Can we trust Sainsbury Energy?

Sue11

My daughter decided that we should have a look at her energy costs so did a comparison which came up with several companies that could do it cheaper. She didn't go with the cheapest quote as we didn't know the company and it didn't seem to have a good record with customer relations. Anyway in the end we thought that Sainsburys would be a good idea. Consequently talking to them on the phone it was decided she would pay by direct debit each month a total of £47.50 which would be a saving and would cover her usage for the year. Sit back and relax we thought everything has been sorted and she will save money.
My daughter who works full time and is a lone parent has just received her first Sainsburys Energy bill (gas and electric) covering the 5 September to the 10 October saying she is in debit for £1452.12.
She hasn't seen this yet she is going to be devastated and I know her first words will be I thought we could trust them. We will be ringing Sainsburys tonight and will post the reply from them.

naedanger

Sue11 wrote: »

My daughter decided that we should have a look at her energy costs so did a comparison which came up with several companies that could do it cheaper. She didn't go with the cheapest quote as we didn't know the company and it didn't seem to have a good record with customer relations. Anyway in the end we thought that Sainsburys would be a good idea. Consequently talking to them on the phone it was decided she would pay by direct debit each month a total of £47.50 which would be a saving and would cover her usage for the year. Sit back and relax we thought everything has been sorted and she will save money.
My daughter who works full time and is a lone parent has just received her first Sainsburys Energy bill (gas and electric) covering the 5 September to the 10 October saying she is in debit for £1452.12.
She hasn't seen this yet she is going to be devastated and I know her first words will be I thought we could trust them. We will be ringing Sainsburys tonight and will post the reply from them.

Have you looked at the bill? Check whether it is based on estimated readings or actual ones. Check whether the final readings are in line with what the meters now show. Then check whether the start readings are the same as the closing readings on the previous bills.

If you check the bills you should be better able to get the problem sorted when you, or your daughter, ring Sainsburys.

Bark01

Sainsburys Energy are really British Gas under a different name

What reads are the bills based on, are they estimated or where they provided by yourself/daughter. Did one of you provide a read when she took over the property?

It could be that the previous tenant gave a false low reading when they left to lower their final bill.

That value is massive so I think there has been some sort of mistake. It more than a typical annual bill.

Speaking to Sainsburys should sort it out.

SwanJon

Sue11 wrote: »

her first Sainsburys Energy bill (gas and electric) covering the 5 September to the 10 October saying she is in debit for £1452.12.

That doesn't sound possible in 5 weeks.

As above, check the opening and closing readings for both fuels.
Check the meter serial numbers on the bills match the ones on the meters themselves.
For the gas, check if the meter is metric (m3) or imperial (ft3).
If you have all this before you call the agent should be able to get to the bottom of it more quickly.

If not already, sign up to the Sainsbury's Energy website - here you can monitor and change the DD amount. The last thing you want is the DD amount changing because of an error. You can also put in regular readings that need not be used for bill/statement, but will help with future estimates.

Nada666

When did you start the account with Sainsbury's? Is it just the last five weeks or is it the first statement you have received but you have been with them for ages?

footyguy

Sue11 wrote: »

My daughter decided that we should have a look at her energy costs so did a comparison which came up with several companies that could do it cheaper. She didn't go with the cheapest quote as we didn't know the company and it didn't seem to have a good record with customer relations. Anyway in the end we thought that Sainsburys would be a good idea. Consequently talking to them on the phone it was decided she would pay by direct debit each month a total of £47.50 which would be a saving and would cover her usage for the year. Sit back and relax we thought everything has been sorted and she will save money.
My daughter who works full time and is a lone parent has just received her first Sainsburys Energy bill (gas and electric) covering the 5 September to the 10 October saying she is in debit for £1452.12.
She hasn't seen this yet she is going to be devastated and I know her first words will be I thought we could trust them. We will be ringing Sainsburys tonight and will post the reply from them.

Sounds like a mistake somewhere. Probably easy to resolve. Not something I would suggest you should lose trust over, at least not at this stage. We all make mistakes from time to time.

Anyway, hope she gets it all sorted out tonight. If she needs more help later, please post a legible image of the bill (with personal info removed) together with what she was told when she contacted them

[Deleted User]

It could be as something as simple as an incorrect reading given by your daughter.Electric dial meters ( 6 rotating dials ) are always getting misread and theres still plenty of them around, so are digital electric meters when a 4 can get read as a 9 if you dont get below the meter.The gas can get the type of meters mixed up with metric and imperial meters.
Sainsburys , like all suppliers just feed numbers into a computer, which is an idiot, and it will send off ludicrous bills without thinking about it. Beats me why they don t have built into the billing program a "that can t be right " overide and use a human to double check, before issuing stupid bills. They could easily automate the billing by asking for a careful repeat reading.
Meter readers are also constantly getting readings wrong fighting to get to the meters covered by junk under the stairs. Another great plug for smart meters, they really are badly needed.

Sue11

Just to thank everyone who replied to my last post about Sainsburys Energy who my daughter transferred to after comparing prices on MSE. If you remember the very first bill she received was for £1452.12 for one month this has now been reduced to £30.32 after calling them up. They said they had estimated the reading!!! On being asked by what means they had come to the estimated amount they said they didn't know. We then asked at what intervals they request a meter reading and they said they don't do that. It is going to be interesting to see what the next bill says.

matelodave

If they don't have a meter reading they guess (they might call it an estimate but it's a guess) so you've got two options. Either send a reading in once a month or wait until the estimated bill comes in and then get it corrected by reading the meter, letting them know and ask for a revised bill.
In any event always check the reading on the bill with the meter and get it corrected, do not accept estimates otherwise anomalies can accumulate and you can easily end up with large over or underpayments.

jhd391

Short answer - NO, NO, NO.
Long Answer: After 2 bills I became suspicious that there was something wrong with billing - Sainsburys estimated that my usage for the year would be 45,000kWh rather than the 15,500Kwh I had estimated. They upped my DD from 85 to 145. After a lot of time trying to work out why my usage had, apparently, trebled I discovered that although i was giving meter reading in Cubic Meters, Sainsbury's were billing me for cubic feet and hence they were multiplying the usage by a conversion factor of x 2.83.!! The meter serial number is 2005 ***** clearly a new meter that measures in cubic metres, readings were given as 5 figure numbers (cubic ft are in 4 figure numbers) and my previous supplier billed me in cubic metres and that info would have been transferred when I switched. To make matters even worse I had a very unhelpful conversation with Complaints when I complained. As has been mentioned before - why don't Sainsburys include a simple algorithm in their billing to flag up bills which are clearly not in accordance with estimates or common sense. Appalling

[Deleted User]

Sue11 wrote: »

Just to thank everyone who replied to my last post about Sainsburys Energy who my daughter transferred to after comparing prices on MSE. If you remember the very first bill she received was for £1452.12 for one month this has now been reduced to £30.32 after calling them up. They said they had estimated the reading!!! On being asked by what means they had come to the estimated amount they said they didn't know. We then asked at what intervals they request a meter reading and they said they don't do that. It is going to be interesting to see what the next bill says.

Well that all seems to have been resolved..why dont you direct your daughter to get onto the latest MSE collective BG switch and grab £30 cashback and the best deal in the UK at the moment.No exit fees as you stay with British Gas as suppliers