Southern Electric price rise rip off

lovelyjubbly

Some of this thread was posted by me before, so if you have read some of it, forgive me for posting it again, but it was necesary to get the whole picture

I had a leaflet from Southern Electric saying that they were putting their prices up as from 1st January 2006, no great suprise there, in the leaflet they say - Quote “even though the majority of our competitors have increased their prices, we wanted you to be able to take advantage of cheaper fuel bill over the christmas period”. So I was suprised when a meter reader turned up on 23rd December, We only ever have our meter read in May.

I made sure that I read the meter as soon as he left so that I would know what the reading was then. I then read the meter on the morning of 1st January to get my end of year reading. On 5th January a bill arrived, we usually get it at the end of January, the bill used the same meter reading that the meter reader took on 23rd December, that would mean that all the electric I used over christmas would be charged at the higher rate, this was in total contrast to the leaflet they sent me as you can see above, I phoned them up and told them about it and the woman said that the reading on the bill was very accurate, I told her that it was taken on 23rd December and that I wanted to give my exact reading so that my christmas usage was at the old rate as promised in the leaflet, she reluctantly took my reading. now I know the difference is only a couple of pounds, but if you multiply that by all their customers it is a lot of extra money for them, as people may have used more electric thinking it was still at the old rate, I know the meter readers have a lot of meters to read, but the company could have given its customers their moneys worth by reading all the meters after 1st January which would have been much fairer.

if anyone else is s southern electricity customer I suggest they check their bill very carefully and phone in your new year meter reading.

Cardew

You are absolutely correct, I think that 'scam' is used by other utility companies as well.

It is even more of a problem with Estimated bills. You would be surprised how low your consumption is before the price rate date and how it increases after that.

Xbigman

In all fairness your next bill should have a small percentage (1/13th?) at the old rate to allow for the odd week, but you can bet they will estimate that bill and come out ahead if its inaccurate.

You have done the right thing and phoned in accurate readings, which they must use.

This also applies when switching suppliers. You are asked to give a reading before a switch. Sometimes this works in your favour, but if it doesn't then do as above, phone in actual readings on the day of the switch.
Regards



X

lovelyjubbly

one of the points I was trying to make was that the bill sent to me on the 5th Jan actually said 'bill up to 31st Dec' which wasn't true, my normal bill is sent to me (usually)at the end of January at which time I would have expected a portion of it to be at the old rate, there fore they were saying that the readind was up to the end of the year, all those people who dont regularly read their meters wont notice that the reading is slightly out and will probably pay the extra withour realising.