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BZ12

MWT said:

Gerry1 said:

@MWT @Mobtr We'll have to agree to disagree on this, but the only logical interpretation was that it was a hybrid, a Price Guaranteed period followed by a Variable capped price thereafter.

The rather unavoidable problem with that interpretation is that there was no period to be variable, as the tariff end date was the same as the guaranteed date.

If the end date for the tariff had been say, October '22, then I would completely agree with you, a hybrid tariff would have been a plausible interpretation, but with the tariff itself ending on the same day as the guarantee, it really just leaves us with conflicting mistakes and no valid interpretation possible.

There is unquestionably a contradiction in the terms, between ‘Variable’ and ‘Price Guaranteed until’ which leads to an ambiguous position as you suggest.  

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding from involvement in a previous case (in an entirely different field) is that there is a general principle known as Contra Proferentum, briefly summarised as - any clause which is ambiguous should be interpreted against the interest of the party which created the clause.  I imagine that would apply here.

MWT

BZ12 said:

MWT said:

Gerry1 said:

@MWT @Mobtr We'll have to agree to disagree on this, but the only logical interpretation was that it was a hybrid, a Price Guaranteed period followed by a Variable capped price thereafter.

The rather unavoidable problem with that interpretation is that there was no period to be variable, as the tariff end date was the same as the guaranteed date.

If the end date for the tariff had been say, October '22, then I would completely agree with you, a hybrid tariff would have been a plausible interpretation, but with the tariff itself ending on the same day as the guarantee, it really just leaves us with conflicting mistakes and no valid interpretation possible.

There is unquestionably a contradiction in the terms, between ‘Variable’ and ‘Price Guaranteed until’ which leads to an ambiguous position as you suggest.  

I am not a lawyer, but my understanding from involvement in a previous case (in an entirely different field) is that there is a general principle known as Contra Proferentum, briefly summarised as - any clause which is ambiguous should be interpreted against the interest of the party which created the clause.  I imagine that would apply here.

That is true, but it would not apply here as the mistake was not in the terms of the deemed contract it was in the material that was provided about the deemed contract.

It is a small but important difference as none of the people on these tariffs were induced to enter into the contract on the basis of the mistake, they were already placed into the contract which had been previously agreed with Ofgem as a capped variable rate tariff.

The damage that everyone can claim is based on the incorrect/;misleading information which they relied upon to their detriment, rather than on a contract term which was confusing or misleading...

BZ12

@MWT very interesting distinction, thanks..

Mstty

Just to aide my curiosity have British Gas offered "better than capped prices" fixed rate deals to those out of a fixed contract since the effected customers here were moved to them as SOLR?

That is potentially where the case is as they may not have offered those fixed deals to you as you appeared to have an end date on your contract which should not have been a contract just an open ended variable deal. That would be the under handed bit. 

wild666

brewerdave said:

lisyloo said:

Set up a DD.
They are quite incompetent (as you’ve seen).
at some stage you’ll probably get “you’re dd is too high” - lower it
then you’ll get “you’re dd is too low” - ignore it and stay on the lower figure
That’s if you don’t want the dd set too high but be aware it may now be too low.
personally I’d rather be on too low, but make sure you’re budgetting.

I've been thru those loops - there is a figure shown in italics "end of contract balance £xx in debit /credit" beneath Direct Debit on the Account Summary page on the website. I have no idea where this figure comes from , it seems to change on a daily basis and when I asked on Chat  the Customer Services person had no idea either of what date was the end of the contract or how the figure was calculated !
 In my ~ 3 months with BG ,the figure has been as high as £190 in credit and as low as £150 in debit! Currently they are predicting £66 in debit . I have no intention of raising my DD until the NR situation is sorted.

They are possibly changing the credit/debit figures frequently as one day you use a lot of electric/gas and another day you use little electric/gas. I know my daily usage of electric varies from 2.7 kWh to 10.7 kWh with Octopus but the yearly usage remains constant at 1500 kWh for electric and 950 kWh for gas. They are possibly recalculating using the new daily usage figures.

brewerdave

wild666 said:

brewerdave said:

lisyloo said:

Set up a DD.
They are quite incompetent (as you’ve seen).
at some stage you’ll probably get “you’re dd is too high” - lower it
then you’ll get “you’re dd is too low” - ignore it and stay on the lower figure
That’s if you don’t want the dd set too high but be aware it may now be too low.
personally I’d rather be on too low, but make sure you’re budgetting.

I've been thru those loops - there is a figure shown in italics "end of contract balance £xx in debit /credit" beneath Direct Debit on the Account Summary page on the website. I have no idea where this figure comes from , it seems to change on a daily basis and when I asked on Chat  the Customer Services person had no idea either of what date was the end of the contract or how the figure was calculated !
 In my ~ 3 months with BG ,the figure has been as high as £190 in credit and as low as £150 in debit! Currently they are predicting £66 in debit . I have no intention of raising my DD until the NR situation is sorted.

They are possibly changing the credit/debit figures frequently as one day you use a lot of electric/gas and another day you use little electric/gas. I know my daily usage of electric varies from 2.7 kWh to 10.7 kWh with Octopus but the yearly usage remains constant at 1500 kWh for electric and 950 kWh for gas. They are possibly recalculating using the new daily usage figures.

I'd agree with that IF they were using actual meter reads - but I haven't got smart meters and I only give a read on the 1st of each month ! As I said, the agent on Chat had no idea what the figure represented !!

Mstty

brewerdave said:

wild666 said:

brewerdave said:

lisyloo said:

Set up a DD.
They are quite incompetent (as you’ve seen).
at some stage you’ll probably get “you’re dd is too high” - lower it
then you’ll get “you’re dd is too low” - ignore it and stay on the lower figure
That’s if you don’t want the dd set too high but be aware it may now be too low.
personally I’d rather be on too low, but make sure you’re budgetting.

I've been thru those loops - there is a figure shown in italics "end of contract balance £xx in debit /credit" beneath Direct Debit on the Account Summary page on the website. I have no idea where this figure comes from , it seems to change on a daily basis and when I asked on Chat  the Customer Services person had no idea either of what date was the end of the contract or how the figure was calculated !
 In my ~ 3 months with BG ,the figure has been as high as £190 in credit and as low as £150 in debit! Currently they are predicting £66 in debit . I have no intention of raising my DD until the NR situation is sorted.

They are possibly changing the credit/debit figures frequently as one day you use a lot of electric/gas and another day you use little electric/gas. I know my daily usage of electric varies from 2.7 kWh to 10.7 kWh with Octopus but the yearly usage remains constant at 1500 kWh for electric and 950 kWh for gas. They are possibly recalculating using the new daily usage figures.

I'd agree with that IF they were using actual meter reads - but I haven't got smart meters and I only give a read on the 1st of each month ! As I said, the agent on Chat had no idea what the figure represented !!

Is this your gas readings? If so you may need to calculate it yourself into kWh.

https://www.theenergyshop.com/guides/how-to-convert-gas-units-to-kwh

brewerdave

Mstty said:

brewerdave said:

wild666 said:

brewerdave said:

lisyloo said:

Set up a DD.
They are quite incompetent (as you’ve seen).
at some stage you’ll probably get “you’re dd is too high” - lower it
then you’ll get “you’re dd is too low” - ignore it and stay on the lower figure
That’s if you don’t want the dd set too high but be aware it may now be too low.
personally I’d rather be on too low, but make sure you’re budgetting.

I've been thru those loops - there is a figure shown in italics "end of contract balance £xx in debit /credit" beneath Direct Debit on the Account Summary page on the website. I have no idea where this figure comes from , it seems to change on a daily basis and when I asked on Chat  the Customer Services person had no idea either of what date was the end of the contract or how the figure was calculated !
 In my ~ 3 months with BG ,the figure has been as high as £190 in credit and as low as £150 in debit! Currently they are predicting £66 in debit . I have no intention of raising my DD until the NR situation is sorted.

They are possibly changing the credit/debit figures frequently as one day you use a lot of electric/gas and another day you use little electric/gas. I know my daily usage of electric varies from 2.7 kWh to 10.7 kWh with Octopus but the yearly usage remains constant at 1500 kWh for electric and 950 kWh for gas. They are possibly recalculating using the new daily usage figures.

I'd agree with that IF they were using actual meter reads - but I haven't got smart meters and I only give a read on the 1st of each month ! As I said, the agent on Chat had no idea what the figure represented !!

Is this your gas readings? If so you may need to calculate it yourself into kWh.

https://www.theenergyshop.com/guides/how-to-convert-gas-units-to-kwh

No - only my leccy supply was switched from Neon Reef to BG and it's BG who show an "expected end of contract" balance which changes every day without any apparent input - might be useful if their own agents knew where the figure comes from ,but it is BG after all !!

Mstty

brewerdave said:

Mstty said:

brewerdave said:

wild666 said:

brewerdave said:

lisyloo said:

Set up a DD.
They are quite incompetent (as you’ve seen).
at some stage you’ll probably get “you’re dd is too high” - lower it
then you’ll get “you’re dd is too low” - ignore it and stay on the lower figure
That’s if you don’t want the dd set too high but be aware it may now be too low.
personally I’d rather be on too low, but make sure you’re budgetting.

I've been thru those loops - there is a figure shown in italics "end of contract balance £xx in debit /credit" beneath Direct Debit on the Account Summary page on the website. I have no idea where this figure comes from , it seems to change on a daily basis and when I asked on Chat  the Customer Services person had no idea either of what date was the end of the contract or how the figure was calculated !
 In my ~ 3 months with BG ,the figure has been as high as £190 in credit and as low as £150 in debit! Currently they are predicting £66 in debit . I have no intention of raising my DD until the NR situation is sorted.

They are possibly changing the credit/debit figures frequently as one day you use a lot of electric/gas and another day you use little electric/gas. I know my daily usage of electric varies from 2.7 kWh to 10.7 kWh with Octopus but the yearly usage remains constant at 1500 kWh for electric and 950 kWh for gas. They are possibly recalculating using the new daily usage figures.

I'd agree with that IF they were using actual meter reads - but I haven't got smart meters and I only give a read on the 1st of each month ! As I said, the agent on Chat had no idea what the figure represented !!

Is this your gas readings? If so you may need to calculate it yourself into kWh.

https://www.theenergyshop.com/guides/how-to-convert-gas-units-to-kwh

No - only my leccy supply was switched from Neon Reef to BG and it's BG who show an "expected end of contract" balance which changes every day without any apparent input - might be useful if their own agents knew where the figure comes from ,but it is BG after all !!

So you took an end reading as advised when the SOLR transfer happened and hopefully a picture as well?

This reconciled with your final statement from neon reef?

I would put all the paperwork together and send it to British Gas complaints department.

BZ12

Mstty said:

Just to aide my curiosity have British Gas offered "better than capped prices" fixed rate deals to those out of a fixed contract since the effected customers here were moved to them as SOLR?

That is potentially where the case is as they may not have offered those fixed deals to you as you appeared to have an end date on your contract which should not have been a contract just an open ended variable deal. That would be the under handed bit. 

It depends which capped price you mean, the Oct21-Mar22 Ofgem cap or Apr22-Sep22 Ofgem cap.  BG took over as a SoLR for me from People's Energy in October 21, so the rate I moved to was around 20p per KWh and 24p per day, 

In mid December 21 they offered me the chance to move onto their 'HomeEnergy Exclusive Jan 2014' tariff of 24p per kWh and 33p per day which is better than the Apr22-Sep22 Ofgem cap.  I didn't take up this offer, in part due to believing I would be giving up 6.5 months of the existing lower rate to do so.  In fact, if we were to accept BG's position that the 'Price Guarantee until 30th June' was not a price guarantee at all, then I would have only been giving up 3.5 months of the lower rate to do so.