Resident on British Gas Business for dual fuel

Terrylw1

P.S. erroneous transfers can't be applied that far back, plus if you work from home it's you & your accountants repsonsibility to assess your usage as well as the Supplier so I can't see you getting away with the ET route. Besides, you've had so many years to sort it that you couldn't argue it.

As to the business supplies not being able to supply domestic customers, thats not true as many do. What matters is there tariff, VAT, Climate Change Levy and Profile Class. Suppliers have always had the right to do this but they have to get you set up correctly...

Terrylw1

Cardiac - ET's can only be applied back 14 months because the industry has "settled" on the consumption at that point. No Supplier is allowed to go back further & not even Ofgem can authorise it as it has to be authorised by the Trading & Disputes Council. That only happens if there is an industry issue with regions themselves, not individuals as it causes havoc to the energy settlements side of the industry and causes lots of spikes in accounting...which knocks onto everybody...

Cardiac_2

Terrylw1- I beg to differ on the 14 month point, especially given the domestic usage, they WILL settle an ET after 14 months. At the sake of revealing far too much, i'm close to one of the people who do the ET work for one of the big suppliers it. We discussed this point and they assure me that aside from certain contracts or extremely high energy usage which changes a profile class above 2, but i don't believe the one in dicussion belongs to that group, a business supplier will almost certainly return this supply based on domestic usage, regardless of time, I honestly thing it's worth a shot.
Wasn't the home supply just a home supply by the way? i wasn't aware that makerfield actually worked from home...?

I'm aware there are guidelines that can be used by suppliers but they tend not to be stuck to religiously if there is a good point to the arguement, there are always exceptions, especially if energywatch are notified. No supplier wants a bad press and will do whatever they can to calm it down!

Terrylw1

Hi Cardiac, not wishing to do the same but I spent many years working for one of the largest electricity companies in a process management & compliance role and you cannot amend data back further than 14 months unless the TDC authorise it for all Suppliers & Agents in a region. This is an industry rule. Suppliers tend to refuse after 12 months since it can take 6-8 weeks to resolve disputes.

Currently various regions are working into 28 months in the case of disputes highlighted in various industry reports, but not from customer requests.

Thats been the industry policy for a long time. A Supplier can choose to amend back further than this if they wish to help the customer but they cannot effect energy settlements in doing so.

Also, you cannot change a customers Supply Start Date in the distribution systems after 14 months. There has never been an allowance to go up to 28 months in that.

So, dispite your ET person saying this, they are choosing to amend internal data back further than 14 months as MPAS won't allow you to process an ET over 14 months. This means that your ET person may be making say a tariff change to help a customer like this, but they can't send them back to a previous Supplier. How they tackle this situation under ET is just to process a fresh registration to the old Supplier which is the same as a customer doing it.

I suggest your ET person speaks to their compliance management team who will brief them on this. I know because I spent the last few years working with external auditors and various others bodies internal & external. The information will be found on the Elexon website.

Energywatch won't try it either as it contravenes industry policy which they are there to enfore alongside bodies such as Elexon.

Also, how would the old Supplier bill back for 3 years since Ofgem bought in the 12 month rule in 2006? If it were possible to bill back to 3 years then a clever customer could then point to the Ofgem rule and get away with 2 years free electricity in the process.

These rules are not guidelines, they are industry compliance matters and Suppliers breaching them making themselves a non compliant company and leave themselves open to possible penalties and additional monitoring on their organisation. Thats why each company has a compliance management team of some sort as yearly audits on such processes take place by a company called Price Waterhouse Coopers on behalf of Elexon.

I think your friend is trying to help customers without effecting energy settlements, which is good if it's just a tariff issue internally but they won't be correcting ET's in the industry process as it won't allow them to.


The original post states that some work is done at home.