Application of the Spring price reductions

ads677

When I received my Atlantic electricity bill for the March to June 2007 period I noticed that I was still being charged the pre-reduction unit prices. The prices for electricity were reduced on 1 April 2007. I queried this at the time and was informed that this would "all be sorted out" on the next bill. This bill has just arrived and the reduction only applies for this bill. After waiting for 2 hours (yes, 2 hours) without a reply on the Atlantic 'service' line I e-mailed Customer Service. At the risk of boring you here is the nub of their reply:

"Whilst I understand your concern I would like to reassure you that it was never our intention to mislead our customers. Our pricing policy has always been to maintain the lowest price for as long as possible and when energy costs were rising we were the last supplier to raise our prices. Likewise, we had always promised that we would lower our prices at the earliest opportunity, hence the announcement in February.

"I hope it will help if I explain that the quickest way to introduce our new prices was to apply them to the first full bill issued after the price change took effect, With the announcement of the new prices being made at the end of February and the gas and electricity rates changing on 1 March and 1 April respectively, there was no time to arrange for bills to be adjusted on a pro rata basis.

"We would have liked all our customers to benefit from the reduced prices at the same time; however, this would have meant a delay in applying the reduction. I am sure you will appreciate that with over eight million customers, we have a complex billing system. To introduce a change in our rates would normally entail a change to our billing program which takes a little time. We took the decision not to delay the reduction so that our customers could begin to benefit straight away. Regrettably, this meant that some of our customers would not see the lower prices until their following bill (my italics)."

How many are "some", has anyone else noticed this, did anyone actually receive an immediate reduction?

Interestingly on a gas bill for the 30 November 2006 - 2 March 2007 there were a multiplicity of prices - perhaps only applied because the prices were being increased? Cynical, me?!

Cardew

This has been covered several times if you do a search. Atlantic not the only company. Same excuse.

However those who 'pushed' the point got their account manually adjusted and the price reduction applied retrospectively.

Absolutely disgraceful practice - they know full well that the majority of their customers won't notice.

I suggest you don't accept their explanation and threaten to report them to Energywatch.

Cardew

This is one thread - there are others:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=389015&page=3&highlight=applied

mprice1988

If customers tell me that happened to thier account i usually just credit the money because it was totally unfair what we done. Just been a bit persistent and we will give in!

ads677

Thanks for the replies. I re-complained to Atlantic and they have "pro rated manually your previous bill and have applied the difference to your account this was a total of £1.68."!!! No confirmation of how the calculation was made though, so I can't check whether I am still out of pocket.

mprice1988

They way we work it out is as follows. Lets say price per unit was 10p but now 5p.

Work out usage of bill and how many days it is over, says 50 units used over 50 days, works out you have used one unit per day.

The how many days you should be charged the higher rate (april 1st for elec and march 1st for gas). Work out cost of how many days at high rate and times that by unit price. Then work out cost of how many days at lower rate. Add those two figures together and that's what you should have paid. Then we see what we actually billed you for and work out the difference.

Example. Say price change took place 25 days into your 50 day bill. We would charge 25 units at 10p = £2.50 and 25 units at 5p = £1.25, so should have cost you £3.75 but we billed you for £5.00 so we would give back £1.25.