supplier refuses to bill on meter readings

MyDogMuppet

pheonix254 wrote: »

They are NOT statutory as far as I'm aware. But can be found at https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/licences-codes-and-standards/licences/licence-conditions

specifically:
Electricity Supply Standard Licence Conditions Section 27.
In terms of "credit" where

"Credit" means the amount by which the payments made by a Domestic Customer to the licensee under or in accordance with the relevant Domestic Supply Contract exceeds the total amount of Charges which is due and payable by that Domestic Customer to the licensee under that Domestic Supply Contract.
The folowing is applicable:


27.16 Where any Credit has accumulated under a Domestic Supply Contract and the relevant Domestic Customer requests that the licensee do so, the licensee must, save where it is fair and reasonable in all the circumstances for the licensee not to do so, refund, in a timely manner any Credit which has accumulated under that Domestic Supply Contract to the relevant Domestic Customer. Where the licensee considers that it is fair and reasonable in all the circumstances for it not to refund any Credit which has accumulated under a Domestic Supply Contract in accordance with this provision, it must inform the relevant Domestic Customer of its view and of the reasons for holding that view.


You do seem to be conflating "billing" with your DD payment, and they're not the same. Billing and charges are about you paying for what you use. A direct debit funds an account which the bills and charges come out of - and statute law (and all the law you've posted to this point), as far as I'm aware, deals only with the accuracy and method of charges and billing, and absoutely nothing to do with the nature of the direct debit or the credit you run up in your account.
It should be noted that you can choose to not have a direct debit, and can opt to pay via cash or in advance by a prepayment meter, provided that the supplier suppliers electricity to no fewer than 50,000 Domestic Customers - though you'll probably get a far worse set of tarriffs to choose from.


It's also worth saying that personally as a layman, I don't think that a 120% estimation for your first year is unreasonable, particularly as your usage thus far has been summer rather than winter. Also, your expectations that it is a simple matter of statistics to accurately estimate your usage is also widely optimistic - for instance - the gas price (which affects electricity prices) has fluctued by more than 20% in December alone - so getting an estimated bill for 12 months accurate to +/- 10% is a pretty tall order if you only have 6 months data on your property, which by your own description is a very niche case highly energy efficient property. It's far from easy to do, even with large datasets, and it would be idiotic of an energy company to underestimate, rather than overestimate the costs it would incur, unless you're a big believer of energy companies going bankrupt and leaving their customers out in the cold in the middle of winter because they didn't have enough capital to buy the electricity for you all.

That said -your DD should be reasonable as per their licence agreement as a supplier which I've quoted for you, and if you're in a high amount of credit every month then they should be clearly be refunding you, reducing the DD or giving you a good reason as to why they're not. It sounds like they're having issues here with the latter part, so continue on with the ombudsman. If their argument turns out to be "we can't accurately estimate your winter usage and aren't prepared to change your direct debit to extrapolate from your summer usage, as summer and winter usage are not comparable," I'd argue that this was a good enough reason - But I'm not the ombudsman or a lawyer, so I'll leave it to them.

If you haven't already (and I'm sure you have, but the answers to some of your questions are there) - check out this guide:
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/lower-energy-direct-debits?purge#step1

Good luck with your case with the ombudsman, and keep us updated. Whilst I can see why companies bill you in advance and generally overestimate, I accept that high energy bills do cause major problems for people so if the complaint leads to change which makes things better for consumers, then I'm all for it.

Thanks for your considered reply.

The only part I take issue with is the use of their huge volumes of data (they probably have access to anonymised data for the whole UK) to determine patterns of usage after allowing for seasonality. Forecasting using simple time series analysis or more sophisticated Bayesian Forecasting methods will work.I'd be stunned if the difference ( Mean Absolute Percentage Error) exceeded 2%. They've got 400,000 customers data for several years....over a million datasets? It should be child's play. I've asked ofgem for the relevant datasets.

Also, remember its a numbers game. So for every 10 underestimated annual bills there will be 10 overestimated annual bills. It's a zero sum game - they are not going to ever go bust collecting cash ( security deposits?) up front.

Of course all our bills will be tumbling. Oil is down by 40%, Russia's gas price is tied to that of oil, we are all in for substantial refunds. I should be smiling....

Bluebirdman_of_Alcathays

MyDogMuppet wrote: »

Thanks for your considered reply.

The only part I take issue with is the use of their huge volumes of data (they probably have access to anonymised data for the whole UK) to determine patterns of usage after allowing for seasonality. Forecasting using simple time series analysis or more sophisticated Bayesian Forecasting methods will work.I'd be stunned if the difference ( Mean Absolute Percentage Error) exceeded 2%. They've got 400,000 customers data for several years....over a million datasets? It should be child's play. I've asked ofgem for the relevant datasets.

Also, remember its a numbers game. So for every 10 underestimated annual bills there will be 10 overestimated annual bills. It's a zero sum game - they are not going to ever go bust collecting cash ( security deposits?) up front.

Of course all our bills will be tumbling. Oil is down by 40%, Russia's gas price is tied to that of oil, we are all in for substantial refunds. I should be smiling....

So, correct me if I'm wrong, you take issue with the fact OVO are using industry wide data rather than their own?

SwanJon

MyDogMuppet wrote: »

1. Eco house has no gas.
2. All hot water via communal wood pellet boilers.
3. The house has no direct heating. Passivhaus.
4. EPC = A

MyDogMuppet wrote: »

They've got 400,000 customers data for several years....over a million datasets? It should be child's play.

You can't have it both ways - either they are not recognising the very specific and rare circustances for your house or they are not usuing the large, broad data sets for all properties (either supplied by them or through the central trhid party).

Which are you actually complaining about?