Am I asking too much from Shell Energy?

[Deleted User]

@ the OP,  I don't use Shell but my inlaws do and have done for quite a few years now.  Their bills are always generated on 17th of the month and I find them as easy to understand as the bills I get from Eon Next.  They also have a smart meter and their account also gives access to monthly usage via the 'My Energy' menu on the account so even though their billing is effectively mid-month, it is relatively easy to lift the information in £ or kWh for both utilities for each calendar month rather than from the 15th to the following 15th (when the actual reads are used).  You can even download the data for each utility as a csv file (again these are monthly data in £/kWh).  This is actually better than the information that Eon Next are able to give me.

My advice FWIW is to get a smart meter installed if you want this level of detail or just accept that your billing cycle runs on the 7th of each month.  I can only assume that your desire to change to the 1st of each month might cause issues if every single customer throughout the land was able to elect the billing to start on the 1st of the month.  Much as you feel angst at Shell stubborn refusal to acquiesce to your wishes they probably feel exactly the same as to why you haven't accepted the billing date and have submitted readings either automatically or manually (if not smart) on the due date such that no estimated reads need to be done by Shell.     

RogerBareford

kroggy said:

RogerBareford said:

kroggy said:

As a result of these issues I have four months of energy being disputed, I asked they they issue two bills, one up to the tariff change and one thereafter, instead they have produced a single bill which is so complex that I would need a top 3 auditing firm to comprehend and again it has gone past the reads by 7 days.

I think your exagerting how complicated the bill is. If you post a copy on here with all your personal details removed then someone will be able to explain it to you so you can understand it and then learn how to understand bills in the future.

I think you mean exaggerating, the bill is only complicated because they insist on adding this estimated week.

You have clearly made up your mind to blame the victim and take the side of Shell Energy, so no thanks I will not spend hours redacting and uploading a bill only for you to attack me further.

I have asked others and they go glass eyed when looking at the bill, the layout is the layout, I am not going to get Shell to change that, all I want is for the bill to run from 1st of month to end of month, I moved in on the 1st of month, I asked to be billed from 1st of month to end of Month and Shell Energy said it would be no problem.

It is clear that email is just a waste of time because by the time they reply a new bill has been sent and there is a whole new inaccurate bill of diarrhea to deal with.

What makes it diarrhea?

When I get the next bill the start of the bill will be an estimated read, so it will either need to be corrected or Shell Energy will be stealing from me.

At the same time they will add another 7 day period with an estimated read and the whole cycle will start again.

So previously all I ever needed to do was take a photo of my read which the 3rd party app converts to a read, I could submit that read to my supplier and I would get a bill for what I submitted.  NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

I really do not understand why this is so hard for Shell, so I have to conclude they are doing this to deliberately provide estimated reads so they can make money in rounding or whatever.

The abrasive and borderline hostile attitude of Shell Energy Staff just makes things worse.

I have had energy companies with call a centre in South Africa, India and the Philippines, I would always prefer a UK call centre but at least some of these were friendly and courteous with a willingness to help or with the ability to escalate to someone more experienced.

I think this is another area where Shell Energy fails, there does not appear to be a senior person to escalate to or a CEO's office, the staff seem almost willing for you to take to the Ombudsman.

Strange way to run a company and over time it will ruin their reputation.

Obviously they do not give a damn at the moment because we can't jump (yet) but I will dine out on telling my circle of their shortcomings and word will get out. 

It would take 5 minutes to blank out personal information on a picture of the bill and upload it then people could go through it and help you understand it. Nobody is "blaming the victim" i just think your wasting a lot of time posting on here and getting worked up about something that doesn't matter. So what if they don't bill you based on calendar months it makes no difference whatsoever, they could bill you once a year and it wouldn't matter because at the end of the day you pay for what you use.

Attempting to get them to change their billing system so it bills you on different days won't change anything so it's a waste of your effort.

What you need is someone who understands your bill to explain it to you and to check for errors so any issues you have can be resolved.

pochase

If your main issue is really your third part app that is based on starting on the 1. of the month what stops you from just pretending the bill is for the 1. and not the 7, 

You will have a time shift of the 7 days, but it will make not much difference in the app.

Nobody is stealing your money, what you pay more today you pay less in the next bill. And you have used the energy already when you receive the bill, so you are not paying anything upfront.

kroggy

pochase said:

Have you started the formal complaints process and asked them to open a complaint for you? You can not just take it to the Ombudsman.

Only after you have done so and waited 8 weeks or get a deadlock letter you can go to the Ombudsman. 

They have two stages in their complaints process and they skipped the second because they did not want to address my issue, they told me that their reply was a deadlock and they would not reply further.

As I said the customer service is the worst I have ever seen from an energy company and trust me I have had some truly awful ones.

I did get the impression that the staff have a problem with understanding written English, they more or less agree to anything on the phone because again they just do not understand.  They come over as quite efficient but when you drill down they do not really understand

kroggy

DerwentMailman said:

@ the OP,  I don't use Shell but my inlaws do and have done for quite a few years now.  Their bills are always generated on 17th of the month and I find them as easy to understand as the bills I get from Eon Next.  They also have a smart meter and their account also gives access to monthly usage via the 'My Energy' menu on the account so even though their billing is effectively mid-month, it is relatively easy to lift the information in £ or kWh for both utilities for each calendar month rather than from the 15th to the following 15th (when the actual reads are used).  You can even download the data for each utility as a csv file (again these are monthly data in £/kWh).  This is actually better than the information that Eon Next are able to give me.

My advice FWIW is to get a smart meter installed if you want this level of detail or just accept that your billing cycle runs on the 7th of each month.  I can only assume that your desire to change to the 1st of each month might cause issues if every single customer throughout the land was able to elect the billing to start on the 1st of the month.  Much as you feel angst at Shell stubborn refusal to acquiesce to your wishes they probably feel exactly the same as to why you haven't accepted the billing date and have submitted readings either automatically or manually (if not smart) on the due date such that no estimated reads need to be done by Shell.     

Thanks for confirming that they do not bill the whole country on the same day.

A single bill they sent me could be deciphered but the layout was awful, but my issue is that they are NOT producing a bill based on the readings that I provide.  They then use an estimated reading which is madness when I have provided a read

I will NOT be forced to have a so called Smart Meter if that is their tactic, I had not thought of that.

I am not asking them to change the whole country

I am asking them to do what they said they would do, which is to bill me from the 1st to the end of the month

I moved in on the 1st and so it is the natural date to record and be charged for.

It is not me asking them to "acquiesce to your wishes" it is me asking them to do what comes naturally when you move in on the 1st.

Also I do not believe it will make any difference, if I changed to the 7th they would add 7 days and bill me to the 14th.

If they want to spend £350 going to the ombudsman then so be it.

kroggy

RogerBareford said:

kroggy said:

RogerBareford said:

kroggy said:

As a result of these issues I have four months of energy being disputed, I asked they they issue two bills, one up to the tariff change and one thereafter, instead they have produced a single bill which is so complex that I would need a top 3 auditing firm to comprehend and again it has gone past the reads by 7 days.

I think your exagerting how complicated the bill is. If you post a copy on here with all your personal details removed then someone will be able to explain it to you so you can understand it and then learn how to understand bills in the future.

I think you mean exaggerating, the bill is only complicated because they insist on adding this estimated week.

You have clearly made up your mind to blame the victim and take the side of Shell Energy, so no thanks I will not spend hours redacting and uploading a bill only for you to attack me further.

I have asked others and they go glass eyed when looking at the bill, the layout is the layout, I am not going to get Shell to change that, all I want is for the bill to run from 1st of month to end of month, I moved in on the 1st of month, I asked to be billed from 1st of month to end of Month and Shell Energy said it would be no problem.

It is clear that email is just a waste of time because by the time they reply a new bill has been sent and there is a whole new inaccurate bill of diarrhea to deal with.

What makes it diarrhea?

When I get the next bill the start of the bill will be an estimated read, so it will either need to be corrected or Shell Energy will be stealing from me.

At the same time they will add another 7 day period with an estimated read and the whole cycle will start again.

So previously all I ever needed to do was take a photo of my read which the 3rd party app converts to a read, I could submit that read to my supplier and I would get a bill for what I submitted.  NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

I really do not understand why this is so hard for Shell, so I have to conclude they are doing this to deliberately provide estimated reads so they can make money in rounding or whatever.

The abrasive and borderline hostile attitude of Shell Energy Staff just makes things worse.

I have had energy companies with call a centre in South Africa, India and the Philippines, I would always prefer a UK call centre but at least some of these were friendly and courteous with a willingness to help or with the ability to escalate to someone more experienced.

I think this is another area where Shell Energy fails, there does not appear to be a senior person to escalate to or a CEO's office, the staff seem almost willing for you to take to the Ombudsman.

Strange way to run a company and over time it will ruin their reputation.

Obviously they do not give a damn at the moment because we can't jump (yet) but I will dine out on telling my circle of their shortcomings and word will get out. 

It would take 5 minutes to blank out personal information on a picture of the bill and upload it then people could go through it and help you understand it. Nobody is "blaming the victim" i just think your wasting a lot of time posting on here and getting worked up about something that doesn't matter. So what if they don't bill you based on calendar months it makes no difference whatsoever, they could bill you once a year and it wouldn't matter because at the end of the day you pay for what you use.

Attempting to get them to change their billing system so it bills you on different days won't change anything so it's a waste of your effort.

What you need is someone who understands your bill to explain it to you and to check for errors so any issues you have can be resolved.

I am not sure if you are an employee of Shell Energy or just like winding people up on forums but please do not reply to any more of my messages.

I am not going to be providing my bill which has all kinds of personal information including the amounts used.

If I am wasting my time then it is my time to waste, please use the IGNORE function so you do not get notified of my messages and please do not reply to them.

I am not asking them to change their billing system, it is clear from other users that they do not bill every customer on the same day.

I moved in on the first, my reads are for a month from the first I expect to be billed from the first for 30 days not 37 days.

As for your last sentence I am quite capable of understanding my bill, I have had bills from almost all of the suppliers on the market over the years, I have been able to verify these with my own spreadsheets.

In the past I have had suppliers who play this USE ESTIMATES game so they can round up and make extra money off each customer.  It was my spreadsheet that highlighted this and they did stop it once I brought it to their attention.

To be honest I just want what seems to be normal, a bill based on my reads, a bill that runs on the anniversary of when I moved in.

QrizB

kroggy said:

To be honest I just want what seems to be normal, a bill based on my reads, a bill that runs on the anniversary of when I moved in.

What you've got is a bill based on Shell's billing cycle, and that is all they are obliged to offer you.

You can ask them, politely, if they will move your billing date but they are at liberty to decline.

kroggy said:

RogerBareford said:

It would take 5 minutes to blank out personal information on a picture of the bill and upload it then people could go through it and help you understand it. Nobody is "blaming the victim" i just think your wasting a lot of time posting on here and getting worked up about something that doesn't matter.

I am not sure if you are an employee of Shell Energy or just like winding people up on forums but please do not reply to any more of my messages.
I am not going to be providing my bill which has all kinds of personal information including the amounts used.

RogerBareford is no more obligated to comply with your request to him than Shell are to your request to them.

Amounts used are not personal information.

[Deleted User]

kroggy said:

In the past I have had suppliers who play this USE ESTIMATES game so they can round up and make extra money off each customer.  It was my spreadsheet that highlighted this and they did stop it once I brought it to their attention.

To be honest I just want what seems to be normal, a bill based on my reads, a bill that runs on the anniversary of when I moved in.

Don't forget that your moving in date (1st of the month) to your property won't necessarily be the date that Shell created the account and commence the monthly bill cycle.   Maybe it should not be set in stone but there you go.  Different suppliers have different ways of doing things.  I know that Eon Next bill me to the day that a read is submitted (either automatically or manually).  It appears that Octopus may be the same reading other posts.  If Shell cannot do what you want them to do then perhaps you should investigate whether you can change to either of these suppliers if the bill date means as much as it obviously does.  Hoping the suppliers you refer to above are neither of the two I have mentioned.

I have been fortunate that the supppliers I have used in the past have always billed me to my actual reads - going from Breeze, British Gas, Yorkshire Energy, Scottish Power, Avro, Bulb and what may be my final resting home at Eon Next.    

Robin9

To me having a meter billing date of my choice comes under a nice to have" it's not a deal breaker. Just wait till you get your state pension every 4 weeks and see how you budget for that

markin

Give them a reading that excludes 7 days use, Then their 7 day estimate will be far closer to the 30 days you want.

The billing system could be set up to do 4% of bills per day so the servers can cope, The is no way they could bill everyone on the 1st without huge upgrades or using a server farm.