September 2008 I changed my Gas and Electric powercard meter to paper billing. From then I received and paid for my bills quarterly, the only time we received a Scottish Gas person to read our meter was this month - 1 year after we changed our meter. Up until now we always thought our payments were fine up until I received my recent bill for nearly 700 pounds for the gas (thats supposed to be the quarterly bill) and nearly (300 for the electricity) I was extremely shocked and stressed by this so decided to contact Scottish Gas to inform them they had made a huge mistake. I got absolutely no sympathy from the girl I spoke to, apparently they do not have time to send someone out to read your meter, which is supposed to be every 3 months, so it is left up to the consumer ( I definately do not have time to spend hanging on the phone for hours!!!) Anyway, I (not the Scottish Gas member of staff) suggested a payment plan to pay it off - she simply said I had to pay the full amount in one go or pay 80.00 per month along with my normal quarterly bills - she would not accept me paying 50.00 per month which I suggested - so now I am left with a bill I cannot afford to pay - How many more people out there is this happening to?? It is shocking behaviour from a large company and very poor customer service to expect people to pay very excessive bills they cannot afford due to their negligence with reading bills every quarter - it should not be left to the consumer to phone in their reading each month, the consumer could quite deliberately provide an inaccurate reading!!! The responsibility should lye with the supplier or it should be made more easier and clearer how to provide these reading each month, instead of sending a huge bill expecting the consumer to pay in one go - do they not realise there is a ressession on!!! An extremely unhappy ex-customer.