Wrong Calculation of Gas kWh

System

reeac wrote: »

And how big an effect is this day to day variation?

Looking back to a download that I took for my region in April (as I was disputing a bill), daily CVs varied from 38.5 to 39.9. When converting volume into kWh usage for billing purposes, suppliers are required to use the average daily CV for the entire billing period for the Supply region truncated to one decimal point. The average CV for the billing period above was 39.3.

This why any kWh figures shown on an IHD are at best a guess.

Raxiel

reeac wrote: »

And how big an effect is this day to day variation?

The value is permitted to vary between 37.5 MJ/m³ to 43.0 MJ/m³ in practice it's unlikely to vary by more than 0.2 MJ/m³ per day for a given supply region.
Source: National Grid

What can have a bigger effect is if a device such as a smart meter, IHDm or thermostat has a fixed value near one end of the scale, and your gas is consistently at the other end.

The difference in £ wouldn't be significant (a few quid a year max), but it would be wrong. And suppliers are required to produce accurate bills under the terms of their supply licence.

EachPenny

Cardew wrote: »

Are they 'obvious errors' to a computer?

Bear in mind that Eon took over the account from EDF who also were charging incorrectly. - and possibly the charges had been wrong ever since the Metric meter was fitted in ????.

With millions of accounts they are never going to be checked 'manually'; and of course there are mistakes in metric v Imperial billing both ways.

From the OP it appears the problem does go back to when the meter was changed and that information wasn't correctly applied to the billing system.

Obviously not all errors are going to be trapped, but on the face of it it doesn't seem impossible for the billing software to be programmed to 'notice' a near tripling (or thirding) of consumption, or to identify a significant discrepancy in readings (assuming the old and new meters weren't coincidentally reading roughly the same).

This happened while EdF was the supplier and before the OP moved in. Which potentially means the previous occupier got billed (or avoided paying for) for the energy accounted for by the lack of a proper 'final' reading from the old meter and initial reading from the new one.

And there's also the point that the EdF man noticed a difference between the recorded serial number and the actual serial number of the meter. Yet even that wasn't sufficient for the system to trigger some further checking.

Obviously manual checking of every account isn't feasible, but it wouldn't be difficult to flag accounts for further scrutiny if certain factors are noticed. For example if there has been a change of meter and recorded consumption has significantly varied from the previous one.

Cardew

EachPenny wrote: »

Obviously not all errors are going to be trapped, but on the face of it it doesn't seem impossible for the billing software to be programmed to 'notice' a near tripling (or thirding) of consumption, or to identify a significant discrepancy in readings (assuming the old and new meters weren't coincidentally reading roughly the same).

This happened while EdF was the supplier and before the OP moved in. Which potentially means the previous occupier got billed (or avoided paying for) for the energy accounted for by the lack of a proper 'final' reading from the old meter and initial reading from the new one.

It could of course have happened before EDF had the account.

Actually the algorithm the accounting computer uses does pick up when there is a large discrepancy between expected and actual consumption. If the latest meter reading(even by a meter reader) is outside the set tolerance, the computer simply ignores that reading (presumably 'thinking' it is a mistake)and substitutes an estimated reading.

It is not until there is human intervention at the energy company, that the proper meter reading is accepted.

LewisHamilton

I can't see how you can claim interest as the energy suppliers do not pay compensation in the same way as financial companies plus the interest rate has been poor.

If E.ON has overcharged you by about £2,000, I'd say a goodwill payment of around 10% to cover everything (missed interest, inconvenience and hassle) would be reasonable so I'd push for £200 compensation. If its £1,000 then £100 etc.

glen.dewhirst

Well phoned national grid and was told that they supply gas to the energy companies who then determine the gas calorific value when working out your bill but I’m on prepayment meter and the calorific value is set at 40.8 although the average in the north east is about 39.9 so would that mean I’m using more gas because the value is set at 40.8.I contacted my energy company and the email sent back to me went like this….
With the calorific value it is set by the shipper who brings the gas into the UK. The invoice is an example of the maths used.
Unfortunately we are not able to change this. The calorific value will always have been 40.8 if that is what is showing on the meter and will remain at 40.8 regardless to who supplies the property. We have no means of changing this.

Raxiel

glen.dewhirst wrote: »

Well phoned national grid and was told that they supply gas to the energy companies who then determine the gas calorific value when working out your bill but I’m on prepayment meter and the calorific value is set at 40.8 although the average in the north east is about 39.9 so would that mean I’m using more gas because the value is set at 40.8.I contacted my energy company and the email sent back to me went like this….
With the calorific value it is set by the shipper who brings the gas into the UK. The invoice is an example of the maths used.
Unfortunately we are not able to change this. The calorific value will always have been 40.8 if that is what is showing on the meter and will remain at 40.8 regardless to who supplies the property. We have no means of changing this.

Sounds like all the more reason to try and get off pre-payment. I know that would be a breach of licence for a credit meter, don't know what the rules for pre-payment are.

Diz_LFC

Ok, so an update on this.

EON sent out an engineer to investigate the gas meter on 28th Nov. He looked at the meter, agreed that it wasn't the right serial number and took the correct serial number and a photo of the meter. He entered it in his little gadget and left.

A few days later I rang EON to find out what happens next to be told it takes 5-7 days for the new serial number to appear on the system. So I waited and rang again.... only to be told that they had nothing on the system from the engineer!! Anyway the the guy I spoke to (Andre) was very helpful and looked into it. He asked me to email over a photo of the gas meter and any tags/labels attached to it, which I did.

So, today I get the following email:

Thanks for getting back to us with photographs of your gas meter.

The photo and details have been saved on your account and also forwarded on to our back office team who’ll ensure everything is updated accordingly.

Your bills haven’t been impacted by the incorrect details; regardless we’ll double check them when we’ve finished updating your gas meter details.

Please give us 3 - 4 weeks to update your account. After updating the details we will then investigate the billing. I appreciate your help with this.

Kind Regards,

Luke Wells

Customer Service Advisor
E [EMAIL="Settlement.billing@eonenergy.com"]Settlement.billing@eonenergy.com[/EMAIL]
Settlement and Billing Solutions – Residential Operations

3-4 weeks to update my account!!!! And then investigate!!
I've already been waiting 5 weeks for this to be resolved!! They've known about this since 15th Nov and each month I'm overpaying them more as the direct debit hasn't been adjusted down yet!

Does anyone know why it takes this long?

Also,

Your bills haven’t been impacted by the incorrect details

How on earth haven't my bills been impacted when they've used the wrong units for the reading (cubic feet) and incorrectly multiplied the reading units by 2.83 to convert them to cubic meters when they already are in cubic meters!!

If EON forum rep Helena is reading this can you please help! This is getting very frustrating!
My house is now under offer and searches progressing, so concerned this could cause problems and not be resolved before completion.

EDF is not much better!!
I called today to be told nothing has progressed since I last called a couple of weeks ago!! Same response - Raised it with the original customer services advisor who will contact me with an update. Wasn't sure if the correct form had been filed, so has filed it again to make sure!
Is there a forum rep on here for EDF (like Helena for EON) who can help?

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

polymaff

Cardew wrote: »

Are they 'obvious errors' to a computer?

Not to a computer itself - but there should be to the computer program's designer, implementer and tester

Like the "quality" software that recently changed my monthly Direct Debit to £4,332.84 :T

Cardew

polymaff wrote: »

Not to a computer itself - but there should be to the computer program's designer, implementer and tester

Like the "quality" software that recently changed my monthly Direct Debit to £4,332.84 :T

With scores of millions of meter readings recorded each year, there are bound to be many thousand misreading errors.

The computer algorithm, for all companies, detects readings outside of a set tolerance and rejects that reading and substitutes an estimated reading.

If that rejection facility were not in place, think what would happen if the computer accepted a reading of, say, 90256 when it should have been 10256. The customer would receive a bill for an extra approx 900,000kWh - say £27,000.

How would anyone write a computer algorithm detecting that metric and Imperial readings had been transposed and causing a much smaller error than the case above.