £0.1/hr. That seems a bit more reasonable but still high as daily standing charge for electricity is like 61p and 31p for gas I believe. 

Are these credit meters or are they PAYG?
(Just to check if you might be paying off a debit on a PAYG meter at so much per day).

Assuming that it’s not a PAYG meter and there is no debit charge;

When you say “smart meter” do you actually mean the meter, or do you instead mean your In Home Display Device (IHD)?

Your IHD is meant as an indication of what you are using, it is not what you are billed to.
You are billed to what the actual meter says not what the IHD says.

If you are meaning the IHD then press the button and change it from showing £’s to showing kWh.
If you are not using anything then it should show 0 kWh.
It gets that kWh usage straight from the meter, and then uses the kWh to calculate £’s.

The £’s that an IHD calculates and shows you may not be using your actual current tariff.
The IHD stores the tariff it is using internally, and sometimes that stored tariff doesn’t get updated as it should.

Which means that your IHD may have the wrong tariff programmed into it, and so show you the wrong £s.
(eg. it might not have updated itself from a couple of years ago when prices were sky high).
If it does have the wrong tariff stored then that can usually be fixed by getting customer support to send it an update command.

As you say that the electricity also appears to be showing you a wrong £’s figure then it does sound as if it may be using the wrong tariff.

If you can tell us what type you IHD is, post a photo of it here, then someone can tell you how to check the tariff it’s is using etc.

PS. What does your actual ‘live’ billing say, either online or in the app?
Those will use your current tariff, so will be more accurate than the IHD.
Either one will also tell you what your actual tariff rates and standing charges are.

Hey ​@weso 

I’m glad to see one of our helpful users Nukecad has already stopped by with some helpful advice and questions here in order to also try and help further.

If you could clarify where it is you’re seeing these figures, we’ll be able to better assist if there’s a problem. The following topics may be of use to you here:

If you could answer some of the questions Nukecad asked above, we’ll try our best to point you in the best direction of what to do next.

I don’t know what’s going on but I’ve gone from an average daily gas use of around 2.5kWh each day for the past three months to suddenly the past week my account is showing a daily usage of 30kWh, even on days when I’m not home. 
My flat uses gas only for heating and hot water so I’m at a complete loss as to how I can be using such insane quantities of gas on days when I’m not even in the property. How have I gone through 23.5kWh of gas when I’ve spent the past two days at my partners house?!
Has anyone else noticed their readings have skyrocketed recently? 
I tried reaching out to customer service about in and after spending almost an hour trying to get in touch with an actual human I was left waiting for another 20 minutes while they “looked into it” then randomly the conversation was terminated and I was booted from the chat.

Where are you seeing these numbers?

Could you post a screenshot, (without any account numbers or personal details).

Some of the charts that you see on your account online will show Esitimates at times and depending on circumstances they can be wildly out.

They get corrected later.

You would not be the first to have a WTF? moment until you realise it's just a transitory estimate and not real.

OR

To put it another way I have suffered from an over inflated Gas Anual Quantity giving me excessive ‘estimated’ usage for a few years now. it is now sorting itself out for me now, but it can take 12 months.

​@Jambles good morning and a warm welcome to the Forum community.

As ​@Nukecad says, this could be due to estimates. Have you got a smart meter or a traditional meter? 

We’ll await your answers, and screenshots as requested by Nukecad.

Mine has increased but that’s due to a)testing boiler ok for approaching winter.

2. Boiler been on boost a few times during Oct for colder morning/evening. 
   It had only increased for the usage. 
   your bill could be estimated. 
   Contact Customer Support if you don’t get to bottom of this large increase on Forum. 
   I’ve always found Customer Support excellent when I’ve made contact. 
   Please keep us UPDATED on progress

Thanks for the positive feedback ​@chrisablake!

I'd always found the estimated readings to be pretty close to my actual usage, so when I saw it had increased tenfold out of nowhere that definitely set up alarm bells.

After many conversations with many customer service people, some very helpful and some obstinate to the point of pedantry, the meter was reset remotely and the readings on the account now match the actual usage again. I've also noticed since the meter was reset that there are now daily readings instead of monthly/every two months.