Solar energy - Feed-in Tariff payment delays - your experiences?

EricMears

Tarkusha wrote: »

I submitted my FIT meter reading on July 4th.
As of today (6th Aug) I have still not received any payment from Scottish Power. I telephoned them last week and was told the amount that I was owed and assured that payment would be in my account by the end of last week. Disgusting service - I wonder what would happen if I delayed paying my gas/electricity bill for a month !

Just managed to speak to someone at Scottish Power - they now say my payment will be made by BACS (slowest possible means) week commencing 12th August. They say that this is "within the guidelines"! Is it any wonder people hate energy companies !

When they did that to me, I reminded them that their 'guidelines' promise payment "within 28 days". For that (and for dreaming up a stupid intermediate figure for 1st April in spite of me having given them an actual reading) they insisted on sending me £30 compensation.

Common_Man

Credit where it's due.

Emailed reading to EON 6-00 PM 31st July. Money appeared in my

bank today (8th Aug.)

Can't really complain about that.

Gardener43

Well, despite receiving an acknowledgement email on 4.8.13 stating a senior complaints handler would contact me shortly, no one has. So I just phoned them again. My cheque is still in a holding pattern somewhere, along with my complaint. I thought I'd take the opportunity to remind them of the cheque they sent me July 2012. It was for £100 more than I expected and, being the honest person I am, I phoned them to ask what they wanted to do. They wanted the cheque back, so I posted it (at my own expense, I might add) and received the correct one some weeks later, but devoid of any thanks or acknowledgement. It galled me at the time, but I had the moral high ground, so what the hell. Anyway, I thought I'd add this to the pot. I do the right thing and I expect nothing less of BG. To say they have admin problems in April, which are still there 3 months later is a bit grim. BG admitted that this problem has affected lots of FIT customers, but why does the customer have to chase them up?
So that's the latest. The 2 working day rule applies (supposedly) this time, so I should have spoken to this senior person by Wednesday of next week.

Gardener43

Well, it's now over 30 working days from the date of my reading and still no cheque. I have had a phone call today from a lady from the FIT complaints section. She kindly pointed out that the email reminder was a'courtesy' and that the onus was on the customer to supply the quarterly gen readings (numerous references by her to the T & Cs for FIT). She either wouldn't or couldn't see that the sudden introduction of this 'courtesy' could be perceived by customers as a change in that onus. She also insisted that the lack of email reminder for me was a 'one off' and that as far as she was aware, no other customer had been affected by this IT glitch. I did say that I was aware of at least one other customer with the same issue and she immediately came back the standard 'I can't discuss any other customers account with you'. "I wasn't asking you to discuss a customer account, you brought up other customers. I was merely pointing out that your IT dept (or you) were under the misconception that only I was affected".
Anyway, I told her I didn't want her courtesy reminder email, so she could file that particular problem somewhere. I had never asked for it and the system prior to it's introduction had worked perfectly fine for me. She told me the cheque had been posted yesterday, and as I hadn't received it and we were outside the 30 working day limit, I could have a £10 credit on my electricity account (or a gift voucher for major high street stores for some other amount, which is of no use to me as I detest shopping).
So there we are. BG FiT customers, take note. The email reminder is a courtesy. In my experience, if you use it, it does not mean that you will automatically get a cheque, or that the reading has been added to your account. And yet the onus is on you (the customer) to ensure the quarterly readings are submitted (see T & Cs). All very uncertain, so I shall stick to the tried and tested way of just emailing the FiT team every quarter, quoting every possible reference I can think of (plus full address).

John_Pierpoint

My 'courtesy' email from BG has arrived' fortunately I was only away "on holiday" for a week, so I have keyed in the reading on-line and got back:

Thank you for your Feed-in Tariff meter reading


What happens now?


If you have responded to our email request to provide a quarterly meter reading, your Feed-in Tariff payment will be sent to you within the next 28 days.
If there is a query, one of our team will contact you.
To visit the British Gas Homepage, click here.

Seanymph

Common man you are lucky!

I sent mine on the 4th and phoned them today (having received their acknowledging email) to be told they had 'issues with their emails' and that my reading had not been received. They also tried to tell me I had to wait until the next quarter was due (this is EON).

I have put up a thread about it so people can be warned, but if you have submitted a reading to Eon best to check it has arrived otherwise if you wait and are outside your '7 day window' you will end up waiting another quarter before you can submit again.

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Seanymph wrote: »

Common man you are lucky!

I sent mine on the 4th and phoned them today (having received their acknowledging email) to be told they had 'issues with their emails' and that my reading had not been received. They also tried to tell me I had to wait until the next quarter was due (this is EON).

I have put up a thread about it so people can be warned, but if you have submitted a reading to Eon best to check it has arrived otherwise if you wait and are outside your '7 day window' you will end up waiting another quarter before you can submit again.

Hi Seanymph

I've just posted on the separate thread you've started on this topic as per the following link.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/62844287#Comment_62844287

Hope this helps.

Malc

delboybiker

Is it me or have Scottish Power suddenly started delaying payment?
For the first year it was always within two weeks but this one is now 40 days plus and still waiting:-(

KevinG

delboybiker wrote: »

Is it me or have Scottish Power suddenly started delaying payment?
For the first year it was always within two weeks but this one is now 40 days plus and still waiting:-(

Hi - there is a separate thread about Scottish Power. My last payment took 22 days. It certainly should not take more than 28 days - you need to complain to them.

beansy

Sent my e-mail reading to Eon for this qtr late evening on 23 Aug and payment was in my bank account yesterday.