Sainsburys over estimated bills

Texy

Have been with sainsburys now since 2013, over that time they have repeatedly over estimated bills which in total adds up to over £4,000+!!! Each of the times they have done this I have had to inform them its wrong, straight away they repaid the over billing but sometimes it took a few months to get it back. I'm not talking about £100 here but repayments in the region of £8-900!.
I installed solar pv few years ago, and my billing went mad, increased 10 fold at times, i had to prove there was a problem which took ages, afterall the meter reading was saying what it was, but fantastically high. They said the meters faulty, swapped it for another one of the same.
I had done some digging about and found that some meters are having problems with solar pv systems. Ofgem produced a report on it and also the Association of Meter Operator's has a list of suspect meters, mine was on it. Sainsburys had never heard of the Meter Operator's or the report. Hmmmm so they say.
The meter was swapped, and by this time id had enough, my bank account was always getting hammered by sainsburys, which meant i was having to miss various things due to not having enough money! They billed me about £1,300 this summers quarter which with solar panels is ridiculous.
I had a meter reading once made up for me out of thin air it seems! I went online to input my quarterly reading and someone had already put one in for me! Wasnt estimated or it would of said, and was double what it should of been.
i went online to view my account just the other day, this quarter they had me owing just for electric £1,354 ish! WHAT! I sent another complaint, and it was changed, but where do they just guess the numbers from?
Enoughs enough, i complained till i was sick to the back teeth of them, demanded a written apology from the person who kept writing to me, a manager? Wont name names but i was told that managers dont speak to customers.. They must be a god i guess. Eventually i received a letter of apology outlining the points I'd raised. I'd also asked for some compensation for all the grief, effort, money theft, lack of customer care in even noticing they had stolen thousands of pounds from me. If i hadnt informed sainsburys they would of still kept what could of been about £5,600! Over billed... That to me is unacceptable, why is there no automatic trigger to notice this in the accounting system software? When a customers bills are very low usually then they get a bill 10x+ higher it should trigger alarms, lets look into it. BUT what in reality happened was they did nothing until the customer complains... Thats deception, or theft in my book, i trust them to look after my account properly.. It didnt happen.
Ok so compensation, initially they said they would give a one off goodwill gesture payment. Ok. How much? They wouldnt say. So i asked for £500, afterall i did have to cancel a lot of things due to huge unexpected bills. Loss of interest, and the months of work proving a meter was adding my solar power TO the bill!
So what did they pay... Ermmm nothing. They did offer £25 for failing to offer a meter accuracy test, eh? well i never complained about that but I'll add that to this list. But in reality they offered sweet nothing.
My reply was to take it to the onbudsman, but im STILL waiting for sainsburys to send out a final position letter, after that the onbudsman can have a look at the case.

The morale of the story is,
A. Check your meter readings everytime
B. Pay your bill via a meter reading each time and never let them estimate it, ever!
C. Watch your account like a hawk, because there's no-one on the other end helping you to look after your interests.
Would i recommended sainsburys energy to someone else? Never ever go there, they are hopeless, they took money, about 5 grand without authority, and have systems which couldnt care less about a customer until they are forced into doing so.

System

Hi. I cannot comment on your experience with Sainsburys. The problem with some of the older models of electricity meters is that when PV solar is installed the meter can, when output exceeds the household electricity demand, turn backwards. In other words, the householder is getting free electricity from the grid. In such circumstances, the supplier will normally arrange to have the meter changed. Your installer was supposed to check this as part of the install. As far as I know, there are no known cases of PV solar installations resulting in an increased electricity bill.

It is of course possible that you have a meter with issues. You can ask for it to be checked at anytime; however, if the test meter reveals that there isn't an issue with your meter the supplier may charge for this investigation.

[Deleted User]

OP, was your electric meter an old dial meter, (6 rotating dials ). Probably a Sangamo Weston type with a rotating barrel ring ? I have found hundreds of these meters over the years running backwards when solar panels are installed. As Hengus says, that is the usual outcome when solar panels are installed, much cheaper bills not more expensive. Sometimes occupiers get a meter reading which is less than the quarter before. Suppliers use auto billing sysyems these days so the system may well think its gone round the clock and start sending out ridiculously expensive bills. I had that happen with my gas bill once when I put in a read less than the estimated one for the quarter before

Texy

There are quite a few cases of meters going faulty, hence Ofgem report into it, 3 pages of meters if i remember right.

Texy

No, its a digital one

System

As Sainsburys is all but British Gas in name it has a derogation that only requires it to read meters once every 5 years. Your advice is sound: customers must provide the supplier with frequent actual meter readings. The EO process is anything but fast - months rather than weeks - and it does not offer significant sums in compensation. If you genuinely feel that your meter is faulty then have it checked. That said, I am not sure what remedy you are actually seeking?

Ok - I have now found the OFGEM guidance that I think that you are referring to and it does say that there have been instances of meters - post the installation of PV solar - treating exported units as imported units. The solution is to have your meter checked. If this is happening then your bill should be re-assessed. That said, if your meter was swapped it must be an extremely low probability of this happening twice.

Texy

The meter was proven to be faulty, i had the british gas engineer out to check it, he told they had loads of problems with solar pv affecting meters, especially smart meters.
I'll have to wait n see now,
So far the 2nd meter has no visible problems, ill have to wait on the sunshine to check it fully.
That was one of the issues i had with sainsburys, the real one was the inability to give accurate bills. Over estimated bills cost me very very dearly, as i said £4300 so far, they have repaid me back after i told them they had charged too much. If i hadnt of told them they would of happily kept my money. They did nothing at all to monitor accounts that have problems, i had to that for them and prove it!
The mess they have made with my account history is unreal, theres something like a dozen refunds on there and theres no explanation record of why. At the time i knew that it was simply charging me too much, then me having to force them to repay me the money back. One payment was about £900, another £700 ish, thats a lot of money to overcharge in my book. Fair enough ill give people the benefit, mistakes happen, but that many times, that often and over that period of 2 years even when i told them i would input my meter readings each quarter, then generate a bill, bill paid.. Simple.. Er no, it still came back estimated by a long way or as i said once a meter reading just appeared in my account and it didnt say estimated, they had made it up! It was in fact double the actual one.
I went onto the account the other day to keep an eye on things, they had me down for the last quarter as using 11,000 odd units! I have a 4kw solar pv.. I sent a sharp email and never got a reply, but funnily the amount changed, still wrong but where the heck do they find these numbers from? There should be automatic software detecting unusual meter amounts, you cant just bill someone thousands of pounds just like that without checking large amounts. Look what just happened to npower... They got caught doing the same thing, making customers pay huge amounts in one go.. Thats not fair or morale. If you use it, ok, repay in installments, but if you didnt, that to me is either theft or deception.
Try telling people who know it all

[Deleted User]

Texy wrote: »

So far the 2nd meter has no visible problems, ill have to wait on the sunshine to check it fully.
That was one of the issues i had with sainsburys, the real one was the inability to give accurate bills. Over estimated bills cost me very very dearly, as i said £4300 so far, they have repaid me back after i told them they had charged too much. If i hadnt of told them they would of happily kept my money. They did nothing at all to monitor accounts that have problems, i had to that for them and prove it! Try telling people who know it all

I work for BG and Sainsburys Energy and we try and visit every 12 weeks. Have any meter readers been round because you seem to be having a problem reading it saying you will have to wait for the sunshine. Personally I use a torch shone from above on digital meters. 9 and 4 gets misread all the time if someone does nt get below the meter

Texy

'I work for BG and Sainsburys Energy and we try and visit every 12 weeks. Have any meter readers been round because you seem to be having a problem reading it saying you will have to wait for the sunshine. Personally I use a torch shone from above on digital meters. 9 and 4 gets misread all the time if someone does nt get below the meter'

theres no issue with the meter reading - the problem is that sainsburys repeatedly over estimate my bills!! by huge amounts - instead of say a few hundred units they put thousands... thats a big over estimation - then i have to complain - again to rectify the issue and argue to get my money back, eventually they cave in and repay it - BUT i houldnt have to KEEP telling them they have falsly taken money that they are not entitled to - to me i count it as theft. ill give them a benefit of once or twice getting it wrong but multiple times is unacceptable when they have been told and told and told again and again.

the meter was going at a faster rate when the sun came out and therefore ADDED the export readings to the bill!! by going back over my useage records over the years there was a clear fault in the amount billed - they clearly do not know what they are doing, the system they use is failing badly. how hard can it be -

send a reminder - meter readings due
customer sends meter reading in
bill is generated
bill is payed

instead it was

estimate bill by thousands over
send bill
customer falls over with shock
customer checks bank account - huge chunk missing
customer rings up to complain - has to argue for ages
eventually company admits they got it wrong
company repays huge chunk months later
customer misses holidays, cancels lots of things cos they have no money left
company does little to apologise, or secure a countermeasure to stop it happening again..

can you see the problem?

pi$$ poor system is failing at my expense.. thousands of pounds.

id put money on dozens of solar systems installed without any monitoring devices will be getting ripped off on their bills - how can you check it acurately without a way of recording what you generate? something needs to change cos there are issues out there - as the BG engineer said - they stopped fitting smart meters because of all the issues of metering inaccuracies [and they nicked software - allegedly]

what a disgrace