Providers not allowing standard rate on E7 meters - complaint to OFGEN?

rogerblack

Though not affected - I was wondering if there were any deeper grounds to the refusal than some companies computers not being able to handle it.

It seems a totally illogical and anticompetitive aspect of the market - as it discourages switching, and incurs 'useless' meter changes.

insanegloss

Afraid not, it's down to the individual company to decide its policy in this area as ultimately if you've got a certain type of meter that's what you should be billed as. If *you* want to change the how it's billed then you may have to change the meter type and naturally this isn't done for free.

Not only that, costs of the meter are different for a supplier irrespective of what tariff the end consumer is on, so they won't want to pay for a more expensive E7 meter to be charged at single rate. This again is company's decision.

Richie-from-the-Boro

There are approx five million of us on Economy 7, then there are all the other multiple rate metering ex-regional one off's. In accounting / software design I can't see its rocket science to change the software, but clearly SP do not want to do this. I've no idea why but I suspect SP has a large slice of the 5 million plus user nation and has no interest or motivation to pay for the meter change costs for the minuscule few who after the meter is changed are always going to leave SP anyway.

The SP stance is and always was, wanna leave ?, get your new supplier to absorb the cost. I don't see that as anticompetitive, the competition's marketing budget absorbs the costs of the meter change in order to get 'one more new customer from its competitors'.

scaredofdebt

Anyone know which providers can support E7, has anyone had a bill for such recently?

I suspect it's going to get harder to find suppliers who do cater for it.

The trouble is it costs them money to change their IT to support such meters.

If you do change from SP can they produce a final bill for E7?

spiro

The other issue is to do with industry standing and settlement (wholesale) data. Each metering point is allocated a Standard Settlement Configuration (SSC) which is based on the switching times of the meter. Based on the SSC the metering point is allocated a Profile Class (PC) which defines how the consumption of profiled (split into half hour chunks) over a 24hr period. The issue is that single rate SSCs are allocated to PC1 whereas multi-rate SSCs (additional load on rate 2 - i.e. night heater) are allocated to PC2. The industry data does not readily support multi-rate meters on PC1 and some rules actually say it must not be and it is based on capability (can the meter do it) not on capacity (what is wired up). Therefore if a supplier bills a 2-rate meter on a single rate tariff it impacts their wholesale costs hence some don't/won't do it.

mardiemare2008

A company should not become your supplier if they cannot support your meter type. Eco7 meters are only beneficial if you use more than 21% or more of your usage during the off peak night rate. Any less and you are losing out financial. Most suppliers support Eco7 but only a handful support Eco10.. The company I work for will happily change Eco7 meter to 1 rate and vice versa at no charge to the customer. (as long as this will not financially disadvantage the customer)

espresso

mardiemare2008 wrote: »

A company should not become your supplier if they cannot support your meter type. Eco7 meters are only beneficial if you use more than 21% or more of your usage during the off peak night rate. Any less and you are losing out financial. Most suppliers support Eco7 but only a handful support Eco10.. The company I work for will happily change Eco7 meter to 1 rate and vice versa at no charge to the customer. (as long as this will not financially disadvantage the customer)

Which of "The Big Six" do you work for giving out this incorrect info?

Nada666

If it was an automatic right then savvy users would change their tariff for a couple of months every winter. E7 prices would eventually have to be altered and no longer offer the existing benefits (and hiccoughs to the unwary).

rogerblack

Nada666 wrote: »

If it was an automatic right then savvy users would change their tariff for a couple of months every winter. E7 prices would eventually have to be altered and no longer offer the existing benefits (and hiccoughs to the unwary).

This is already worth it in some cases.
Even if you get charged for the meter switch.