Night and day rates wrong way round

Pete395302Hardware

My energy company have my night time rates and day time rates the wrong way round, I thought they would pick it up when I told them they were entering them on the wrong side. I had to send pictures of my meter readings day & night a number of times,eventually they recalculated the bill and at one time I was £15000 in credit!!! The bills have now
got back to a more sensible amount but still the wrong way round.
I am just wondering what my rights are regarding this mistake, as they put me on these rates when I joined them
Should I mention it again or wait till they have sorted themselves out.

[Deleted User]

I assume that you mean meter readings, not rates?

This happens surprisingly often and you should probably give them a kicking until they sort it out.

inspectorperez

Had this problem with EDF some years ago.

Took them months to resolve it correctly. Eventually sorted and they acknowledged the poor performance by making a compensation payment. 

SAC2334

Was this from an actual visit from a meter reader or was it the suppliers estimated reads being transposed , and secondly do you have a smart meter ? 

I was a meter reader for 20 years and most of my colleagues were putting readings which displayed 1 on the digital meter into the night rate regardless of whether it was night or day .Most of the meters in South Yorks rate 1 was day rate . This was never brought up at our meetings .Managements view was that the supplier gets the two readings and its up to them to get it right .

They did nt ! especially British Gas .

All these problems started when digital meters took over from reliable long lasting analogue meters which even now are far more reliable than cheap digital meters. Analogue meters never got the rates transposed .
The  24 hr timerswitch associated with the very old analogues is a different matter as they could be 12 hours out but they still recorded properly when the cheap rate was active showing a small reading which rate was in progress at any one time.

inspectorperez

SAC2334 said:

Was this from an actual visit from a meter reader or was it the suppliers estimated reads being transposed , and secondly do you have a smart meter ? 

I was a meter reader for 20 years and most of my colleagues were putting readings which displayed 1 on the digital meter into the night rate regardless of whether it was night or day .Most of the meters in South Yorks rate 1 was day rate . This was never brought up at our meetings .Managements view was that the supplier gets the two readings and its up to them to get it right .

They did nt ! especially British Gas .

All these problems started when digital meters took over from reliable long lasting analogue meters which even now are far more reliable than cheap digital meters. Analogue meters never got the rates transposed .
The  24 hr timerswitch associated with the very old analogues is a different matter as they could be 12 hours out but they still recorded properly when the cheap rate was active showing a small reading which rate was in progress at any one time.

Would you believe the case in point I referred to in the post above yours was an analogue meter (which is still in place).

I recall the confusion arose because it was a second property and the daytime consumption is minimal whilst night rate consumption is high due to maintaining property temperatures over winter periods. Someone somewhere made an incorrect assumption when EDF transferred on to a new billing platform causing the readings to be transposed.

SAC2334

Thanks, yes I can believe it
.That is an error from EDF as meter readers and customers get the low and normal  rates correct every time as its difficult not to see two readings displayed on the meter , low at top normal below ( with the small window top right of meter  pointing to which rate is active at any one time ) 
A photo of the meter would convince EDF of  the correct billing  I would have thought  and should have been resolved quickly as they had  the historical readings on hand as well. 

EssexHebridean

This sometimes seems to originate from a supplier assuming that R1 is day and R2 is night as well - that has twice happened to us now, and it can take a bit of persuasion to get the supplier to understand that in some cases the rates show up the other way round!  sadly in this case the photographs of the meter sometimes just serve to convince the supplier even further that they are correct! 

Plasticman

I had the same (EDF again) many years ago when my meter was changed. I contacted them about 5 times. My bill went from thousands in debt to thousands in credit. Eventually they got the correct numbers for day and night from my new meter but they decided I was £700 in credit which I wasn't. I gave up at that point, took the money and forgot about it. 

wild666

Play them at their own game if you have to submit readings every month and submit the readings the other way round then at least your monthly usage will be correct in monetary terms every month. 
Email them and tell them you are doing this until they correct their error as this is the only way your monthly bill will be correct. 

SAC2334

EssexHebridean said:

This sometimes seems to originate from a supplier assuming that R1 is day and R2 is night as well - that has twice happened to us now, and it can take a bit of persuasion to get the supplier to understand that in some cases the rates show up the other way round!  sadly in this case the photographs of the meter sometimes just serve to convince the supplier even further that they are correct! 

You re right, I ve been to  Eco 7 digital meters where the night was R 1 and vice versa and the houses where only a few doors apart. Various meters have different ways of showing which rate is actually active at the time it is viewed. Sometimes they default to show the active rate on the meter screen , or the active  reading pulses as one scrolls through the three reads or little symbol will highlight under the active reading. 

Then there is the problem in BST when night rate is still on past 9 am due to digital clocks drifting and night rate is still active when really it should nt be.
 Smart meters should really stop all these errors as they can be programed correctly and they stick to the times more or less to the second , no time drifts  .
Eco 7 Smart meters were only just coming in when I retired in 2017 so I never saw more than a handful with Scottish Power being the first to install them using Secure Liberty meters . None of my colleagues or management even knew that the reads were only on button 6 not the usual button 9 on the keyboard .I actually got the info from this forum and passed it onto management 

GhibliFan

I’ve had to go to the ombudsman over this. It’s not unusual for this to happen. Eon-next were estimating my late mum’s readings so high that when I gave them the actual readings they were lower than their estimate by thousands of kWh’s.  To fit in with their estimates they just transposed the readings. 

OP, keep on at them and don’t let it go on too long because it becomes a real problem.  Good luck to you, it seems to be virtually impossible to get anyone to listen at these big energy firms.