Please somebody advise us! Powergen charges.

BonnyBunny

Hi, I have been desperately seeking Powergen tariffs online but they aren't there. The reason is, our bills for a small bungalow are horrendous and we do not know why.

We moved in at Christmas 2005 with a Heatwise meter and all-electric heating (storage heaters) so we expected a high bill but by the time they deigned to respond to our enquiries we owed over £300, which they asked us to pay off £100 a month.

However, ever since then our account, they tell us, is in constant debit, and (despite £100 a month direct debit) we still owe £184. This seems just too high.

We cannot change provider as (we are informed) it would require a new meter because Heatwise is an East Midlands old technology that nobody else does.

Anyway, we phoned today and the girl told us, you are being charged business rates! Phew we thought, we will get a refund, BUT they then phoned back and said you ARE domestic rates after all. Hmmmm.

We have no way to account for spending over £100 a month especially in the Summer. And I can't find anywhere to check if the tariffs are correct. Does anybody know???

It says on the letter explaining the new charges (August 06) that the primary rate is now 17.61 (inc VAT), the secondary unit is 9.66, heatwise standing charge 7.46 per day, heatwise day (afternoon) unit 4.73, night rate 4.73 .

Are these the domestic charges, or the business ones? Because if they have charged us wrongly we need a refund. Please anyone, can you get back to us before we break the bank.

stewie_griffin

Those prices are definately domestic and not business. Have you checked to make sure your bills are based on actual readings and not estimates?

Gal

I can get you the information on heatwise tomorrow when I am back at work.

Cardew

Those prices seem correct.

The only way to work out if your account is correct is to check consumption in kWh from when you moved in until the last bill and do some arithmetic.

Bear in mind that there will probably have been a price change this year at sometime.

oldrimes

A friend on Heatwise has also found it to be quite expensive. If you can do without the afternoon and evening topups of power to the storage heaters then I think you can switch to other providers.

Make sure the bills are based on actual meter readings. There are effectively 4 meters that have to be read with heatwise. Powergen contract out the meter readings to other companies, and problems can arise in communicating the 4 actual meter readings. The meter reading company may be recording the 4 meter readings, but Powergen may not be getting all 4 readings through on their computer systems.

You must keep every bill they send, as current bills relate or fix problems in earlier bills. Also keep a record of your correspondence or communications with them. If you are unable to ascertain how the charges are being calculated, keep asking them for an explanation. Heatwise is complicated because there are 4 meter readings required to calculate power used.

If things still don't seem to add up, and you feel you have given Powergen plenty of opportunity to resolve / explain things - then I'd advise putting it into the hands of Energy Watch.

In my experience, any problem involving Powergen can take a fair bit of time and effort to resolve, and progress is only made when Energy Watch are involved.

Having seen some of their 'explanations' of power bill's, you'd need a maths degree to understand how they arrived at them. Neither myself nor Energy Watch were able to understand how Powergen were calculating my friends bills - 4 different meters to read and a random mixture of estimated and actual readings used in bills, basically it was a complete mess. It took 1 1/2 years to resolve her problems.

Best wishes, and hope your problems are resolved quickly.