Scot Power's strange arithmatic

dogshome

If you are with Scot. Power I hope you keep your Bills
Recently I went through the bills of a friend who before the latest rises, had, had a demand to increase D/Debits from £61.50 to £72.00, and having analised the bills for the last 3 years found that an increase of only 50pence was required which Scot. Power accepted as correct - BUT the excercise showed some very strange calculations on the bill 8 Apr 2007 toJuly 2007, a period of 88 days during which a tariff increase took place after 23 days.
The consumptions over this period were ELECT 445 units ( 5 a day)
GAS 2559 kWh (29.07 a day)
However Scot Power opted to charge just 7 units of Electricity and 63 Kwh of Gas to the 23 day original lower cost tariff, and the remaining balance to new higher tariff, but when the two tariffs are calculated on average daily use basis, the bill totals £4.50 less - it took two letters to Scot.Power before they agreed to credit the account with £4.50 - this sleight of hand billing is unforgiveable as during the period April - July, the demand for power and heat heat is falling with every day that passed
My efforts to recover £4.50 may seem small beer, but bear in mind that Scot Power use automated systems to produce their bills, so the only customers who have not suffered this con are those who have a billing date that coincides with the tariff change date, just one in every 365 customers, which adds up to millions of £'s in overbilling.
If you still have a Scot Power bill for April - July 2007 CHECK IT NOW

Premier_2

There's no con, there's no slight of hand, there's no over-billing.

What a customer pays monthly is added to an account

What a customer consumes as recorded by the meter is debited from the account.

If a customer pays too much, a credit balance will accrue; if a customer pays too little a debit balance will accrue. The suppliers monitor the balances and adjust payments accordingly (typically every 6 months).

If a customer doesn't like the system (like me!), they should choose a tariff that doesn't require monthly payments.

Cardew

This accusation of a 'con' on the allocation of units to pre-price rise and post-price rise periods for all companies comes up time and again.

Whilst obviously mistakes(both ways) will happen, any deliberate attempt to 'scam' customers would be conspiracy to defraud and whoever was responsible would face a custodial sentence and the company be fined £millions.

The allocation of units to each period is as you say automated. The algorithm for the computer is quite sophisticated and includes data from the Met Office on temperatures.

This algorithm is also independently audited. Any computer programmer that dared to alter it would be discovered, and anyway a whistle blower would probably report them.

From the figures your friend was charged for approx 600kWh(gas) and 100kWh(electric) at the wrong rate, which is a huge discrepancy on a relatively small bill.

I have no idea how this occurred, but I can only think it is something to do with estimated meter readings in a previous period.

As you analysed the bill for 3 years, and there have been several rises and a reduction? in that period, did you find any other similar instances.

Whilst, from your figures, there has obviously been a mistake, it is a massive leap to assume this is "sleight of hand billing" and a "con" affecting all all customers and a deliberate act of deception.

For instance, could it be possible that a mistake be made in favour of the customer?

If you are convinced that this is systematic fraud, I suggest you repost your allegations to the Regulator, The Office of Fair Trading(OFT) and perhaps the local police fraud squad.

mech_2

This kind of thing annoys me. It seems to happen a lot. No formula that factors in weather conditions can explain it if you look at the temperature record for that time of year. Maybe such systems are in place and rigorously audited, but I dare say a human can intervene on any customer account at any time and screw with the figures. If in just a few minutes 4 pounds can be added to a bill it's easy to see how this is cost effective if applied to many customer accounts. And if challenged they will blame it on a once-off operator error, so no authority will be intervene for the occasional complaint by a few eagle-eyed customers for 3 or 4 pounds at a time.

The only way around it is to choose an energy supplier that allows you to submit meter readings at any time and doesn't ignore the readings you give them. Luckily Scottish Power is OK at this in my experience. Submit readings regularly. Once a month, or more often if speculation about price rises are being mentioned in the media.

My water supplier did this. They "misread" the meter just a week or so before a price rise. Any fool should have been able to see that 1 unit in 6 months wasn't very likely. But even after giving the right reading it was all at the new rate. It cost me an extra £3.60. Not enough to make a fuss about, but the principle of the thing annoyed me. And of course the water company is a monopoly, so I can't switch away in disgust.

catford

mech wrote: »

This kind of thing annoys me. It seems to happen a lot. No formula that factors in weather conditions can explain it if you look at the temperature record for that time of year. Maybe such systems are in place and rigorously audited, but I dare say a human can intervene on any customer account at any time and screw with the figures. If in just a few minutes 4 pounds can be added to a bill it's easy to see how this is cost effective if applied to many customer accounts. And if challenged they will blame it on a once-off operator error, so no authority will be intervene for the occasional complaint by a few eagle-eyed customers for 3 or 4 pounds at a time.

The only way around it is to choose an energy supplier that allows you to submit meter readings at any time and doesn't ignore the readings you give them. Luckily Scottish Power is OK at this in my experience. Submit readings regularly. Once a month, or more often if speculation about price rises are being mentioned in the media.

My water supplier did this. They "misread" the meter just a week or so before a price rise. Any fool should have been able to see that 1 unit in 6 months wasn't very likely. But even after giving the right reading it was all at the new rate. It cost me an extra £3.60. Not enough to make a fuss about, but the principle of the thing annoyed me. And of course the water company is a monopoly, so I can't switch away in disgust.

I have been with them over a year and they have tried to put up my direct debit three times.:eek: Each time I was in credit and on two occasions when I phoned they agreed that the increase was not needed and reverted to the former payment.
This time they tried to increase my payment by £32. I still have plenty of credit but could only get it down to a £13.95 increase.:mad:
Time to look around I think

HaushinkaGreenDay

Hi dogshome,

Funny that, my friend had a similar thing happen to her with British Gas.

I'd got suspicious when she mentioned getting a cheque back for £140 in April this year - surely most ppl on monthly DD are in debit or around £0 at that time of year.

Anyway, I had a look at her bills over the summer and it turns out a meter reading taken by meter plus in August 2007 had either been mis-read or incorrectly entered, resulting in a stupidly low gas calc over the winter (8kWh a day!!).

When the next (customer) meter reading had been submitted in August 2008, there was of course a massive jump and BG calculated this at the January 2008 onwards tariff. They didn't notice the massive indescrepancy, ie 25000 kWh used over summer!!!

Anyway, my friend, armed with this info, managed to get it sorted properly by asking BG to re-calculate for the winter period at the correct (pre-Jan 08) tariff for those months preceding the price rise.

Turned out to be about £200 difference (refund) over the year, but unfortunately due to the refund of £140 in April 2008, plus the automatic reduction in DD since Nov 2007, she's had to up her monthly amounts to compensate for the debit.

Moral of these stories: Always take regular meter readings, submit them to your energy provider if you can, and record them so you can check your bills when they come - don't just assume your energy provider is right!!!

Haushinka

dogshome

Thanks for the comments and to establish the baseline, I would point out my friend is on an online tariff with Scot. Power and no bills have been issued on estimate readings. So far as supplier reviews of the customers Debit/Credit account are concerned, these are based only on consumption and the the bottom line of the customers bills - Any error in the calculations leading up to the final figure on a bill will not be detected, unless the customer checks it in fine detail.
Scot Power may well be using an complex algorithym to post calculate power use over a given period, but everyone makes a mistake sometime and who ever wrote the software for this particular period, got it wrong in spades.
You don't have to have a degree in computer science to know that between
April and July the daylight hours get longer each day and customers turn on the light only when it gets dark.
I maintain my ground - By this flying-in-the-face of logic calculation that produced very low consumption figures for the cheaper tariff period and abnormally high consumption for the more expensive tariff period, Scot. Power added millions to their bottom line, and, when challenged they offered no explanation for the figures, they just coughed up the £4.50 overcharge