SCOTTISH POWER - Check your GAS Bills NOW...

Ms_Chocaholic

Just checked mine and the correct calculation has been used.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention though.

naedanger

You may also wish to inform Ofgem at the following email address: consumeraffairs@ofgem.gov.uk

They are not interested in individual customer complaints. But I would think someone within the regulator would be interested in this complaint because of its potentially systematic nature and what it potentially reveals about SP's systems and testing. It is probably a long shot that the email will be forwarded to the right person but is, in my view, worth an email.

polymaff

modsandmockers wrote: »

I think that the whole of the industry’s inability to offer a 21st century level of customer service is partly due to the fact that most of their ‘systems’ are still rooted in the days before privatisation, when manual systems were the norm (BT OpenReach is the same). Modernisation? Competition? - perish the very thought of it.

Agreed. This year - like most years - I've received several incorrect S975 certificates from banks and building societies. The generation of these would, you'd think, be fully automatic. What is more, the sanity check that the computer's algorithms should contain is so simple that even in a fully manual system an eight-year-old should be able to pick up the errors these S975s contained (Does Nett plus Tax equal Gross)?

Behind too many of these shiny offices and corporate mission statements it is all BS - it seems.

polymaff

naedanger wrote: »

You may also wish to inform Ofgem at the following email address: [EMAIL="consumeraffairs@ofgem.gov.uk"]consumeraffairs@ofgem.gov.uk[/EMAIL]

They are not interested in individual customer complaints. But I would think someone within the regulator would be interested in this complaint because of its potentially systematic nature and what it potentially reveals about SP's systems and testing. It is probably a long shot that the email will be forwarded to the right person but is, in my view, worth an email.

Tried it, heavily emphasising that this was a systemic, not a personal issue.

"You may be aware that Ofgem does not have a direct role in handling individual disputes or enquiries; energy companies are subject to strict complaints handling standards backed up by an independent energy Ombudsman."

And that was that.

Tigsteroonie

Checked mine too, thanks for the heads-up, but mine are using the correct conversion rate.

Pincher

Three Scottish Power bills for 2015, all correct.


These correction factors are obviously to compensate for variations in supply quality, across the regions. So somebody is constantly sampling, and reporting the density (or whatever they measure) to a National Grid type organisation, which disseminates the figures to the anyone who wants to know. Somebody has to type this figure in, in Scottish Power, quite often I should think.


I have no problem in believing some drunken idiot typed 1.2264 at 13:31, after a liquid lunch for Mabel's birthday, and then walk in the next day sober, and typed in 1.02264 the next day.

victor2

Pincher wrote: »

These correction factors are obviously to compensate for variations in supply quality, across the regions. So somebody is constantly sampling, and reporting the density (or whatever they measure) to a National Grid type organisation, which disseminates the figures to the anyone who wants to know. Somebody has to type this figure in, in Scottish Power, quite often I should think.

You could use that argument with the Calorific Value, which does vary over time and region, but the correction factor discussed here is an industry standard, and has not varied once in the several years I've been looking at utility bills.

derekwilliams

@Victor2 is correct. The 'Volume Correction' factor is FIXED across the industry - all suppliers should use the '1.02264' figure.

The 'Calorific Value' can and does change within an agreed max/min range.

That said, so far other SP customers reporting above on this thread are all being billed correctly, so maybe it was just me with this billing anomaly. Maybe it has something to do with when the switch to SP occurred and the billing was setup. My switch to SP was January 2015. My father was with SP last year (now EDF) and his SP bills for 2014 were correct.

It is very hard to believe that they manually enter the 'Volume Correction' figure for every new account, but at the moment this seems the only explanation.

Cardew

[QUOTE=derekwilliams;68769894
It is very hard to believe that they manually enter the 'Volume Correction' figure for every new account, but at the moment this seems the only explanation.[/QUOTE]


If it is manually entered, IMO it is inconceivable that with some 20 million gas accounts that there haven't been hundreds of errors e.g. 10.2264 or 0.102264.


Given that a metric gas unit will always be in the region of 11kWh, surely every computer program will have a 'gross error check'.

victor2

derekwilliams wrote: »

It is very hard to believe that they manually enter the 'Volume Correction' figure for every new account, but at the moment this seems the only explanation.

Indeed. Goes against the basic design of databases in that duplication of data is opening up a gateway to errors.
Shouldn't be possible, even for a hungover idiot, to make such a mistake on one account.