Beware scottish power estimating reading for 31st March

RobboRobbo

Beware, just got my bill from scottish power and they estimated  the reading for 31st march, even though I have a smart meter. This has meant a slight overcharge as too many units are on the new tarriff. Seems a bit sly to me.

Astria

RobboRobbo said:

Beware, just got my bill from scottish power and they estimated  the reading for 31st march, even though I have a smart meter. This has meant a slight overcharge as too many units are on the new tarriff. Seems a bit sly to me.

Check your smart meter tariff, if you are on daily/30 minute intervals they won't estimate, but if they are reading only once a month they can still estimate for when the tariffs change.

Asking for a 30 minute interval will also give you access to some more tariffs which may be beneficial for you.

RobboRobbo

I am on the standard tarriff, with the smart meter providing daily readings, which I can download, but they chose to use an estimated reading completely ingnoring what the meter said, just for that day when the prices changed and denied that I wasnt be charged correctly.

[Deleted User]

RobboRobbo said:

Beware, just got my bill from scottish power and they estimated  the reading for 31st march, even though I have a smart meter. This has meant a slight overcharge as too many units are on the new tarriff. Seems a bit sly to me.

@Astria is spot on. Bear in mind, you are not being overcharged the unit cost: the actual cost is the difference between the two tariff prices x the number of units.

RobboRobbo

Yes, it works out to be £5 over charge, but with over 2 million customers, it could be a £10 million rip off.

Astria

RobboRobbo said:

Yes, it works out to be £5 over charge, but with over 2 million customers, it could be a £10 million rip off.

Surely though, even though you have a smart meter, you took meter readings on the 31st March which you can forward to SP and ask them to rebill you?

wild666

RobboRobbo said:

Beware, just got my bill from scottish power and they estimated  the reading for 31st march, even though I have a smart meter. This has meant a slight overcharge as too many units are on the new tarriff. Seems a bit sly to me

Can your meter be read by Scottish Power? If so then then they have no reason to estimate the reading on 31/3/22 unless the meter didn't give them a reading on the day. If I was a SP customer and they under read the smart meter and I was getting usage readings on a daily basis I would complain.

I have a smart meter, installed by BG back in 2015 and it can be read by my present supplier , Octopus but it occasionally doesn't send readings but if you had the exact reading on your meter for the day in question I would send them it and ask that they recalculate the bill. 

Gerry1

It's a widespread scam, not limited to Scottish Power: EDF did the same thing.

Surprise, surprise, EDF's website crashed on 31 March and they don't have any facility to enter the date of the meter reading, it's deemed to be the date of entering it.

Even worse, they set up a special webform (open only until 3 April) that allowed readings for 3 March to be entered, but they still managed to generate a bill with the 31 March reading applied to 1 April and a lower estimated figure applied to 31 March, resulting in an overcharge.

Although the overcharge was small I complained on principle, and eventually EDF cancelled the bill and generated a correct one. But I wonder how many people didn't jump through both hoops and were overcharged?

Xbigman

British Gas did the same. Despite sending them a reading for gas on the 31st AND getting an emailed acknowledgement with the correct reading they still used a lower reading. The difference is only about £3.50 so I decided to do nothing except hate them a little more. 


Darren

RobboRobbo

I did not take a reading on the 31st March as I didnt think it necessary as I had a smart meter and wrongly trusted the company. I was able to calculate the readings however, using downloaded smart meter data, and this was accepted by SP and new bills have been generated. 

The point of my post though, was not to ask for advice, but to warn people that this is occurring so they can check if SP has tried to scam them too. This applies to others companies too now, I see.