Ebico, British Gas & the EOS

westofsouth

A dual fuel account was set up with Ebico in early Sept 2020. They of course asked for opening readings, which I provided. However after receiving the first bill for this empty property it was clear that for gas they had used a much lower estimated reading to open the account. This resulted in an an excessive bill for nil gas consumption.

Ebico became British Gas and the matter was escalated to an EOS investigation. Evidence of the true opening reading was provided, proving virtually zero gas consumption. However the EOS sided with British Gas. I naturally appealed the decision, which was not upheld.

What conclusions can be drawn from this? Is the EOS truly impartial?

[Deleted User]

The EOS does not investigate a complaint, it goes solely on the evidence that you provide it with and a case file from the supplier. Clearly, the evidence that you put forward was not convincing enough to persuade the EOS that you were correct.

If you do not accept the Final Decision then the supplier will close the complaint. Should the matter end up in Court, then the supplier can use the Final Decision in support of its case.

My advice, FWiW, is think though the consequences of going to the EOS should a complaint not be upheld.

greenguppie

westofsouth said:

A dual fuel account was set up with Ebico in early Sept 2020. They of course asked for opening readings, which I provided. However after receiving the first bill for this empty property it was clear that for gas they had used a much lower estimated reading to open the account. This resulted in an an excessive bill for nil gas consumption.

Ebico became British Gas and the matter was escalated to an EOS investigation. Evidence of the true opening reading was provided, proving virtually zero gas consumption. However the EOS sided with British Gas. I naturally appealed the decision, which was not upheld.

What conclusions can be drawn from this? Is the EOS truly impartial?

The conclusion that can be drawn is simply that, based on the evidence supplied to the Ombudsman service, they were not convinced enough to support your complaint.

Yes, the Ombudsman service is impartial. The fact that on this occassion, they were not convinced enough to support your complaint, does not mean they are impartial.

There are some issues that stand out with your complaint, if it was made in line with your post.

Ebico has not become British Gas.

Ebico are an independant, not for profit, separate legal company.
They have no supply licence for supplying any energy.
At the time you applied to join Ebico, they offered energy through their supply partnership with licenced supplier at the time, Robin Hood Energy.

(Today, Ebico offer energy though a new supply partnership with licenced supplier, Octopus Energy)

Robin Hood Energy ceased trading on 05 January 2021. As a result, Ofgem revoked their supply licences.

Prior to RHE ceasing to trade, they agreed to sell their order book, which included customers they supplied under the Ebico brand, to British Gas.

You would have been informed of this at the time, and that your supply was being switched to British Gas. A switch needed to occur as British Gas supply energy under their own supply licences.

Your complaint appears to have been made against Ebico and/or British Gas.

The EOS would not accept any complaint against Ebico as they are not, and never have been, licenced by Ofgem the regulator to supply energy.
Your complaint should have been filed against the licenced supplier, in this case RHE.

However, as RHE ceased to trade and so lost their supply licences as a result, then the EOS would not accept any complaint now against RHE. Even if you had complained about RHE when they were licenced, then those unresolved complaints would have been automatically rejected by the EOS following their notification that they would cease to trade as the EOS would know this would lead to the removal of their licences.
 
The EOS will only investigate complaints made against licenced energy suppliers.

In the circumstances you have described, I do not see you have any complaint against British Gas, and that is presumably why the EOS would have found against you in this matter as you had attempted to make such a complaint against BG.

Whenever you switch supplier, opening meter readings are submitted to and have to be verified by an independent meter validation company.
This process has been mentioned many times here on the forum, and you can find details of the process elsewhere on line.

Where the opening meter reading is not agreed by the meter validation company, an alternative is used by both the old supplier and the new one. Complaints are usually only accepted from customers if the difference between the reading used and the reading the customer submitted exceeds certain prescribed limits.

This is simply because as the losing supplier must use the same reading as the new supplier, what you don't pay one supplier, you have to pay the other according to the respective tariffs, so it is the difference in the costs of the tariff that applies, which is small compared to the total cost of the energy supplied. Therefore small differences in meter readiungs (as long as both suppliers have used the same reading) result in a small cost difference.

Also, the EOS will not accept any complaint against any licenced supplier until the customer has first exhausted the that suppliers own complaints procedure without acceptable resolution. In most cases this means at least 8 weeks have passed since the original complaint was filed with that supplier, or the supplier issues you with a deadlock letter.

westofsouth

Thank you Dolor, interesting comments..

"The EOS does not investigate a complaint",
However the EOS staff member dealing with the case described himself as an 'os-investigative-officer'...

westofsouth

My overall impression was that these 'os-investigative-officers' have a very heavy workload, and in some cases they appear to be poorly equipped to deal with the technicalities involved - in particular with the added complexity of so called 'smart' meters. It is hardly surprising that their decisions can sometimes be very questionable.

QrizB

westofsouth said:

A dual fuel account was set up with Ebico in early Sept 2020. They of course asked for opening readings, which I provided. However after receiving the first bill for this empty property it was clear that for gas they had used a much lower estimated reading to open the account. This resulted in an an excessive bill for nil gas consumption.

There is some information missing here.

• You say "this empty property". Is it a new build and you're the first occupier, or is it a vacant-possesion purchase/rental?
• What was your meter reading when you took possession?
• What opening meter readings did Ebico use, and how do those differ from the readings you provided?
• Who was the supplier prior to Ebico, and what readings did they use when closing your account with them?
  

greenguppie

westofsouth said:

Thank you Dolor, interesting comments..

"The EOS does not investigate a complaint",
However the EOS staff member dealing with the case described himself as an 'os-investigative-officer'...

It rather depends on how you define 'investigate'

It is true that the EOS do not investigate in the sense they do not carry out research or study into your complaint. As I explained, they are impartial, so that means they should not do that to support you and your complaint.

Nor do they make their own enquires about your complaint, save to ask the supplier you have accused for their case file on the matter. (and sometimes they will revert to you for further evidence or clarification of your claim where needed)

But if you use investigate to describe someone that carrys out a formal inquiry, examining the evidence placed before them, to establish the probable underlying truth, then that probably does accurately describe what the EOS do.

greenguppie

westofsouth said:

My overall impression was that these 'os-investigative-officers' have a very heavy workload, and in some cases they appear to be poorly equipped to deal with the technicalities involved - in particular with the added complexity of so called 'smart' meters. It is hardly surprising that their decisions can sometimes be very questionable.

You could probably make the same accusations about any court judge (or even a jury in the case of a serious criminal matter) in this country.

It is not the role of any judge or to a lesser extent the EOS, to understand the technicalities of your complaint.

It is your role as the complainant to put your complaint in such a way so that the adjudicator, whether it be the EOS or a court, is convinced as to the merit of your complaint, having heard the evidence of both parties. Where your complaint is based upon techicalities, it would be your role as the complainant to explain those technicalities in a way that convinces the adjudicator of the merit of your complaint.

On what basis do you believe that the decisions of the EOS can sometimes be very questionable?
I have explained above why your complaint against BG was probably dismissed as being without merit.

Yes, there will undoubtedly be some questionable decisions by the EOS, as there are by some court judges, condsiering the thousands or millions of cases they adjudicate over. But there is always an appeal process. In the case of the EOS, then you can effectivley appeal that decision to a court, and where a decision is made by a court, that can usually be appealled to a higher court (although permission of the original court may be required in some instances)

I must say, I don't hear of many successful claims in court against a desision originally arrived at by the EOS, that would support the initial findings of a supplier refuting your grounds for complaint.
There will be the odd few as I said, but not many.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary that would enlighten me?

As @[Deleted User] says, you would certainly expect a defendant, an energy supplier in this case, to include within their defence the findings of the EOS where those findings support the defence of the energy supplier (just as you would wish to include them in any court claim if the EOS findings supported your complaint).
A court would then review all the evidence placed before them, and form an independant judgement, just as the EOS had done previously.

* In the case of your complaint, I have already indicated that I feel it should have been made against RHE. There is little value in pursuing a claim against RHE now as they have ceased to trade and are in administration. Even if a court was willing to hear your complaint in these circumstances, and even if that did result somehow in gaining judgement in your favour, there wiould be little to no chance of enforcing that judgement against RHE.

But you could bring a claim against British Gas if you still wanted to, assuming you have not accepted the findings of the EOS in your complaint against them. If you did that, you would surely lose for the reasons I have previously outlined.

westofsouth

The key issue is the validity of the opening gas reading.

The meter is a Secure Liberty EG4v11 so called 'smart' gas meter

It displays m³ and also kWh (using a fixed conversion factor of 11.1354) - so a reading of 100m³ would display as 1113kWh.

I provided Ebico with the kWh version of the opening gas reading.

Unfortunately neither Ebico (in 2020), BG or the EOS seem to willing to accept that a kWh reading can easily be converted back to a baseline gas volume for billing purposes (and the relevant CV applied).

However they absolutely cannot claim (as they do) that I did not provide an accurate/valid opening reading.

I am an engineer, perhaps I should have realised...

QrizB

So you gave them the wrong reading, and they didn't accept it? That's hardly surprising.

The meter measures cubic metres. Billing is based on the number of cubic metres consumed. The conversion to kWh in the meter is approximate as the number of kWh in a cubic metre of gas varies.

I don't think you've answered any of my earlier questions yet. Once you do, it might be possible to reach an opinion on whether your original claim of "an an excessive bill for nil gas consumption" has any merit.

I work with engineers. They're usually pretty good at following instructions to the letter.

westofsouth

Thank you for your comments QrizB

Can I suggest you run this past your engineering friends... 

Example:

I provide the energy supplier with the meter reading say, 6138kWh

This can then be divided by the fixed 'built in' conversion factor (see earlier post), to obtain the volume figure  6138/11.1354 = 551.2m³

This volume figure can then be used to establish kWh consumption in the usual way, taking into account the current calorific value.  =551.2x1.02264x39.3/3.6 = 6153.5kWh

6153kWh is then used for billing purposes.

Note 39.3 is the current CV used by British Gas