How accurate are our energy bills?

CashStrapped

I have not read all of the above posts but I remembered reading this article which is quite pertinent.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-3337392/Steve-Watson-checked-energy-bill-discovered-big-firms-reap-millions-pounds-customers-OVERCHARGED.html

So the OP does have a point with regard to some aspects of billing.

I am not talking about ensuring meter readings are accurate and things like that. However the fiddle of a decimal point here and there multiplied over millions of customers is something that should be checked by a regulator and not down to the eagle eyed customer.

Methusela

Several posts in this thread have taken the view that consumers who get confused between direct debit amounts and actual energy costs, or who fail to provide accurate meter readings and keep spreadsheets recording their consumption have only themselves to blame if they get overcharged as a result of suppliers‘ mistakes on their bills.

I would like to remind everyone that my original post related only to bills produced by the energy supplier after full and accurate readings have been provided to them or obtained by them but where serious errors then enter the billing process, errors which are later blamed on “system errors” or “human errors” by the supplier. The consumer cannot be held responsible for such mistakes and in spite of some comments to the contrary I still believe that a large proportion of consumers would not have the ability to identify such errors themselves.

Robin9 points out that I am guilty of generalising, based on a very small amount of data. I accept the truth of this but would welcome suggestions as to where I might obtain sufficient data to provide an accurate picture of the extent of serious errors in energy bills. Individual consumers might become aware of a few mistakes on their own bills but they are unlikely to publish data on the subject. The only reliable source would have to be data published by the energy suppliers themselves, showing how many mistakes they have identified in-house or have had pointed out to them by irate customers. Surprisingly, they do not publish such information, so that is why I have to rely on generalisations.

Rough guesstimate of extent of errors: I have found three serious errors during the past 3 years. The post by Jack-Pott records two errors in his bills in 15 years while Molerat mentions two billing problems. That’s seven billing errors affecting three people out of the ten who have posted so far. Let’s work back from this very small sample of 7 errors over the past 15 years for the ten people involved in this discussion.

In that 15 year period the ten contributors would have received 600 quarterly bills between them. Bluebirdman posted a suggestion that 20 million bills are issued each quarter or 80 million each year. If we apply the figure of 7 errors per 600 quarterly bills found in this thread, then across 80 million bills we might expect to find more than 933,000 errors each year.

My own latest two errors totalled almost £500 (apologies for an error in my OP) but I would hope not too many mistakes would be that big, so let’s say the average mistake is only around £10. That still leaves us with a potential total for supplier created mistakes approaching £10 million per year. Isn’t that sufficient cause for further investigation?