PfP Energy ceases trading - here's everything you need to know

Declan01

lisyloo said:

TezFair said:

I looked at the Sainsburys energy and Eons tariff and I noticed that both requires you to install a smart meter on certain tariffs. I didn't think they could do that??

They can't force you to have a smart meter, although they can make it a condition of certain tarriffs.

Can someone educate me on the objections to smart meters please.
This is for my own education not prying into anyone else's decisions. Thanks

lisyloo: I have smart meters, and I wish I didn't.  They are dreadful.  Some companies can read them, others can't. They are SMETS 1 meters.  The first problems I had were when Shell Energy was taking incorrect readings from my electricity meter.  This took ages to fix. It turns out the electricity meter was producing a low and a high reading, The incorrect reading was being used.  Then I moved to Eon, who didn't bill me for gas for ages.  They were putting my gas meter on the national database it turned out, and so the gas bill was automatically stopped because the meter was re-entered on their system, so it was a "new" supply.  Going from Eon to Igloo, worked fine.  The latest switch to PFP energy didn't go properly.  I had to give my opening gas reading over the phone to PFP, the electricity reading went OK, which was ironic, considering what happened at Eon.  I was pleased that the gas reading was on PFP's website.  I got my final bill from Igloo, with an estimated reading.  I found that my original gas reading has been removed, and an estimate had been put in its place, I complained and PFP sent a meter reader to my home.  Checking up on this, the estimates were still there for the gas supply, and the nonsense reads from the gas meter that were there when I got my Igloo bill were gone.

I now have to sort all this out with BG.  So unless when you get smart meters you can garentee they are SMETS 2, don't touch with a barge pole.  We are also paying for then though increased energy prices.

There should be an over the air update for SMETS 1 meters to make them SMETS   2, but it was delayed from last year.

brewerdave

Declan01 said:

lisyloo said:

TezFair said:

I looked at the Sainsburys energy and Eons tariff and I noticed that both requires you to install a smart meter on certain tariffs. I didn't think they could do that??

They can't force you to have a smart meter, although they can make it a condition of certain tarriffs.

Can someone educate me on the objections to smart meters please.
This is for my own education not prying into anyone else's decisions. Thanks

There should be an over the air update for SMETS 1 meters to make them SMETS   2, but it was delayed from last year.

....not all SMETS1 will be upgradeable - they will have to be replaced. Some utility cos. are still using SMETS1 meters for installs in certain circumstances.
Even with SMETS2 there can be problems with the gas meter communicating with the hub on the leccy meter dependent on distance and the materials between the meters. And also some people have had issues with the SMETS2 set up communicating with the DCC, who data gather for the suppliers.

Stompa

I just tried supplying my meter readings on the PfP website, as requested in the latest BG email. The electricity reading was accepted OK, but for gas I get a message saying:

"Your meter reading was not accepted. Please try again. If the problem persists please contact Eddie our automated chat bot by visiting pfpenergy.co.uk or email your meter read to"

Eddie no longer seems to exist, and there's no email address supplied. Is there any way to get this reading to them?

UPDATE: Nevermind, just had an email from PfP explaining what to do. Enter via the portal (which currently seems to be unavailable), phone them (for which they give numbers) or email them (for which they give an email address).

[Deleted User]

lisyloo said:

TezFair said:

I looked at the Sainsburys energy and Eons tariff and I noticed that both requires you to install a smart meter on certain tariffs. I didn't think they could do that??

They can't force you to have a smart meter, although they can make it a condition of certain tarriffs.

Can someone educate me on the objections to smart meters please.
This is for my own education not prying into anyone else's decisions. Thanks

Smart meters will form part of what is known as a Smart Grid. Grids need to become smart as increasingly they will have to cope with varying supplies of renewable energy. The National Grid has to maintain both voltage and frequency: if either of these get out of kilter then damage may be done to the Grid and to consumer products in our homes.

Rather than turn wind turbines on/off, the National Grid will increasingly start to demand that suppliers offer time-of-use tariffs. Prices are low when supply exceeds demand and vice versa. For example, I am on Octopus Go and I get 5 hours of electricity per night at 5.5p/kWh.

Smart meters also offer savings to DNOs as they can investigate issues remotely. For example, a SMETS2 meter monitors the voltage coming into the home. 

I could go on. My view is that smart meters will become mandatory. Moreover, future tariff price comparisons will be based on historical usage plus when the power was used with data pulled from the meter (only with the consumer’s permission). Smart meters can record 48 by 30 minute periods of usage per day on 4 separate registers. There is nothing sinister going on.

Gerry1

lisyloo said:

TezFair said:

I looked at the Sainsburys energy and Eons tariff and I noticed that both requires you to install a smart meter on certain tariffs. I didn't think they could do that??

They can't force you to have a smart meter, although they can make it a condition of certain tarriffs.

Can someone educate me on the objections to smart meters please.
This is for my own education not prying into anyone else's decisions. Thanks

Don't want to derail this thread, but the main reasons behind the strong arm rollout tactics haven't been publicised anything like as much as the trivia (the shiny toy that soon gets hidden away in a drawer).  The objections include:-

• Cost: About £475 per household (yes, you're paying via higher bills) but it's officially estimated that it may save you a paltry £11 per year (yes, only eleven pounds).  These Parliamentarians think it's Not So Smart.
  
• Privacy: do you really want all sorts of unknown people snooping on your lifestyle to build a 'highly personalised profile' to work out when you're at home, when you're on holiday, when you go to bed etc so that they can monetise you?
• Rationing: Every smart electricity meter has a kill switch, every gas smart meter has a cut-off valve, and both are remotely controlled.  When there's not enough energy to go round (notably electricity, which can't be stored easily) load limiting will restrict the power you can use at peak times and / or the total number kilowatt hours supplied.  If you don't obey, then the meter disconnects your supply: 'load shedding' means you have your own personal power cut imposed.  Similarly, time of use tariffs can make electricity prohibitively expensive at peak times.

So if you agree to a smart meter say Goodbye to privacy and Hello to being controlled by it !

QrizB

Privacy - you can choose whether your meter reports half-hourly, daily or monthly. A meter reporting monthly gives no more info than you providing a monthly reading. Also this is the Ofgem doc with details of the data privacy framework.

Rationing - load shedding is already a thing, albeit on a district basis rather than house-by-house.

I chose a smart meter. I'm satisfied that my data is adequately protected and that I'm at no significantly greater risk of being cut off than I was before.

deanos

My direct debit was due yesterday , no failed fee on my account yet 

fly-catchers

Opening up the market to competition certainly hasn’t worked well for the consumer! 

Verdigris

Just got an email to submit meter reading to PfP. As it's my normal meter reading day, I'd already done it.

I've emailed Green, to cancel my transfer, because although marginally dearer, the BG offer is fixed until April. I gather Green may be putting their rates up on October 1st. I'm still listed as being with PfP and BG emailed me yesterday as if a transfer to them was ongoing.

Gerry1

QrizB said:

Privacy - you can choose whether your meter reports half-hourly, daily or monthly. A meter reporting monthly gives no more info than you providing a monthly reading. Also this is the Ofgem doc with details of the data privacy framework.

It was a bit TL;DR but neither your 11-year old Ofgem consultation nor anything else I've ever seen confirms that the monthly transmission is just a single reading: I suspect that it's the cache of ALL the half hour data.  If not, why are they so coy about it? 

QrizB said:

Rationing - load shedding is already a thing, albeit on a district basis rather than house-by-house.

You haven't mentioned Load Limiting, which is designed to pre-empt Load Shedding.