Bulb - Large adjustment after failing to take smart meter readings

Toonshorty

Hi all,

I had a nice suprise yesterday morning waking up to a bill from Bulb to say my bill for this month is £404. To put that into perspective, I'm usually charged around £110. Having looked into the breakdown, it seems they have made a large adjustment to re-align electricity consumption following a manual reading from a contractor that came out to read the meter last month. They effectively estimated a reading on the 4th May at 1844, but the manual reading on the 16th May was read at 2846.

I moved into the house in July last year so have been in for 11 months now and was told that since both gas and electric were on smart meters, I wouldn't need to provide readings as they would just be read by the energy company directly. I assumed that this was exactly what was happening and have had no communication from Bulb in the last 11 months to indicate that there was any problems with them reading the meters.

I have spoken with their support team briefly who have said that they can see both smart meters are 'online' from their side, so presumably they shouldn't have had any problems taking readings. Strangely, their app shows gas usage as being done on estimates every month on the 4th, but then a smart reading on both the 4th June and 26th May. No smart readings have been taken for electricity though.

Based on the manual reading I took when I first moved in and a manual reading yesterday, I am consuming approximately 200kWh a month. Bulb have typically been estimating my usage to be around 100kWh (lowest month was 34kWh, highest was 150kWh). This means I've effectively been 100kWh short each month, but the majority of this (8/11 months) would have been at the lower cap which means I'm now faced with a huge bill as the difference is being charged at the new tariff.

Bulb have said they are unable to take historical readers and so are unable to correct the bill however the IHD does allow me to see how much I have spent each day/week/month and also shows a unit rate for electricity (even if it is completely wrong). In theory that should allow me to collect evidence of historical usage and calculate to a reasonable degree of accuracy what the reading would have been prior to the 1st March, but I don't know whether this would be accepted or not. Naturally Bulb are going to want to bill at the current tariff but not sure if I have any rights here to try and negotiate a fairer deal.

I take some responsibility as I haven't actually checked the meter at any point since moving in, but that was mostly on the basis that I was told I didn't need to and at no point was I contacted to say there were problems getting readings. Had I been informed prior to the 1st March that no reading had been taken then I would have had no issue providing manual readings. Would this be something to potentially raise as a complaint with Ofgem?

Given the current squeeze we're all facing right now, being landed with a £400 energy bill is a bit of a problem and given I estimate ~685kWh (napkin maths for now) of that adjustment was prior to March, I suspect an adjusted bill would probably be more like £200-250 which is more manageable.

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks!

Gerry1

IIRC smart meters hold 13 months worth of usage data.  Tell them to use this history to determine the readings for 31 March so that they can calculate the bills using the prices that applied at the relevant times.  If they can't access the usage info remotely, tell them to send a meter reader to download it via the smart meters' optical ports.

If Bulb are awkward, submit a formal written complaint via Royal Mail (get a free certificate of Posting) and go to the ombudsman upon receipt of a deadlock letter or after eight weeks if they don't send one.

You'll have to pay for what you've used, but ask for a Payment Plan if it a large single payment would be problematic.

pochase

Toonshorty said:

Given the current squeeze we're all facing right now, being landed with a £400 energy bill is a bit of a problem and given I estimate ~685kWh (napkin maths for now) of that adjustment was prior to March, I suspect an adjusted bill would probably be more like £200-250 which is more manageable.

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks!

Positive is your calculations are wrong.

Estimated reading was 1844 on real meter read half a month later was 2846. That is 1002KWh. Subtract the 50KWh you expected to use in this 2 weeks and you owe them for an additional 950KWh.

The 950KWh are at a rate of 29p  £275,50 arears that you additionally. The £400 include already the normal payment.

The savings by being billed at the lower rate is not the £150 to £200 that you believe it is.

Difference between lower and higher cap should be somewhere in the region of 8p, so 693 x 8p = £55.44, so you are still owing them estimated  £220 after recalculation for the arears. You also still owe the money for your normal use in May.

I would need the correct old and new rate for your region to make a correct calculation.

A bit strange is that you have a £404 bill if there is only an arear of 275.50, or £290 if I calculate the whole 1002KWh as arrears, the £114 would be for the standing charge for May and for 2 weeks of electricity. Have they maybe estimated your usage again, and this time very high?

Brie

For what it's worth I was with Bulb for nearly 4 years and they never had a smart meter reading from me so I assumed there wasn't a smart meter here.  I moved to Eon and suddenly the smart meter is working and they are getting correct readings (I checked).  I suspect something similar is happening with your smart meters - e.g. Bulb isn't getting the info.

Alnat1

You could try downloading the Bright app. You might be able to see when the units were used that way, as it picks up smart meter info

[Deleted User]

OP - the costs shown on your IHD will only be correct if the supplier can access your smart meters. The IHD uses the tariff data sent by the supplier to each of your meters to calculate costs.

In an ideal World, a supplier would contact customers if they cannot pull readings from your meters. Sadly, this rarely happens, and it is often left to the consumer to take note of the fact that estimated readings have been used for billing (usually annotated with an ‘ E’). That should have been the trigger for you to contact the supplier.

The fact that the supplier can ‘see’ that your meters are connected to the network doesn’t mean that it can pull data. All suppliers use DCC-approved secure Adapter software to provide a link between meters and their systems. Before there can be any data pulls, each meter needs a bespoke security certificate. Meter manufacturers are responsible for their meters, and the DCC is responsible for the network and communications hubs. There is a lot that can go wrong!

Smart meters do hold 13 month’s worth of import data; however, based on my 3 years with Octopus, retrieving missing data is I believe a complex manual process. I suspect that not all suppliers have the secure software to do it. Octopus had to develop its own software as it bills on 30 minute data and not meter readings.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

have you got entry reading and today reading, easy to work out usage and cost?

Toonshorty

Thanks everyone for your comments so far, that's been really helpful.

pochase said:

Toonshorty said:

Given the current squeeze we're all facing right now, being landed with a £400 energy bill is a bit of a problem and given I estimate ~685kWh (napkin maths for now) of that adjustment was prior to March, I suspect an adjusted bill would probably be more like £200-250 which is more manageable.

Any advice would be much appreciated, thanks!

Positive is your calculations are wrong.

Estimated reading was 1844 on real meter read half a month later was 2846. That is 1002KWh. Subtract the 50KWh you expected to use in this 2 weeks and you owe them for an additional 950KWh.

The 950KWh are at a rate of 29p  £275,50 arears that you additionally. The £400 include already the normal payment.

The savings by being billed at the lower rate is not the £150 to £200 that you believe it is.

Difference between lower and higher cap should be somewhere in the region of 8p, so 693 x 8p = £55.44, so you are still owing them estimated  £220 after recalculation for the arears. You also still owe the money for your normal use in May.

I would need the correct old and new rate for your region to make a correct calculation.

A bit strange is that you have a £404 bill if there is only an arear of 275.50, or £290 if I calculate the whole 1002KWh as arrears, the £114 would be for the standing charge for May and for 2 weeks of electricity. Have they maybe estimated your usage again, and this time very high?

Yes, I think I've made a bit of a hash of the napkin maths - too many numbers! First of all, I've confused matters by quoting the £404 bill which is actually the full bill for the month including gas; the electric component of the bill is £314.59. The difference is a little harder to calculate as the monthly cost

frugalmacdugal said:

Hi,

have you got entry reading and today reading, easy to work out usage and cost?

Yes my original reading when I moved in was 807 although I did change to Bulb after moving, so their first recorded reading is on the 4th August 2021 at 957. The reading yesterday was 3051 so on average around 6.7kWh per day.

I managed to extract monthly totals from the IHD, it's not perfect but given the bills are based on estimates from the 4th of each month, it should be reasonably aligned.

<div>Aug '21 - 208 </div><div>Sep '21 - 154 </div><div>Oct '21 - 196 </div><div>Nov '21 - 191 </div><div>Dec '21 - 192 </div><div>Jan '21 - 232 </div><div>Feb '21 - 233 </div><div>Mar '21 - 202 </div><div>Apr '21 - 184 </div><div>May '21 - 211 * </div><div> <br></div><div>Total:   2003 kWh</div>

(MSE forums seems to make a bit of a mess of the code block it seems)

As far as I can tell, I have been billed for a total of 887kWh across bills from September 2021 to May 2022. My actual usage over this period (I believe) is around about 1,792kWh, so there's a shortfall of around 905kWh. This is only to the 4th May, so the total shortfall will be slightly higher. 905kWh at 25.8p would be £233.49, whereas if I apply rates of 17.439p to Aug/Sep, 19.235p to Oct-Mar and 25.8p to Apr/May the total would be £173.52 - so the difference is around about £60.

Based on those calculations, the total usage for June's bill should be May's usage (211) plus the shortfall (905) for 1116kWh - which given I've been billed for 1105.3 seems about the right ballpark. Once I apply the correct unit rates to the usage, plus the standard charge and VAT - I end up with £254.52 as the bill. So effectively £60.07 less than what I was actually billed (£314.59).

If I speak to them about a payment plan then I may see if they can credit the account with £60 to effectively offset the timing. I'll give them a call on Monday and see what they can do.