EDF direct debit manipulation

snowcat53

A reply from the CS director on my complaint, still leaving many questions unanswered.
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"I can confirm the Direct Debit review that was completed in September 2012 was not Mrs X’s annual review, and was an interim review triggered by us obtaining accurate meter readings. The main point of this review is to ensure payments are covering energy consumption and to estimate what needs to be paid in order to bring the annual review balance to zero.

At this point, we estimated Mrs X’s consumption for the year would be £523.16 for electricity and £958.86 for gas. During the period January to September, we received payments totalling £1125; £387 of which was allocated towards electricity usage and £738 towards gas usage. This meant there was a shortfall between payments received and the estimated annual consumption. We automatically calculated what needed to be paid for the next two months to ensure that the account balance was close to zero by the time we completed the annual review.

There were only two payments remaining of £178 needed to ensure the correct amount had been paid. A payment of £178 was received on 1 November 2012 and a Warm Home Discount rebate of £130 was credited to on 13 November 2012. Prior to this, Mrs X also received a £45 Fuel Support payment in July 2012. These figures added together almost covered the additional £178 payment required. When we completed the annual Direct Debit review, the balance was up to date and ongoing payments remained the same.

Mrs X’s Direct Debit is currently at £130 per month; £50 for electricity and £80 for gas and based on current consumption levels, I can confirm this is correct. "

jalexa

snowcat53 wrote: »

A reply from the CS director on my complaint, still leaving many questions unanswered...

Just commenting on one point. I think Edf have massively shot themselves in the foot. They have admitted they perform a "short-year" calculation "we automatically calculated what needed to be paid for the next two months to ensure that the account balance was close to zero by the time we completed the annual review". It was "short-year" calculation (not 'spring review') that did for E.ON. Whoops.

I assume the 'annual review' date was around Nov/Dec?

The Edf payment scheme may intend to achieve a zero balance at annual review but the published mechanism is that debit balances of less than £150 per fuel will be recovered over the following 12 months. That's what the write-up says but here we have a shortfall (£107?) which could (or should) be recovered over 12 months being recovered over 2 months.:eek:

So not so much a case of direct debit manipulation but CS Director sanctioned payment scheme manipulation which is immeasurably more serious.

PS:
Still awaiting an explanation and the above explanation won't work for me.

snowcat53

The annual review was December.

I am trying hard to follow what you mean about short year calculation (I'm sure it's me) - can you explain why you think that is so significant?

They haven't stated how they calculated the estimated annual bill - at first sight it matches my figure almost exactly if it includes DD discount and warmhome and fuel support discounts. The original DD of 125 over 12m would have balanced within £20.

jalexa

snowcat53 wrote: »

I am trying hard to follow what you mean about short year calculation (I'm sure it's me) - can you explain why you think that is so significant?

Its the recovery of a (perceived) shortfall over a period of less than 12 months (in your case 2 months). The same "mechanism" that caused E.ON 'spring review' to implode.

In EDF's case it is a pernicious mechanism. It heaps the blame and opprobrium for a "shortfall" on the customer when in reality it results from the supplier's failure to manage payment adequacy (in your case over the preceding 10 months).

From the Edf DD scheme explanation...

If your balance gets too big, we’ll need to clear it. At your yearly review, if you end up owing us more than £150, we’ll ask your bank or building society for it so that your debt doesn’t get too large. (We will, of course, let you know before we do that.) And if you’ve got a credit balance of more than £150, we’ll pay that back to you automatically.


The treatment of <£150 can therefore be inferred.

victor2

This is interesting.
My annual review is in May and I have only ever paid EDF what I have calculated to be an appropriate amount, despite them trying to increase it every time they've had a reading.
Probably more by accident than design (or my forecasts were spot on ), my account balance passed through zero last May. This year I anticipate I'll have a debit balance of something around £70 in May, but I am now paying enough to cover my annual usage, assuming the last 12 month's usage is repeated.
So, if I give them a reading in April, will they try to increase my DD by the debit balance less my current DD amount, as there will only be 1 month to go to my annual review?
I have already confirmed with them that I can make a one-off payment in May to zero the balance. It will be interesting to see what happens.

PS. They told me last November, when I foolishly gave them a reading and they tried to increase my DD by an unjustified amount, that their billing system would be fixed in the New Year... They also told me we'd have a white Christmas (OK, made that bit up)!

brewerdave

snowcat53 wrote: »

A reply from the CS director on my complaint, still leaving many questions unanswered.
---

"I can confirm the Direct Debit review that was completed in September 2012 was not Mrs X’s annual review, and was an interim review triggered by us obtaining accurate meter readings. The main point of this review is to ensure payments are covering energy consumption and to estimate what needs to be paid in order to bring the annual review balance to zero.

Jalexa is spot on; CS Director has effectively blown up the idea of Annual review - why bother if you can carry out an "interim" review every time you input meter readings......exactly as the EDF Commodore 64 has been doing (with VERY limited accuracy!!:rotfl:) for the last couple of years!!:)

PS Even more reason not to input your own meter figures before required for "annual " review!!!!

jalexa

victor2 wrote: »

So, if I give them a reading in April, will they try to increase my DD by the debit balance less my current DD amount, as there will only be 1 month to go to my annual review?

Oh go on, give it a try?:D

Snowcat's explanation is fairly clear except that the provenence of the annual cost has not been established though it is central to the calculation. In my current case Snowcat's explanation will not work, there is no financial shortfall set against the projected cost provided at page 5 of the statement. So it remains a mystery which Edf are strangely silent on though the Complaint is rapidly approaching 8 weeks.

I have had many absurd re-calculations and there is no single calculation model which can explain every re-calculation. My working assumption is that nobody knows how the automated system works but in the ethos of "customer service" they will try to dupe the customer with an invented explanation.:rotfl:

SnowMan

I've been reading about EDFs failure to give direct debit calculations with a shake of a head.

I've taken a bit more interest in their actual calculations now I've initiated a switch to them.

Official info on the edf website and in the OFGEM direct debit leaflet is not the full story if much of the action takes place in these interim reviews instigated by customer readings which are not disclosed in leaflets such as the OFGEM one.

There seem to be major problems with edfs direct debit policy even based on calculations on the annual review date. A customer who is £149 in debit at the annual review date gets to pay back the £149 over 12 months yet the customer who is £151 in debit has to pay £151 as an immediate lump sum. It is a real cliff edge difference in approach.


If we now look at these interim reviews (based on what edf have told snowcat) and let's take a customer 1 monthly payment from their annual review who submits a reading and gets a recalculation and consider 3 interim review recalculation scenarios

a) If that customer is then £200 (say) in debit - then they they will have to pay that £200 as an addition to their last payment. Probably not a large difference to what would happen at the annual review in that they would have to make a lump sum payment of the £200 debit. That isn't really very good but that is a fault of the edf official annual review policy not this interim review.

a) If that customer is £130 (say) in debit - then they they will have to pay that £130 as an addition to their last payment. This makes a huge difference to what would have happened at the annual review in that they would have been able to pay back the £130 over 12 months. This is the real shocking scenario of this edf until now undisclosed interim review policy (assuming it is actually a policy rather than a randomly produced explanation).

c) If that customer is £130 in credit - then presumably edf should for consistency with this new interim review policy for debits as opposed to their annual review policy where it would be paid back to the customer over 12 months, knock off £130 off the customers last payment (or reduce their last montly payment to zero if it is less than £130 and refund the balance immediately). Do they actually do this?


If I wanted to cause (deserved) mischief, if I were snowcat I would write back to edf and ask if this was their policy for interim reviews because I needed to know for future planning purposes, setting out the 3 scenarios above, and ask how they justified its inconsistency with their annual review policy.

snowcat53

One aspect of the edf bills is very confusing and makes them hard to verify.
As i mentioned in post 188, they put warm home and fuel support discounts as payment credits (along with DDs) but the amounts are 123.81 and 42.86 (not 130 and 45). To counterbalance this they only charge VAT on a portion of the electricty and gas charges. Bonkers or what?
I may ask them to explain this

jalexa

snowcat53 wrote: »

...There were only two payments remaining of £178 needed to ensure the correct amount had been paid. A payment of £178 was received on 1 November 2012 and a Warm Home Discount rebate of £130 was credited to on 13 November 2012. Prior to this, Mrs X also received a £45 Fuel Support payment in July 2012. These figures added together almost covered the additional £178 payment required.

Well I think that is a nonsense explanation because there appears to be a monthly payment missing whether it be the increased payment of £178 or the prior or post review payment amount.

The "£45 payment" was prior to the interim review. Is it (or not) included in the "£1125" stated by Edf as "payments received"?

In an earlier post, schrodie (#232) posted that "additional payments" were not included in Edf calculations. Maybe on the right lines there?

I'm afraid I do consider you got an explanation, just the usual attempt to invent an answer to fit.