Metric/Imperial meters and overcharging

bytesplicer

Deleted_User said:

Be careful, you're accusing people of fraud on a public forum.

Changed to 'in my opinion', but in any case I haven't named a particular company.  As for accusations of fraud, everything I've said there is provable, I would be happy for any of the energy companies to challenge me on it.  If I'm missing something that shows I'm wrong I'll happily walk back anything I've said, but I already discussed this issue with the company involved and the ombudsman and everything they said painted them in a worse light.

jimjames

KerrBearrxo said:

Doesn't surprise me at all. They make mistakes just like everyone else. One thing to mention too is this wasn't done on purpose it was just pure incompetence and it's actually hurt them as well because some people were undercharged for energy and Ofgem has stated they cannot recuperate the losses from the customers they have to write it off.

We were undercharged for over 10 years, meter was recorded as metric but was actually imperial. Only came to light when changing supplier.

If it was deliberate fraud then there would be no cases of undercharging and only overcharging.

macman

Do you really believe that each supplier has a dedicated team who spend their days manually checking through bills and records of meter changes in order to defraud their customers?
They are billing hundreds of thousands of customers daily, it's untouched by human hand and driven by the data they have on the meter type. Garbage in, garbage out.

bytesplicer

jimjames said:

KerrBearrxo said:

Doesn't surprise me at all. They make mistakes just like everyone else. One thing to mention too is this wasn't done on purpose it was just pure incompetence and it's actually hurt them as well because some people were undercharged for energy and Ofgem has stated they cannot recuperate the losses from the customers they have to write it off.

We were undercharged for over 10 years, meter was recorded as metric but was actually imperial. Only came to light when changing supplier.

If it was deliberate fraud then there would be no cases of undercharging and only overcharging.

At face value that would make sense, how can it be fraud when they're losing money?  Except they're not, as already mentioned, if you collate the losses from undercharging and the gains from overcharging, even assuming a very generous 50/50 split of under/over charging, the overcharging nets more money than is lost from the undercharging.  Besides which, 'hustle' 101 includes planned losses to avoid suspicion, if you're cheating at cards you don't use your advantage to win every match or you risk showing your ruse.

The undercharging actually raises more interesting questions.  In all the cases of overcharging, the fix has been very slow in coming, with months if not years of runaround before the meter issues was uncovered, usually by the customer.  In this case the energy companies gain by delaying resolution.  For undercharges, the money is already lost so there's nothing to be gained by them drawing it out.  I'd be interested to see the data for how long resolution takes on undercharging vs overcharging, and particularly who uncovers the fault in the end.  I'd be willing to bet the undercharging is discovered by the company itself not the customer.

bytesplicer

macman said:

Do you really believe that each supplier has a dedicated team who spend their days manually checking through bills and records of meter changes in order to defraud their customers?
They are billing hundreds of thousands of customers daily, it's untouched by human hand and driven by the data they have on the meter. type. Garbage in, garbage out.

No, I don't believe they have dedicated teams who spend their days manually checking through bills and records in order to defraud their customers.  A dedicated team isn't required, all that is necessary is inaction by not training staff to know to check for meter type mismatch when a dispute is raised.  Also inaction by not having a proper procedure when switching suppliers for checking the meter type, they already send a person out, why don't they double check the units used on the meter, which would avoid all of these errors, something that can be done at the same time as taking the reading and costs them absolutely nothing to implement.  If you look at my original post, this is a well known industry wide issue that has been known about for decades.  You're right about garbage in, garbage out, they're still allowing garbage in during supplier switch and meter exchange, when you couple that with the fact that the balance of these errors falls in favour of the energy companies you have to wonder why it's still happening.

[Deleted User]

Why would a customer report undercharging, even if they discovered it?

Your postulated 'interesting' statistics would be meaningless.

bytesplicer

Deleted_User said:

Why would a customer report undercharging, even if they discovered it?

Your postulated 'interesting' statistics would be meaningless.

It's funny that you're assuming the customer is dishonest when it's in their favour, but that the energy company isn't when it's in theirs   Of course I'm assuming as you say that many customers wouldn't mention it, and this is my point, in the case of undercharging, somehow, miraculously the energy companies discovered the meter reading mismatch on their own, without any input from the customer, who as you say aren't going to report it.  And yet, when it comes to overcharging, not only do the energy companies not discover the issue, they actively refuse to check for meter reading mismatch even after being informed of an issue by the customer, and won't do so until again the customer discovers the problem themselves.  That's what's interesting and it certainly isn't meaningless, just more evidence of fraud.

Thank you for making my point for me.

[Deleted User]

bytesplicer said:

Deleted_User said:

Why would a customer report undercharging, even if they discovered it?

Your postulated 'interesting' statistics would be meaningless.

It's funny that you're assuming the customer is dishonest when it's in their favour, but that the energy company isn't when it's in theirs   Of course I'm assuming as you say that many customers wouldn't mention it, and this is my point, in the case of undercharging, somehow, miraculously the energy companies discovered the meter reading mismatch on their own, without any input from the customer, who as you say aren't going to report it.  And yet, when it comes to overcharging, not only do the energy companies not discover the issue, they actively refuse to check for meter reading mismatch until again the customer discovers the problem themselves.  That's what's interesting and it certainly isn't meaningless, just more evidence of fraud.

Thank you for making my point for me.

I'm just pointing out that your stats would be pointless but you can't possibly know the circumstances of each situation.

Your entire assertion is that there are people in the suppliers who are hunting through meter records and deliberately changing them to overcharge.  Not simply that if they notice a mistake that they are not fast to fix it, but that they are actually fraudulently (your oft repeated claim) changing details.  You actually even state that you have direct evidence of this deliberate falsification of previously correct data.

I'm not sure that saying "some customers might not notice or happen to point out a mistake if it was in their favour" makes that point at all.

bytesplicer

Deleted_User said:

bytesplicer said:

Deleted_User said:

Why would a customer report undercharging, even if they discovered it?

Your postulated 'interesting' statistics would be meaningless.

It's funny that you're assuming the customer is dishonest when it's in their favour, but that the energy company isn't when it's in theirs   Of course I'm assuming as you say that many customers wouldn't mention it, and this is my point, in the case of undercharging, somehow, miraculously the energy companies discovered the meter reading mismatch on their own, without any input from the customer, who as you say aren't going to report it.  And yet, when it comes to overcharging, not only do the energy companies not discover the issue, they actively refuse to check for meter reading mismatch until again the customer discovers the problem themselves.  That's what's interesting and it certainly isn't meaningless, just more evidence of fraud.

Thank you for making my point for me.

I'm just pointing out that your stats would be pointless but you can't possibly know the circumstances of each situation.

Your entire assertion is that there are people in the suppliers who are hunting through meter records and deliberately changing them to overcharge.  Not simply that if they notice a mistake that they are not fast to fix it, but that they are actually fraudulently (your oft repeated claim) changing details.  You actually even state that you have direct evidence of this deliberate falsification of previously correct data.

I'm not sure that saying "some customers might not notice or happen to point out a mistake if it was in their favour" makes that point at all.

I didn't say you could know, I'd say it would be interesting to know.  My assertion isn't that there are people in the suppliers who are hunting through records deliberately changing them to overcharge.  Look at my answer to 'macman' a few posts above, all that is required for the energy companies to profit from this problem is selective inaction. They don't need to change any details or do anything that you're suggesting, fraud often relies on deliberate inaction as opposed to direct action.  Saying that is my entire assertion is patently false.

You've indicated yourself that customers won't point out an error, so in the undercharging cases, where the energy company discovered the issue themselves, they must have some checks in place to make this discovery, yes?   That is why the statistics would be interesting, because if only the undercharges are discovered by the energy companies, and the overcharges are only discovered by the customers, that would suggest the suppliers are checking for errors that cost them, but not checking for errors that cost their customers.  That's the point.

luvchocolate

I had gas meter change end of November it was 40 years old and read 4 didgets 

I am a low user November using 6 on the meter 

We've had power cuts for a full day and half day this week and in spite of cold weather not used much 

Today I checked after only 2 weeks I've used 30 on the meter which is 5 didgets 
I did read the new one when installed 

This is worrying so at the end of the month instead of sending readings online I think I'll call