How far off is your providers estimation?

MuckChucker

For a long time I've known that BG have over estimated our useage - in truth, upon inspection they were closer than I expected but an over-estimate nonetheless. Now thanks to my Bright app I have enough data to quickly show up a full 12 months of data. We do get a lot of complaints here about unfair DD amounts so I do feel this may be an interesting topic.

My 2022 tally is:
              Actual     Estimate     Diff     Cost
Gas -     5647        5951          304     @10.29 = £31.28
Elec -     4142        4633          491     @35.07 = £172.19

So over £200 in total - which incidentally is my monthly DD. Not an insignificant amount. As this obviously goes to my account as credit, I'm not going to push the issue, especially with further increases on the horizon. However this could be quite a few grocery shops for other families and if it proves to be a very common issue, it's just not right.

So am I putting too much focus on this?
Anybody's estimated use way over what you can actually account for?

MattMattMattUK

MuckChucker said:

For a long time I've known that BG have over estimated our useage - in truth, upon inspection they were closer than I expected but an over-estimate nonetheless. Now thanks to my Bright app I have enough data to quickly show up a full 12 months of data. We do get a lot of complaints here about unfair DD amounts so I do feel this may be an interesting topic.

My 2022 tally is:
              Actual     Estimate     Diff     Cost
Gas -     5647        5951          304     @10.29 = £31.28
Elec -     4142        4633          491     @35.07 = £172.19

So over £200 in total - which incidentally is my monthly DD. Not an insignificant amount. As this obviously goes to my account as credit, I'm not going to push the issue, especially with further increases on the horizon. However this could be quite a few grocery shops for other families and if it proves to be a very common issue, it's just not right.

So am I putting too much focus on this?
Anybody's estimated use way over what you can actually account for?

I am with EDF and their estimate is higher than my usage, but I have also made an effort to cut down and I am also going into the office more which means less home usage. They are estimating in line with the amount I used over the last three years however my usage is around 20% down over the last nine months, I would expect that to be reflected in the next review, but not reflected at the moment. 

I think you any many others are putting too much focus on this though, some people are being under-estimated, others over, the data that they have for estimates is vast, but has limitations. For example there was a significant cold spell in December which will generally have increased usage and the last three winters have been very mild, so this one is predicted to be colder, hence potentially greater usage, however as prices have increased significantly people are making a real effort to cut down which is something that has not historically needed to be factored in. 

The guidance from Ofgem requires suppliers to try to stop customers getting into debt and try to stop them building up significant credits as well, with the target of being break even at end of a twelve month period, but also not having a negative balance at any point. That combined with some people slashing usage to a bare minimum usage then complaining that the estimates are too high, others who do not seem to understand just how much energy costs have increased complaining that they are in debt and they do not know why and a third group who do just not understand energy billing at all.

ariarnia

i agree with mat. if they were out by one dd payment then they were out by about 8%. at £200 a month your saying your dd should have been £185ish. 

we have records for the last 5 ish years of our use and can vary by 25% depending on the weather and just what we're doing that year (building work wise or how often we're away or even buying a new energy efficient fridge and washing machine had a noticeable impact on the bills a couple of years ago) 

if you try guessing now how much energy you use in the 12 months if your within 10% then i think you did a fairly decent job. 

Mstty

Why are these estimations when you obviously have a smart meter if you have your data available in the bright app.

Not been with BG for many many years, before smart meters do they refuse to update the bills with actual smart meter data?

MattMattMattUK

Mstty said:

Why are these estimations when you obviously have a smart meter if you have your data available in the bright app.

Not been with BG for many many years, before smart meters do they refuse to update the bills with actual smart meter data?

They update bills with actual smart meter data, they do not bill monthly unless on variable, the bill is accurate, the monthly fixed Direct Debit is generally set for the whole of the billing period. 

ariarnia

Mstty said:

Why are these estimations when you obviously have a smart meter if you have your data available in the bright app.

Not been with BG for many many years, before smart meters do they refuse to update the bills with actual smart meter data?

good point.

i thought they meant suppliers have to estemate future use when setting the dd. and there dd was set to high by about 200 over the year so they are now in credit.

but reading again they have a smart meter thats sending data to bright but are saying there bills were estemated. which is odd.  

matelodave

As said above, you shouldn't really have estimated bills if you've got a smart meter. However that said, I've got a smart meter and I still check my bills monthly against meter readings to ensure that they aren't actually estimating readings.

Likewise I send in a reading if their reading/billing date doesn't correspond with a tariff change, just so I can ensure that they cant get away with slipping in a crafty estimate, although they shouldn't need to estimate if they have data from the meter.

Even if you don't have a smart meter or they aren't using smart readings then you should send in monthly readings to avoid getting estimated bills. TBH no-one should get estimated bills if they took charge of their energy and put the effort into reading meters, regularly, sending in the readings and getting bills corrected if the energy supplier uses estimates rather than actual readings.

MuckChucker

oh yeah, great point @Mstty which had occurred to me before. Yes, it's a smart meter which sends the data every 30 mins. Yet BG in their wisdom only review accounts every 6 months when they generate the bill. I would like to think this estimated useage will come down to be more in line with my figures which I think is March/April, we'll see

ariarnia

when you have your data have you tried calling them and asking them to lower the dd to where you think it should be? 

we have never had a problem getting our dd changed (sometimes we've agreed a number between our number and there number) but only ever when we have had meter readings to back up what we are asking for (not just asking can they make it lower). 

and sometimes (recently actually) we've had to do the same to get them to keep our dd higher than they wanted. they want us to drop our dd to £5 because of our credit balance and we want to keep it at £100 because we're coming off a fix in april and estemate our use then will be closer to £150 a month so want the cushion of a high credit balance (and from april our loyalty reward with ovo will be interest of 5% on credit balances which is always nice). 

never been with british gas tho. eon, sainsburys and ovo have been the last 5 years. 

MuckChucker

ariarnia said:

when you have your data have you tried calling them and asking them to lower the dd to where you think it should be? 

we have never had a problem getting our dd changed (sometimes we've agreed a number between our number and there number) but only ever when we have had meter readings to back up what we are asking for (not just asking can they make it lower). 

and sometimes (recently actually) we've had to do the same to get them to keep our dd higher than they wanted. they want us to drop our dd to £5 because of our credit balance and we want to keep it at £100 because we're coming off a fix in april and estemate our use then will be closer to £150 a month so want the cushion of a high credit balance (and from april our loyalty reward with ovo will be interest of 5% on credit balances which is always nice). 

never been with british gas tho. eon, sainsburys and ovo have been the last 5 years. 

nope, as mentioned, I'm "happy" to keep it as is with a view on future prices. This thread is more an effort to see how widespread the issue may be based on how often we see posters complain about providers trying to increase their DDs. 

400ixl

Forgetting the monetary value as that has changed significantly over the last year. BG estimations are within 50KWh of what I used in the 12 months.

Pretty accurate really, no smart meter but I do give manual readings either monthly or bi-monthly and BG do then produce interim bills automatically based on those figures.

My DD is what I set it to and BG have not refused me setting it to what I want it to be which is higher than they say it needs to be, but it corrects for the government grant being refunded rather than credited to the account.