Scottish Power Economy 7 Compensation for fault?

FOXGLOVE_2

Hi

I'll try to make this as brief and clear as possible.

Just before Christmas, I started having a problem with my hot water. I have Economy 7 meters and my supplier is Scottish Power. Normally, the full tank of water is heated overnight and always has plenty hot water left into early evening for dishes.
All of a sudden, the water wasnt being heated so I phoned up Scottish Power and my landlord (a housing association) to have it looked at. A heating engineer came out from the housing and fitted new elements into the tank incase the water wasnt being heated properly.
The problem continued and they came out again to check it over. They couldnt find any problem with the tank etc so told me to contact Scottish Power as they couldn't touch the equipment or meters.
Scottish Power came out and couldnt find anything wrong.
I contacted them again and they agreed to come out and replace the day and night meters.
Still no change.

Now, along the way, I've been told how the Economy 7 meter thing works and know this has something to do with the Radio Teleswitch box that sits alongside my meters. When this box receives a signal (around midnight) it turns on the power to heat the water and stays on til around 7am.

Apparantly, I should hear a 'clunk' when this is turned on and on the front of the box, there are two little windows that should turn orange to signify the night meter is on. I plan to have a look at this when I get up in the morning (around 4am) to see if the radio teleswitch is activated or not.

So I spoke to Scottish Power this afternoon, asking them if they can send someone out to look at it as the last appointment resulted in new meters being installed and as far as I can see, the teleswitch remained untouched.

The girl I spoke to didnt really know what the fault was (it's probably not the most common fault) and said that it sounded like the boiler and element. She confessed to not knowing too much about this teleswitch thing and that I should call the meter liasion dept tomorrow morning.

Now, to avoid them passing the buck to my landlord, the heating engineer said I should forward Scottish Power to them - who have details of work carried out on water tank element etc to prove its not an issue with their equipment.

Considering this has been going on since Christmas and I'm having to use the boost function during the day (which costs a lot more) to supply hot water, I'm getting a bit cheesed off with it all.

I read another post on here where a Scottish Power customer was without power for over 24 hours and received compensation as it was in the T&C's that they were entitled to claim this from Scottish Power.

Anyone know what I should do here? Can I claim back the cost of using peak power for heating or will I qualify for the daily rate of compensation?

The post I read about the compensation payment said they got £41 for just over 4 nights of loss of service.

It'll be around 3 months I've been trying to sort this! :mad:

Thanks in advance for any advice or info.

Premier_2

Read the meter registries now. Read them again in the morning.

If both low rate & normal rate have increased, there is no problem with the teleswitch

Edit: have you checked the fuse/circuit breaker that controls the off peak immersion element? If an engineer fitted a new immersion heater, it sounds like the old one was broken; that could lead to a circuit breaker tripping which the engineer may not have spotted since the circuit is presumably only live at night.

FOXGLOVE_2

Premier wrote: »

Read the meter registries now. Read them again in the morning.

If both low rate & normal rate have increased, there is no problem with the teleswitch

Edit: have you checked the fuse/circuit breaker that controls the off peak immersion element? If an engineer fitted a new immersion heater, it sounds like the old one was broken; that could lead to a circuit breaker tripping which the engineer may not have spotted since the circuit is presumably only live at night.

Do you mean the rows of switches that sometimes flick over when a lightbulb goes or a switch trips?

I've checked all switches there and theyre all on.

Premier_2

FOXGLOVE wrote: »

Do you mean the rows of switches that sometimes flick over when a lightbulb goes or a switch trips?

I've checked all switches there and theyre all on.

Yes, that's the ones.
Not that problem then if they are all on.

FOXGLOVE_2

Wonder if Scottish Power do payout for this kind of thing...

Premier_2

FOXGLOVE wrote: »

Wonder if Scottish Power do payout for this kind of thing...

I think you need to discover the root cause of the problem before hoping for any compensation.

Check the meter as I described earlier.

If the meter is actually at fault, then the supplier may take your actual usage as recorded and estimate the split between night and day based on previous usage

spiro

Premier wrote: »

Yes, that's the ones.
Not that problem then if they are all on.

There may be a 2nd curcuit that only activates at night, check if this is active. Having said that if the afternoon boost causes the water to heat up it sounds like the curcuit between the meter and the immersion heater is OK.

As already suggest read the night rate on your meter before going to bed and again in the morning, if it has not moved it is not switching.

Premier_2

spiro wrote: »

There may be a 2nd curcuit that only activates at night, check if this is active. Having said that if the afternoon boost causes the water to heat up it sounds like the curcuit between the meter and the immersion heater is OK.

...

As you suggest, it's not clear from the set up how the immersion heaters are wired up.

It could be that the main heating element is wired to a separate circuit to the boost heating element. This would not be unusual where there is a 2 rate electricity supply.

Ignite

Do you have storage heaters? Are these heating up overnight? If so, then there is probably nothing wrong with the Eco7 metering. It might be worth asking for an electrician to come out and check the wiring.