North of Scotland - Total Heat Total Control

Miss_Informed

Hello

I have recently started complaint procedures with Eon for mis-selling me my power.

I live in the far north of Scotland and have all electric heating which is distributed by Scottish Hydro. I have discovered via the forums that Scottish Hydro are the ONLY supplier which support my meter, Total Heat Total Control (THTC) which would have been glaringly obvious by the MAPN codes of my meter.

Eon signed me up over the phone with a promise of reducing my direct debit and a free energy monitor (which i have never received). Of course at this point i was miss informed and naive in the ways of power companies. I informed them I had storage heaters so they signed me up to a Economy 7 deal. My heating/hot water meter actually has Economy 7 written on it and i have two readings so the confusion could be expected from a consumer with little electrical knowledge.

They then wrote and told me that my meters didn't support this and placed me on a price promise plan instead. I saw two rates on the bill and assumed this was day and night rates. I was then moved to a standard rate :eek:

On receiving my latest humongous bill i challenged the amount stating that they had me on the wrong tariff, I had been charged a flat rate for ALL my electric, they acknowledged this was incorrect for me and was informed that they knew i was being charged at the wrong rate, that they didn't know what i should be being charged at. I am currently waiting on them to come back to me with correct rates for my electric.

I fail to understand why
a) if companies know they don't support the meter why continue to charge instead of working with customer to understand the situation and work with them to resolve the issue? (financial gain for company i would guess)
b) Scottish Hydro are my only option in the far north for my supply (does this not stop fair competition?)
c) that they have obvisually been aware of this for some time judging by this forum and continuing with this practice (financial gain due to people mis-understanding complicated bills and pricing structures)
d) MPAN codes are quite clear so it should all be easily highlighted to suppliers so surely price comparison sites should use these instead of post codes to identify possible suppliers and price quotes

I would advise anyone living in the north of Scotland with all electric houses to have a good look at their bills, as economy 7 is incorrect, many of my friends are on this and are being charged almost double the rate for at least 4 hours a day usage.

I have the rates for Scottish Hydro and will be working out the cost they would have charged me compared to my current bills and then with whatever Eon come back to me citing is what I should have been charged.

lemon26

Hi Miss_Understood,

We live in the Outer Hebrides, so North West Scotland, and when we bought our house it too had THTC with Scottish Hydro and is all-electric. We couldn't do anything for the first two months as we were renting whilst the purchase completed but found it horrifically expensive.

Once purchased we moved supplier, to nPower, and requested an Eco7 tariff and non-prepayment meter. It took them two tries to get it right as it would appear that in North Scotland we don't get Eco7 but Eco8. Certainly, my night rate is between 0030 and 0830 at the moment. However, nPower, as an English comapny, don't seem to get this and asked the DNO (Scottish Hydro) to fit a Eco7 meter. Obviously, they didn't do Eco7 but Eco8 and couldn't fit a Eco7 meter as requested. Cue a bit of a nightmare but eventually sorted!!

So, you can move on THTC and they can fit an Eco7 meter. You could try ringing them back and requesting an Eco7 meter be fitted which might be free or for a small fee (£50 ish). It might be beneficial to ask that they remind the DNO that their E.On's Eco7 equates to North Scotland's Eco8.

Hope this helps?

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Hi Miss_Informed

I'm sorry you've had such a difficult time sorting this out.

Thought a bit of background might help here. Total Heat Total Control is a form of Restricted Hour Tariff (RHT) metering arrangement. These are specifically designed for all electric properties with storage heaters similar to the set up you describe.

They provide electricity at a cheaper rate at certain times during every 24 hours for heating requirements and use a timeswitch to move between peak and off peak times.

You're right, in that, we don't offer a tariff particularly tailored to this type of metering. Industry regulations mean we do, though, have an obligation to offer a tariff to customers with RHT meters.

However, we also have an obligation to make customers aware of certain things at the point of sale.

Specifically, we need to let people know about the metering arrangements at the property and that we can only offer either a standard single rate or Economy 7 tariff.

We need to give the unit prices and standing charges involved but won't be able to quote potential savings.

If we fell down on any of the above and the switch took place less than 12 months ago, then this may well be classed as an Erroneous Transfer.

With Erroneous Transfers, accounts can be sent back to the original supplier as though they had never left.

Your complaint handler will be able to tell you whether this is possible or not.

Hope this is of interest. Let me know if you need any more details as will be happy to help.

Malc

Scrimper13

Hi
I too have had a very similar experience to you Miss Informed. I moved into my housing association house in 2010 and decided I would like to stay with EON as I had got on well with them in my previous house. I have never had storage heating before so did not know much about 'low rates' etc and didn't understand why I had two electricity meters. When I phoned up EON and explained to them that I had two meters they told me that it was fine and they would take both meter readings and would work out the best deal for me. I (wrongly) put my trust in them and assumed they gave me the best deal.
However, I felt I was paying over the odds so decided to shop around after a year but couldn't find anyone who would take on two meters. I eventually found one (can't even remember who now) who said they would be able to offer me a deal as I had storage heaters. I then received a letter from eon saying that the chosen supplier had requested only one of multiple associated supply numbers so they objected the transfer!
After contacting everyone again it turned out they couldn't do the two meters after all anyway.
So as I again tried phoning and no one was willing or able to take on the two meters I felt I had no choice but to stay with EON.
In 2012 I got a letter asking me to phone them to talk about renewing my plan so I did and then they moved me on to a plan that they said would be best for me and my needs!
It wasn't until recently that I realised that my heating comes on through the day and other people were telling me that storage heaters are only supposed to come on through the night I decided i had to do further investigating. Last night I trolled through the Internet trying to find something and discovered i had to phone Scottish hydro (as they "own" my meters) who told me that the meters were put in under their Total Heating Total control plan which made sense why my heating also came on through the day. I then phoned EON and after being put on hold for 32 minutes(!) I was informed that I didn't have a cheap rate on either of my meters at any time of the day and he was unable to tell me if I would be able to get economy 7 as he couldn't find out if they could do the two meters at different rates!
So now I'm left with what?! Storage heaters are expensive even when used at a low rates so to discover that I have been paying for them at normal rate since the beginning is ridiculous. They have looked at my account a number of times so why has it not been flagged up at some point. I'm sitting waiting for someone to "get back to me" while paying over the odds for my heating!
Electricity companies/suppliers/providers and whoever else is involved need to realise that it is not just a case of us being idiots, we provide the information requested of us and are promised that they will work out what is best for us. Each company has a number of different plans which only they know not us!
Maybe you can also help me out Malcolm from EON and tell me at what point do you guys need to take at least some responsibility for giving us the wrong information?

And Miss_Informed what did you decide to do I the end? We're you able to get your meters changed to an economy 8 or are you stuck with Scottish Hydro?

Joyful

As only a couple of companies can bill 3 rate meters I know at BG that anyone with 2 MPANs get advised we cannot quote for these and they may be billed up to 30 % higher on a price plan to bill them. It then goes to a team who write to the customer to advise the price so they can compare.

I would suggest anyone that has been billed by another company ( even if over 12 months) asks for an Erroneous Transfer back to their original supplier as it is clear they should not have been taken over. This means they will then be billed for the time on a correct tariff.

Samaincita

We're dealing with a similar issue. In our case, we found out that Eon had been providing our flat with electricity for years (through different tenants), but they shouldn't have. Because of this we've been overbilled and paid an awful amount of money for our heating (we too have storage heaters). It took us thousands of calls to their customer service to find this out, and now they can't transfer us back to the original provider because a lot of time has passed to be classified as an erroneous transfer. So basically no electric company will take us! Eon kept telling us for a while that if we wanted to change our meter we needed to change our whole heating system.
I'm glad to read you already found out and perhaps you can ask for an erroneous transfer, I hope you can get all sorted out soon!. We've placed a formal complaint and they've offered us some money plus a free meter change, but I was seriously considering informing the Watchdog as this is starting to look like a bad movie for us.
The best advice I can give to anyone is to stay away from Eon!

Good luck!

Scrimper13

The problem seems to be that EON are more than willing to take on two meters even though they can not offer tariffs for them and do not explain this to the customer. Why would anyone have two meters other than for storage heaters and why would anyone use storage heaters that are not connected to a cheaper rate? Also EON have reviewed my service a number of times yet have not alerted me to any of this.
Once you have signed up you are stuck. No one else will take me and EON don't offer any tariff for my meters leaving me stuck paying extortionate prices for heating. I do not have the option of changing my heating system as 1. I live in a housing association house and 2. I couldn't afford it anyway.
Where am I supposed to go from here? :mad::mad:

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Hi Scrimper13

I'm sorry the information you've received so far hasn't been very satisfactory.

Total Heat Total Control (THTC) meters are designed to give you a number of hours of cheaper electricity during every 24 hour period for heating/water heating purposes only.

These hours are controlled by the meter operator and are determined by checking the relevant weather forecast for the region.

All electricity used through the THTC set up is recorded by one meter. The rest of the electricity used goes through the other meter.

We do have a tariff available to give you a cheaper, off peak rate for electricity going through the THTC meter and this is what you should be on.

The tariff will depend on the type of meter actually installed at the property as well as the region. If you drop an email to the address in my Profile, I'll be happy to take a look for you.

Malc

Scrimper13

I thought I would update you on how things turned out. I contacted Malc (EON representative on here) as he advised and he fixed everything within a couple of weeks!!
As soon as I explained what had happened too me with EON he got on the case. He explained everything too me what had happened and what he was going to try to do about it. He discussed tariffs available for my meters that the people on the helpline knew nothing about and there is no reference to on their website (also for the record EON are looking into other RHT tariffs to make them readily available for others stuck with these meters). He happily answered all my queries and never made me feel silly for not really having a clue about any of it!! And he also got me a nice refund for being over charged while changing me to a suitable tariff for the future.
So if EON representatives offer their help on these pages I highly recommend that you take it. They genuinely are there to help.
Thanks again Malc :j

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Many thanks for the kind words Scrimper13. They're much appreciated.

Malc