Rounding up tariff rates on bills

BeltonRose

It probably sounds like I'm a geek - but I have just calculated my year to date energy bill using the tariff rate I signed up to (eg 10.855p per KWh for the electric) and compared it to the bill from my energy company. They rounded the tariff up to 10.86p. OK Bear with me........ Overall for gas and electric on the year to date they have charged me 12p more than they should have and its all because of the rounding up and rounding down. The point I want to make is this: 12p isn't a great deal is it - not worth bothering about - but if they have 1 million customers and they charge each one just 12p more each year - that will make them a whopping £120,000.00 more money. Why tell me my tariff is 10.855p and then charge me 10.86p? Is this common practice? Maybe something for Ofgem to look into??

st999

It also screws up excel calculations, I can never get my excel spreadsheet to agree with my bill.

dogshome

It's common practice when invoicing items priced at fractions of a penny
On calculations which end up with fractions of a penny below 0.5, the fraction is disregarded, but for fractions of 0.5 and above the the sum is rounded up to
the next whole number

pooch

I would expect any supplier to charge you the according to the tariff you agreed to.

I'd start with contacting the supplier and following their complaint procedure if you think they are not.

If the supplier upholds your complaint, I would expect a small gesture of goodwill, as well as an apology and of course any overpayments refunded.

If the supplier does not uphold your complaint (and you still believe they are wrong), the next stage would be the ombudsman, not ofgem.

Ofgem are not interested in individual compliants. If you can get the supplier (or ombudsman) to agree they are not charging you according to their tariff, and it is reasonable to expect all others in a similar position to be similarly overcharged, and the supplier on being alerted to this error does not appear to be rectifying all the bills of similarly affected customers, then perhaps that would be the time to alert ofgem, but not before.