HUGE electricity bill!

jalexa

amie1234 wrote: »

Im beginning to think that it is our landlords fault for not checking that the meter is wired up right and for putting us on the wrong tariff when we moved in,

its N-powers fault for setting us up on a tariff that they knew we could never benefit from.

This is going to seem like some poster's "you've used the power so you have to pay" argument, except its not, because I don't rate that type of argument.

Regardless of fault here there is a central issue. Electric heating is not cheap, particularly day rate electricity. It is a technical characteristic of electric powered "wet" central heating that (1) it consumes a lot of power and (2) it requires powering during the electric "day". The system, for the usage you have stated, would have cost you big money whether or not the Heatwise element was correctly connected, used and billed.

IMO this Heatwise thing is red herring. Which is not to say it is correctly connected, used and billed.

BTW I disagree with a previous poster's "Heatwise is an awful tariff. Pay the £50 or so to Npower and change the meter for a standard meter then switch to the most competitive standard tariff you can find comment, without knowing more details. In principle, "Heatwise" (or Economy 10) is appropriate for electric "wet" central heating.

As the current account holder you need to determine (and hopefully post) what is the unit rate for each supply, specifically the Heatwise rate - and find out the hours the Heatwise supply is made available.

Then the landlord's electrician needs to check that the landlord's installation is correctly connected for the metering arrangement in place for the tariff being billed. A competent electrician should be able to determine whether or not the metering is appropriate. Then make recommendations to the landlord.

Regretably, whatever the outcome, this will never be a cheap heating system.

I'll restrict my criticism of you to one point, as a learning point for others, "in February we got a bill from N-power for £187. I thought this was a little low but paid it". That is the key moment which will determine where most of the responsibility lies (for the subsequent large bill). *If* the bill had estimated readings then you had the chance to provide customer reads. Almost certainly there was guidance about that on the bill. If you didn't take that chance then you are largely responsible. *If* the bill was "wrong", then NPower is responsible. But note there is no entitlement to backbilling relief over the the most recent 12 months. Errors can be corrected.

Look out the Feb bill and post the numbers *exactly* as they appear on the bill. Then the numbers on the next bill.

Terrylw1

amie1234 wrote: »

Hi Terry,

Would the MPAN be the 'supply number' noted on our bill? If so, we have two.

Weve only got one meter and there is aticker on it saying heatwise. There are also 5 rates on the meter but only one is advancing.

Im beginning to think that it is our landlords fault for not checking that the meter is wired up right and for putting us on the wrong tariff when we moved in, but also, as you say, its N-powers fault for setting us up on a tariff that they knew we could never benefit from.

So, do you think that I have a strong case- to get our bill recalculated? How they would do that, I dont know!

Thank you for your help

Hi,

I think some dodgy has gone on here. You should have 2 MPAN's and either 2 meters if a time switch style or 1 if a teleswitch (if memory serves me!).

You got the right number of MPAN's and clearly enough registers to record for a Heatwise but if only one is advancing it further says something dodgy has been done.

I think what has happened here is that it has been converted to a standard one rate meter by disabling the extra Heatwise functionality. This could be due to a rewire where all heating has been wired to the Day only consumer unit. I think anyway, I've never seen this on Heatwise before but I have seen it one to E7's in southern regions before the practice was stopped to disable the timeswitch.

Another question is what is your bill showing? If you've got a multirate set up with only the Day advancing, it should be alerting your supplier to investigate a potential faulty time switch. Its clearly not that since that engineer would have spotted it and sorted it out.

I still think there is a possibility that the previous occupant understood this and was being billed at standard somehow, but since you have 2 MPAN's, that's very dodgy as the supplier knows they can't do that to Heatwise metering, its a non compliant action...but not impossible in terms of producing bills.

I think you need to do a bit of digging with the landlord and supplier, then post some more info. If the supplier did this for the previous occupant, you can argue they knew and should have informed you to allow you to decide...but its such a one off, it would easily be missed hence an easy mistake on their part. If however, the landlord has caused all thus, the supplier has no need to rebill unless you can get them to agree to help...but they don't have to, it may be something complaints would do a a compromise though. Providing the wiring during changed after the meter was fit, the supplier has not knowingly fit something they shouldn't but, every time that meter is read, the Data Collector should be reporting it to them as a possible faulty time switch or at least the supplier would only see 1 register moving...this might help you turn it around on them for a compromise.

If they did rebill, they would just replace all bills back to your starting date by creating one new bill up yo when the meter gets changed. This would be on the standard rate and would show all previous payments. You have to check this is cheaper first, but I think you are a way off looking at this until you determine more about why its happened, when and who caused it.

nPower

Hi amie1234,

That all sounds a little confusing :-S

Can you send your account details and a copy of your query to [EMAIL="forumresponse@npower.com"]forumresponse@npower.com[/EMAIL] and I'll take a look into this for you?

Many thanks,

Adam

amie1234

Hi Adam,

Thank you for your message. I am at work at the moment but will list the information, along with that requested by others above, later tonight once I get home. Just to let you know, I have sent a letter to your complaints department explaining our situation, so it may be better for me to scan a copy for you?

We had arranged for N-power to fit us a new meter on 12th May (on the basis that we would then choose a tariff that was best for us). However, I've just had a letter through saying that we will be put on the 'standard' tariff with each unit costing us 18p! This would end up costing us more that it does now!

Im inclined to skip the new meter and ask instead, that we stay on the meter and tariff that we have now (heatwise) but just have the meter wired in right so that we actually benefit from the cheaper (night) units?

Thank you for your help,

Amie

nPower

Hi amie1234,

I've just received your emails and will get onto this right away!

Hopefully we will get to the bottom of it all

Many thanks,

Adam

Terrylw1

amie1234 wrote: »

Hi Adam,

Thank you for your message. I am at work at the moment but will list the information, along with that requested by others above, later tonight once I get home. Just to let you know, I have sent a letter to your complaints department explaining our situation, so it may be better for me to scan a copy for you?

We had arranged for N-power to fit us a new meter on 12th May (on the basis that we would then choose a tariff that was best for us). However, I've just had a letter through saying that we will be put on the 'standard' tariff with each unit costing us 18p! This would end up costing us more that it does now!

Im inclined to skip the new meter and ask instead, that we stay on the meter and tariff that we have now (heatwise) but just have the meter wired in right so that we actually benefit from the cheaper (night) units?

Thank you for your help,

Amie

Do some digging Amie, someone is at fault here.

If you have a 1 rate meter fitted, it will be standard rate but their are going to be deals that Heat wise wouldn't be accepted onto. Check those, but find out the rest some we can see if we can find out what has gone wrong.

amie1234

Hi everyone...thank you all for your continued help. Im going to try to answer your questions:

• On our bill we have no reference (other than the mpan and the 'Standard Heatwise' tariff name at the top) to a heatwise rate.
• The bill is split into 4 sections for the period of 06.08.11-30.09.11 (there are other similar periods but I'll use this as an example) The rates quoted are as follows: For the '24 hour' it states 'first 2377 at 13.5p' and a standing daily charge of 20.1p per day. There are then 3 more sections listed as Heat boost, Heat (part) and Heat (part) and the meter has not advanced for these last three readings. However, it lists the Heat boost cost as being 'first 0 at 12.4p' and the last 'Heat (part) as 'first 0 at 5.3p).
• I have given customer reads when I was asked for them.
• We only have 1 meter but we have 2 mpans.
• I've since spoken to the letting agents again and they have given me the meter readings that they took on the day we moved in. They took four readings: 14259, 02563, 16823 and 10026. But...when I look at the readings now the first is advancing but the last three are as follows: 0003, 3777, 00832. The last 3 readings have been the same since we moved in.

I spoke with n-power again today to see why this had happened and they said that the last three readings have been the same since before we moved in (possibly since 2008!). Then why did the letting agent note completely different readings? Confusing or what! N-power are also insisting that the property had storage heaters at some point and that the landlord shouldve told n-power that the storage heaters were taken out. The property has never had storage heaters!!!

Npower also said that the previous occupiers were on a tariff called 'super tariff domestic' which had an option to use a heat boost but that this had been removed in the past. Yet, we still have 'heat boost' showing on our bill- although this meter reading has not advanced.

Surely n-power should have noticed the problem before now?

Amie

Terrylw1

The letting agents have clearly messed up the readings they took and they never got used since the differ to the readings you say have never moved on the meter or bill.

A call centre operator won't fully understand the set up so they can't judge when it comes go storage heating. I think that's perhaps more an assumption than an expert opinion.

They say the issue has been going on since 2008, so they must have reading data going back that far to even see that. That proves something happened a long time ago.

If you want to know if the wrong meter was fit as the developer plans changed away from any initial plan Heat wise, ask Npower what the meter installation reads are as 3 of them will be the same as what you have now. If yours are higher, something has changed since the flats were built which means its your landlord that ha caused it. If the developers caused it, unless the landlord agreed the plans, its a bit of a cold trail unless you won't o go to court over it if its cost you.

One question though...do you live in the old Northern Electric area? Heat wise doesn't exist in that region, but that region is the only one that supports Super tariff metering. So, I suspect Npower have been making a bit of a mess by using invalid tariffs for the previous occupant which proves someone has Bern looking at the account. They are also responsible for taking readings every 24 months per SLC's so they should be taking readings. Every time they took a reading via a meter reader, it would have been reported as a potential faulty time switch. The supplier has an obligation to correct that. In your case, it sounds more like a wiring issue but the supplier should have got as far as we have in the few days and looked towards solutions such as changing the meter if the Heat wise is not required. Every reading you gave would also raise a flag about this. So, if you need back billing to a better product after changing the meter, pointing all this out will put them on the back foot.

Just remember, you need to be sure you have nothing wired to the other consumer units...which should be the case. If it got rewired, the sparky would provide a contractors completion certificate which the engineers need o check for safety before doing the job. Why not ask where that is if you can prove the the registers have all moved since it was installed (hence landlord rewired later)? If the landlord hasn't got one...its going to be dodgy by a non registered sparky. The engineer may have an issue over safety here and its his call, but if you are onsite it might help resolve it.

Keep posting though you've got a complex scenario here and I doubt complaints staff will understand it. They will probably need to get a metering expert to look at some elements of it.

jalexa

amie1234 wrote: »

We had arranged for N-power to fit us a new meter on 12th May (on the basis that we would then choose a tariff that was best for us).

Terrylw1 has expertly teased out there is billing problem to solve but the "best tariff for you" cannot be solved in isolation and indeed if the letting agent's tenancy agreement (on behalf of the owner) allows tenant meddling with the metering choice and/or the heating system connection then IMO it is an inadequately drafted tenancy agreement. It is not impossible you are the victim of some "meddling" during a previous tenancy as hinted by Terrylw1.

Heatwise (or a generic Ecomomy 10) tariff is appropriate for an electric "wet" heating system unless the system has storage (which is not the norm). While these metering systems are either not available in every region, or not comparable online, it is not an easy calculation that standard is cheaper. And without being critical I do not think that you (or the owner) has done that calculation recently. I'm guessing the decision was taken by the developer as best for the "as installed" heating system.

My suggestion is hold off the meter change until you have, the owner has agreed an appropriate connection for the property heating system and the letting agent has consented.

amie1234

Thanks Terryw1 and Jalexa,

I'm going to cancel our meter change until we have dug a little deeper into the problem.

Terryw1, we live in Northampton. I'm going to request some detailed info from our letting agents. They must have details of meter/tariff changes, readings etc... from previous tenants which might help fill in some gaps.

I'll keep posting...!

Thanks, Amie