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Energy Prices


Captain Howdy
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Just had my first quarterly bill from BG since I got handed over from the outstanding company that was peoples energy.      £1,893    U WOT M8.       BG , don’t ya just love their incompetence . This will no doubt take me weeks if not months of endless phone calls to sort out.  These bastards need jailing.

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7 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

Just had my first quarterly bill from BG since I got handed over from the outstanding company that was peoples energy.      £1,893    U WOT M8.       BG , don’t ya just love their incompetence . This will no doubt take me weeks if not months of endless phone calls to sort out.  These bastards need jailing.

Have you used that much energy? The tariff you were on at Peoples led to them going under, why would you expect BG to honour it? 

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29 minutes ago, Rico1304 said:

Have you used that much energy? The tariff you were on at Peoples led to them going under, why would you expect BG to honour it? 

I was £440 in credit when peoples went under, I then paid £280 to BG up to mid December and they’re now telling me from mid December to yesterday is £1,893.

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6 minutes ago, Captain Howdy said:

I was £440 in credit when peoples went under, I then paid £280 to BG up to mid December and they’re now telling me from mid December to yesterday is £1,893.

Did you submit meter readings to get that bill? I've had a couple of times where the bill's been a bit weird, but as soon as I submitted readings it got corrected very quickly.

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6 minutes ago, Mudface said:

Did you submit meter readings to get that bill? I've had a couple of times where the bill's been a bit weird, but as soon as I submitted readings it got corrected very quickly.

No they told me they could take them from my smart meter but that doesn’t seem to be working, I’ve tried the app which apparently tracks your usage but surprise surprise it’s utterly useless, shows me as using something like £80 a month. A long process ahead I fear.

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1 hour ago, Captain Howdy said:

No they told me they could take them from my smart meter but that doesn’t seem to be working, I’ve tried the app which apparently tracks your usage but surprise surprise it’s utterly useless, shows me as using something like £80 a month. A long process ahead I fear.

Their App is fucking brutal.

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2 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

I was £440 in credit when peoples went under, I then paid £280 to BG up to mid December and they’re now telling me from mid December to yesterday is £1,893.

If your credit was based on an estimated reading it may not have reflected the true position. Did you take a reading when Peoples went under and is the new bill based on a true reading? 

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Twice I have ended up going to the ombudsman whilst dealing with BG. Won the first one and the second one took approx 2 years after leaving them before BG actually contacted me to say I owed them money. Absolutely brutal to deal with. 

I vowed I would never go back, unfortunately People's energy went under and I have been automatically transferred to BG. After approx 6 months, I have gotten my first bill from BG and I will be transferring asap. Absolutely horrible company to deal with.

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I would make sure your energy company is working off actual meter readings every month. If you have a smart meter, they should be getting readings anyway. If you have SMETS2, they should be able to pull readings for any date automatically. If you have a SMETS1 and it's been registered with the DCC*, it's likely that it will only submit readings on a certain date each month. Get your energy company to update their billing calendar to fall in line with that, especailly if you are trying to avoid estimated bills.

 

Nowadays, you can submit readings by calling, emailing or even using an online portal or app. The way most energy company systems work is based on Estimated Annual Consumption (EAC). The more actual readings the system gets, the more accurate the estimates are. There will be times when an estimate is required, such as on the day the rates change, and this estimate is much more likely to fall in line with actual usage if there are months of actual readings before it.

 

If you think you have a credit balance, make sure your company has billed you up to date (ie, to an actual readings from within 14 days) and then that will show your true account balance, which you can have refunded if you're still in credit.

 

* This is the ballachy reason why your company asks for readings even though you have a smart meter. SMETS1 smart meters were only designed to communicate directly with the supplier that fitted them, so they effective go 'dumb' when the customer switches to someone else. The new supplier has to submit a request to the DCC for the permissions concerning data collection and data usage from the SMETS1 meters, and this process can take anything from a few weeks to a few months as the DCC are working through a backlog of requests. During this time, the meter cannot send readings so the customer has to do it. SMETS2 are universal in that the permissions automatically transfer between suppliers when the customer switches.

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33 minutes ago, Scooby Dudek said:

Twice I have ended up going to the ombudsman whilst dealing with BG. Won the first one and the second one took approx 2 years after leaving them before BG actually contacted me to say I owed them money. Absolutely brutal to deal with. 

I vowed I would never go back, unfortunately People's energy went under and I have been automatically transferred to BG. After approx 6 months, I have gotten my first bill from BG and I will be transferring asap. Absolutely horrible company to deal with.

Yep that’s been my experience, woman on phone today was all over the fucking place. 

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1 hour ago, Trumo said:

 

* This is the ballachy reason why your company asks for readings even though you have a smart meter. SMETS1 smart meters were only designed to communicate directly with the supplier that fitted them, so they effective go 'dumb' when the customer switches to someone else. The new supplier has to submit a request to the DCC for the permissions concerning data collection and data usage from the SMETS1 meters, and this process can take anything from a few weeks to a few months as the DCC are working through a backlog of requests. During this time, the meter cannot send readings so the customer has to do it. SMETS2 are universal in that the permissions automatically transfer between suppliers when the customer switches.

Increasingly, SMETS1 meters will stay (relatively) smart upon switching.  Not a trivial task, interoperability, let me tell you.

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4 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

I was £440 in credit when peoples went under, I then paid £280 to BG up to mid December and they’re now telling me from mid December to yesterday is £1,893.

Thinly veiled 'didn't think a grow room in the attic would consume that much leccy' post.

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2 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

Yep that’s been my experience, woman on phone today was all over the fucking place. 

Make sure you put a complaint in when it's sorted and tell them you expect a 'goodwill' gesture for all the fucking about you've had. Start at 50 quid but if they offer 25, take it. Recently got 25 quid out of Octopus because of the balls up of service they've given me since they became my supplier of last resort.

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My monthly direct debit with Octopus looks to be going up to £150 per month from the £92 I was currently paying. They’re saying my combined gas and electricity is going up by just over £700 per year, which is marginally better than my two sisters who are both with British Gas and have been told their bills are going up by £800 for the combined gas and electricity.

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