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

orrery

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

- it may well help to explain the tensions within the Euro area, as it is an anathema to the Germans..

Off topic, I'm sure, but I've raised invoices to companies in the Netherlands and Germany last month and both are now overdue.

John_Pierpoint

Perhaps they too are having their standards undermined?
There are two reasons why payments are late:
The organisation is badly organised and managed, so the records are inaccurate and even when the "Is" have been dotted and the "Ts" crossed at the order stage there could be a pile of unprocessed invoices in the bottom drawer of overworked under paid "Lucy", who is on maternity leave.
The other possibility is that the administration is really on top of its game and supplies are passed for payment within 48 hours of delivery but the finance department deliberately withholds payment until the pips squeak. GEC was operating the latter model in my experience.
The Dutch are lovely laid-back-tolerant, but commercial people to work with, and perhaps as a foreigner I cannot recognise underlying passions and prejudices.

My experience of helping to maintain a Europe wide commercial system is somewhat out of date now, but the Germans still tended to have a bit of the master race arrogance of we are the engineers and we know how to do things efficiently, about them.
I think I would take the line that "can you help me burrow out the inefficiency in this process" [I loved finding invoices that were inaccurate and rejecting them, with a bit of luck that would be at least another 30 days of free money - do it once get it right first time The East Germans were good at playing that card because the DDR was always short of real money]. With a bit of luck the pride of the German finding the bottleneck will put you transaction on top of the pile.

Just one final thought are you fitting in with local custom and practice, in terms of sale and terms of payment; could you be the skinflint foreigner who is at the bottom of the pile because you are doing it "wrong" (I am assuming you are bearing the exchange risk/reward and invoicing in Euro?)?

In some ways I had a sympathy for GEC: If you live in an economy, where the politicians can see no benefit from an honest currency and are hell bent on inflating it, only a fool would pay on time.

Uitlander

EricMears wrote: »

All of them will claim they're entitled to delay payment until end of month following you reporting month so you can always force payment in 32 days if you report close to end of month.

And all of them sometimes do a lot better than that.

I take the view that I don't really care if the cash turns up next day or six weeks later - it's a bit of a bonus really and I'm not depending on it to pay any bills. But agree it would be nice if they just got on and paid on receipt of readings - anything else must be costing them money to keep a transaction 'active' when it could have been paid & filed.

Their contract with me requires me to report readings on specified dates. I do this. In return I expect them to keep up their end of the bargain and issue the payments due. Late payment does cause me difficulties and as other have commented it usually down to either poor staffing, or a conscious ploy to defer. Either way it smacks of a company acting in bad faith which undermines the basis of the contract in place. Whether it is possible to move providers remains to be seen, but I would rather name and shame SSE for sharp business practices than sit back and suck it up. YMMV.

orrery

A round of applause for EDF, please.

Reading reported late Sunday evening - 15th. Email advising of payment received today (18th), with a note that they were having problems with email, so this could have been delayed. Just checked the bank and the money is there already!

jennifernil

We submitted our reading on the 12th, to EDF and money was in the bank on the 18th.

Slower than previously, but not too bad.

Dave_Fowler

Submitted readings to EDF on 11th Dec. Still waiting - so it's not all good news. But, according to their T&C, I could be waiting until near the end of March!

Dave F

jennifernil

Our payment was actually in the bank before we got the e mail saying they (EDF) had sent it.

Nikki

jennifernil wrote: »

Our payment was actually in the bank before we got the e mail saying they (EDF) had sent it.

Ours too, submitted our reading on the 2nd Dec, payment on the 12th, email on the 19th.

Dave_Fowler

Dave_Fowler wrote: »

Submitted readings to EDF on 11th Dec. Still waiting - so it's not all good news. But, according to their T&C, I could be waiting until near the end of March!

Dave F

The money has now arrived in the account, but still no email to confirm how the amount is split between the two systems and FIT / Export.

Previously there have been 4 separate payments into the account 2 x (FIT and Export); this time only one payment which is quite close (within 16p) of the total amount I was expecting. It is never exactly what I expected, usually a few pence in their favour.

Dave F

The_Truth_Is_Out_There

Southern Electric used to pay within the 28 days. But recently told me the Government have extended that time to 65 days. So it seems they are making full use of the extra time for the money in their account... All that interest and everything !.