Outfox The Market

Nick_C

My refund arrived yesterday, including the £30 statutory compensation. I'm happy. 

JGB1955

My refund arrived yesterday WITHOUT the statutory compensation....I'm less happy!

Nick_C

JGB1955 said:

My refund arrived yesterday WITHOUT the statutory compensation....I'm less happy!

It should be paid proactively, but I suspect if you don't ask, you don't get.

If they don't pay it within 14 days of the failure to issue a bill, it goes up to £60.

I quoted the law and the deadline, which probably made them realise I'm not to be messed with. 

MWT

Nick_C said:

That's a reasonable explanation, and an interesting example of a law that is meant to protect us actually making life more difficult.

Although if they have taken money by DD, I can see an argument for keeping the data for 6 years. 

GDPR has this covered... you may of course retain the date as part of your banking records for example, but you may not process the data for any new purpose...

I have learned to hate GDPR in so many ways since it came into play, but you can learn to live with it as a business, just make sure you cover all the possible uses of the data within your contract, including use during termination and you are relatively safe.

FreeBear

Nick_C said:

JGB1955 said:

My refund arrived yesterday WITHOUT the statutory compensation....I'm less happy!

It should be paid proactively, but I suspect if you don't ask, you don't get.

If they don't pay it within 14 days of the failure to issue a bill, it goes up to £60.

I quoted the law and the deadline, which probably made them realise I'm not to be messed with. 

Is that 14 calendar days, or 14 working days ?

FreeBear

FreeBear said:

Nick_C said:

JGB1955 said:

My refund arrived yesterday WITHOUT the statutory compensation....I'm less happy!

It should be paid proactively, but I suspect if you don't ask, you don't get.

If they don't pay it within 14 days of the failure to issue a bill, it goes up to £60.

I quoted the law and the deadline, which probably made them realise I'm not to be messed with. 

Is that 14 calendar days, or 14 working days ?

Answering my own question - 10 working days or 14 calendar days.

I'm going to give them a little extra rope and assume the clock started on 4th Oct to issue a final bill, which would have taken us up to 15th Nov for the 6 week window. No refund by the close of 29th Nov, I'll start demanding another £30 on the Tuesday.

Nick_C

This was the email I sent;

"I switched from OTM to Sainsbury’s on 3 October.  I have a large credit balance on my account.

The law requires you to produce a final bill within 6 week of the switch completing.  You have failed to do this, even though the handover meter readings were verified four weeks ago.

Please ensure that a final bill is issued without further delay, and that the money you owe me is refunded promptly.

Please also ensure that the statutory £30 compensation payable under Regulation 8(2) of The Electricity and Gas (Standards of Performance) (Suppliers) Regulations 2015 is paid within 10 working days from today – ie no later than Tuesday 30 November.

 

Regards,

oliverbrown

Nick_C said:

If they don't pay it within 14 days of the failure to issue a bill, it goes up to £60.

So, as I understand it, after 10 working days of non-refund of a final bill the first £30 of compensation becomes payable. After another 10 working days of non-payment of the £30 compensation, another £30 compensation is added.

The question is, does the second £30 compensation require customer interaction at any point, since Ofgem say suppliers have:

10 working days from identifying a standards breach to automatically compensate you.

Arguably they will need to have customer notification before they "identify a standards breach"?

Nick_C

The energy companies are meant to identify these breaches themselves and automatically pay compensation.

When you switch, they must issue a final bill within 6 weeks.  If they don't, they owe you £30.

They must pay the £30 with 10 working days.  If they don't, that is a further breach and they owe another £30.

They must refund any credit balance on the account with 10 working days of issuing a final bill.  If they don't, that's another £30.

dbks

oliverbrown said:

Nick_C said:

If they don't pay it within 14 days of the failure to issue a bill, it goes up to £60.

So, as I understand it, after 10 working days of non-refund of a final bill the first £30 of compensation becomes payable. After another 10 working days of non-payment of the £30 compensation, another £30 compensation is added.

The question is, does the second £30 compensation require customer interaction at any point, since Ofgem say suppliers have:

10 working days from identifying a standards breach to automatically compensate you.

Arguably they will need to have customer notification before they "identify a standards breach"?

A supplier should know when they last supplied you, when they issued you a final bill, when they gave any refund due as shown on that final bill.

If it is not within the GSoP requirements, they should be identifying that a standard payment is required. They should know when they made that standard payment to the consumer.

If they failed to make that standard payment within the time permitted, they should identify that they should then make an additional payment.

Suppliers are also required to report regularly to Ofgem the data associated with this (no. of cases in each category). If a supplier such as OTM fails to comprehend the requirements correctly, that presumably calls intop question the accuracy of the data they are submitting to Ofgem.

The underlying motive of the GSoP requirements is to incentivise energy suppliers to improve the customer service they provide to consumers, not simply to give more ammo to consumers who are attentive and can be bothered to keep complaining to their supplier about their level of customer service.