Economy 7 & Daytime meters switched

rich2k2

This week I got a letter from E.ON telling me the electricty charges were going up again and it prompted me to head for the uswitch.co.uk site. I live in a flat so I don't have gas but I do have economy 7 for the storage heaters and immersion tank.

For the price comparison on uswitch I opted to use KWH for the last year to get a more accurate comparison. Imagine my delight when it said I could switch to British Gas for my electric supply and save over £600 per year. But then as I was reviewing the figures I discovered something puzzling. The daytime KWH for the year was over 7,000 but the overnight KWH was around 2,400. After checking through the year's bills I had to conlcude this must be wrong and my initial thought was that the automatic switchover to Economy 7 couldn't be working properly.
I rang E.ON customer services to query it. They put me on to the meter time switch team.

Armed with a torch and the wireless phone I was instructed to investigate the meter cupboard where it immediately became apparent that the lower meter reading was the daytime meter. The distribution company had changed the meter to an electronic one in 2004 and had recorded the meters the wrong way round. Both meters were initially at zero.

So it turns out that Energi and then subsequently Powergen/EON have been charging me the daytime rate for all my overnight electricity and the E7 rate for my daytime electricity since the meter was changed. Using a quick calculation based upon the average difference between the lower daytime rate and the E7 rate, I calculated they have overcharged me to the tune of £1,900 over the last 4 years. :mad: I am now waiting for them to recalculate and decide how they are going to compensate me.

In the meantime, I put the revised figures into uswitch the right way round and it advised me I could still save over £300 per year by switching from E.ON to British Gas.

It's worth checking if you have two meters that the utility company is using the right meters for its billing. :money:

stressfulife

Surely if you have been vastly overcharged for night rate this means you must have been vastly undercharged on the daytime hours (at E7 rates).
And I'm sure the lovely and benevolant Eon wouldnt want a penny of it back!!

brysiewysie

No it looks like the OP has had 7000 units charged at the higher daytime rate and 2400 at the lower night rate. It seems that he has been over-charged. It usually takes a number of days to get a revised corrected bill out.

This usually happens becuase either the people fitting the meter bodge it or the early readings are transposed by the customer or meter reader because they are so similar. Neither are usually the fault of the supplier or the customer and it is worth keeping an eye out for this type of problem after any multiple rate meter is exchanged.