Smart meter fiddle by new energy supplier?

matt_drummer

Shoddie said:

Hi @ matt_drummer.  If UW had succeeded, they'd have made their profit from converting a huge block of historical night rate units into day rate units without having to pay for any additional incoming electricity.  

Well then,

You haven't read or understood what I have written.

Energy retailers profits are capped.

Simply, they pay for what they bill customers, so if they have billed you for day time usage, that is what they will have paid for.

It's more complex than that, obviously, but that is the basic principle.

They are not trying to rip you off, they are trying to avoid being ripped off themselves.

EssexHebridean

I can’t recall if it’s been asked or answered previously, but which way round are your registers? Is R1 your and R2 your night - this seems to be considered by many less E7-savvy suppliers to be a “standard” - it often seems to be those with R2 = day and R1 = night who suffer the most from transposition errors - indeed I have a feeling that I was never able to use UW’s method for supplying readings directly from their reminder letter for that reason, as it defaulted to put the two registers round the wrong way. 

Ildhund

EssexHebridean said:

Is R1 your and R2 your night - this seems to be considered by many less E7-savvy suppliers to be a “standard” - it often seems to be those with R2 = day and R1 = night who suffer the most from transposition errors

I learnt sometime last year that this R1/R2 problem stems from DCC. They expect the first register tier (usually 0 or 1) to be peak/day/normal, with the next (1 or 2) for offpeak/night/low. This came to light when my SMETS1 meter was enrolled and adopted on to DCC; until then, my tier 1 had been for night usage and tier 2 for day. The solution was simply to swap registers. This worked fine, also eventually for billing, but I could no longer simply subtract last year's readings from this year's to find my annual usage. I put up with it, and of course it's now all history ...

... except that when my shiny new SMETS2 meter was fitted last year, they managed to do it again, with offpeak recorded on tier 1 and peak on tier 2. I grumbled loudly, and the TPRs were switched within a couple of hours.    

EssexHebridean

We were always the “wrong” way round - and as a result had issues with “most” suppliers we were with at some stage. Some, once they’d had it explained (and been sent photos) learned, corrected things, and all was well, but then there was Scottish Power… 🤦🏻‍♀️

Shoddie

Hi @EssexHebridean.  After UW had taken over the meter day rate was on R01 and night rate was on R02.  All the evidence points to the registers having been the other way round up until then.  I found the following on the CAB website:

This is interesting as @Ildhund seems to be saying the DCC assume the standard is the opposite way round.  The link @Ildhund posted describes the mechanism in some detail.  As @matt_drummer pointed out, I'm sure there are mechanisms to ensure that both suppliers and customers are charged on the basis of the same readings.  What I suspect is that there is a weakness in what happens when retail customers move to a new supplier.  In my case the final readings used by British Gas are the opposite way round to the initial readings used by UW.  This means that my initial bill was inflated by the cost of several years worth of the difference between my day and night usage.  I suspect that UW and BG would have paid for wholesale electricity based on the initial agreed readings without subsequent checks.

If UW aren't hiding a systematic abuse of the process, why would they refuse to admit their mistake.  Why get the ombudsman to gaslight me about their error being "impossible".  I recovered the original £740 they stole under the direct debit guarantee and they haven't had a single penny from me since.  It's been nearly three years now.  Why not take me to court?  I have challenged them to on a number of occasions.

EssexHebridean

They haven’t “got the Ombudsman” to do anything - what you are reading is the opinion of the Ombudsman officer who has looked at your evidence. 

The perception has for a lot of suppliers always been that the day reading will be on R01 and the night on R02 - I suspect largely because that is seen as the “logical” way round for it. It’s extremely surprising that the Ombudsman would think that transpositions can’t happen - they are far from uncommon. As said previously I think it happened to us at least three times in the 20 years we were on E7 - and it would have happened once again with (I think) UW had I not realised that their meter reading link defaulted the wrong way round for us! 

I honestly don’t think there is any malicious intent on the part of UW here I’m afraid - as dull as it is, I think they just tend towards incompetence. 

Shoddie

Hi @EssexHebridean.  I think the ombudsman's behaviour is easy to explain.  When they couldn't find any metering consultants prepared to work for the minimum wage, they told their adjudicators they had to use the suppliers for technical support.

As for UW, It can't just be incompetence.  Fairly early on, I was called by customer services and the guy had clearly been briefed that I had to accept that British Gas were at fault.  I kept trying to make my points, asking him to write them down and checking that he had written them down.  He kept on raising spurious points and ignoring what I was saying.  Finally he produced a stream of waffle ending with " ... and that proves British Gas were at fault" or similar.  At this point I put the phone down.  The more recent conversations have been from customer service personnel who seem genuinely interested in solving the problem.  Sometimes I go through all the evidence again and they say they will get back to me in a few days with a resolution.  I then explain that they won't because there's someone higher up the pyramid who will block them.  I hear nothing for several months then the same thing happens again.

When I moved from British Gas I was just one of millions of refugees who had gone to companies offering good rates before turning up their toes.  We all found ourselves dumped with BG on penitential tariffs.  The remaining suppliers were fighting for the business and UW were offering the best rates.  Those with SMETS1 meters on economy seven, might have been a minority but it still represents a large number and that's still a lot of small parcels of pure profit.  I'm all for giving the benefit of the doubt but not without some sort of narrative and explanation.

EssexHebridean

The BG/E7/Smart meter issue is a well known one - how on Earth it didn’t occur to them until after folk were SOLR’d across that they simply couldn’t cope with those accounts, I can begin to imagine, but the situation was unquestionably worsened by them not coming clean about it and asking for those customers affected to be moved elsewhere at the outset. At that time we were also one of those hopping from one relatively small supplier to the next chasing the best E7 rates - and because of that BG issue I refused point blank to get an electric smart meter at that stage, as much as I wanted one, I wasn’t prepared to risk finding ourselves midwinter with no heating and only very expensive hot water! (The irony was that EDF were being positively insistent that I ought to have a gas one installed, in spite of my pointing out that there was little point as it wouldn’t be able to communicate!) 

mmmmikey

Shoddie said:

Hi @EssexHebridean.  I think the ombudsman's behaviour is easy to explain.  When they couldn't find any metering consultants prepared to work for the minimum wage, they told their adjudicators they had to use the suppliers for technical support.

As for UW, It can't just be incompetence.  Fairly early on, I was called by customer services and the guy had clearly been briefed that I had to accept that British Gas were at fault.  I kept trying to make my points, asking him to write them down and checking that he had written them down.  He kept on raising spurious points and ignoring what I was saying.  Finally he produced a stream of waffle ending with " ... and that proves British Gas were at fault" or similar.  At this point I put the phone down.  The more recent conversations have been from customer service personnel who seem genuinely interested in solving the problem.  Sometimes I go through all the evidence again and they say they will get back to me in a few days with a resolution.  I then explain that they won't because there's someone higher up the pyramid who will block them.  I hear nothing for several months then the same thing happens again.

When I moved from British Gas I was just one of millions of refugees who had gone to companies offering good rates before turning up their toes.  We all found ourselves dumped with BG on penitential tariffs.The remaining suppliers were fighting for the business and UW were offering the best rates.  Those with SMETS1 meters on economy seven, might have been a minority but it still represents a large number and that's still a lot of small parcels of pure profit.  I'm all for giving the benefit of the doubt but not without some sort of narrative and explanation.

Hi @Shoddie whatever the rights and wrongs of your complaint or the situation the reality is that if UW progress this you're likely to have shot yourself in the foot through your use of emotive language and by casting this as a conspiracy theory. You may believe that this is a conspiracy between the ombudsman and energy companies but however justified you feel in doing so, sharing that view with the ombudsman was not a shrewd tactic.

If you browse this forum you will find lots of examples of customers who's complaints have been satisfactorily resolved through referral to the ombudsman service. Where folks have expressed dissatisfcation with the service that's often because they themselves have been in error or have had unreallistic expectations. You will also find examples where the consensus of opinion on this board (albeit without full visibility of the facts) is that the ombudsman has mis-understood or made a bad call, and you'll find a fair amount of dissatisfcation with the service. But none of this proves conspiracy.

If you are lucky UW will write this off and you'll avoid legal procedings, although you may find it difficult or impossible to change suppliers whilst there is a debt outstanding, even in the case where you have legitamately challenged that debt. If this does go to court, whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, my money would be on UW winning and you incurring legal costs in the process. All that UW have to do is to refer to the ombudsman's reports which the judge will almost certainly quickly accept and find in UW's favour. If it goes to court and they need to, the gloves will be off and UW will (diplomatically so as not to alienate the judge) paint a picture of you as some kind of nutty conspiracy theorist who is confused. Not only have you refused to accept that this is actually an error that British Gas made in your favour when they and the ombudsman explained this to you, you tried to persuade them not to alert British Gas of this.

As far as your last paragraph is concerned, you talk of being a "refugee" who was "dumped". This kind of language is similarly emotive. Rather than stick with one of the bigger suppliers, you took a gamble and switched to a small supplier in order to benefit from a lower rate. That supplier went bust, but rather than leave you in the lurch the SOLR process took over and you avoided losing any credit deposit that had built up and also you got continuity of supply.

Having said all that, I do have some sympathy with you. Unfortunately your emotions seem to have got the better of you and I can't help thinking that significantly increases the risk that this won't end in a way that is satisfactory for you.

Shoddie

Hi @mmmmikey.  Is it your opinion that the ombudsman was correct in that the meter register functions weren't exchanged?