Faulty energy meter resolution dispute

EssexHebridean

My memory for retention of numbers isn’t wonderful - but I’m pretty certain that I’d remember after a few months that “hang on, haven’t I input this number before?” Sorry OP, but I’m really struggling to find this plausible. You also say that you have photos of the meter for the entire 6 years you lived there? What was your reason for not only taking those photos, but also for retaining them - I sometimes photograph my meter for a specific reason - readings at a tariff change point maybe - but once I know all is well I usually delete them as no longer required. Also - you never looked at previous photos and felt it was strange that you were seeing the same reading for the off peak register? 

You are trying to place all the fault with the energy company here, but you do have to take some responsibility yourself too - for not picking up on the non-changing meter reading,  and for not noticing that presumably your overnight use was being billed at zero for 6 years.

Apologies if this has already been asked, and clarified, but you are certain that the “day” reading does continue to advance overnight I take it? Ie, there is no possibility that thr switchover to E7 is happening as normal, but the off peak meter is not advancing, meaning that while you are being charged for the peak use, your overnight use could have been entirely free? Your peak use would have been exceptionally high anyway due to your decision not to use NSHs, so perhaps this isn’t implausible. I see Mobtr raised this possibility earlier but can’t see that it was addressed. 

DavidWT

EssexHebridean Thank you for being so quick to pass judgement without actually seeing any of the evidence. You have habits relating to how you manage your photos on your phone, other people do not share those habits. I never delete any photo I take, why would if I have the storage? I will photograph the meter, then submit the reading at a later time.

I suffer from bipolar disorder. There are times that I struggle to get out of bed, so you would understand that having a critical eye for meter readings and figures on a bill has not always been at top of my list of priorities. My health comes first and other things, such as this need to wait to be sorted out when they can.

There are times when submitting meter are all I can manage. I pay my energy bill by direct debt so there have be times in the depths of depression that I haven't even read my bill.

Quite frankly I find your attitude offensive. The fact that I was unable to scrutinize my bills means that I'm reasonable for my energy company overcharging? They failed in their duty of care, and I'm to blame? If you don't lock your car does that me it's ok for me to steal? There is no difference here.

If you would like to examine the evidence, rather then just spouting off with your baseless opinions then feel free to examine my spreadsheet where I have calculated energy use:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aJDPY5ihJpCZVVeFBatA80IMyk4Nv8bCX-nLxbs99ws/edit#gid=1495026539

To answer your specific question yes, the engineer confirmed that only the day meter advances regardless of time and as for my peak usage being exceptionally high how could possibly know that? All I've told you is I have storage heaters, you have no other information as to my usage habits.

pochase

Some of the information you are giving does not really match up.

• Shortly after moving into a property in 2016 I began an economy 7 tariff, which commenced in July of 2016.

Keep_pedalling The property I lived at the time was heated entirely by electric heaters. We did not have storage heaters due to the fact that the property was not occupied during the day; all that stored heat would just have been used to heat an empty flat which seemed a waste. Also there was an initial capital cost for the storage heaters that we could not afford. Why go Economy 7 then? I told that was the only option for my account, and I could not change to a standard tariff. This was later discovered to be an administrative fault with the energy company's IT system, and the current occupant of that property is on a standard tariff.

Either you were on a single rate and changed to E7, or you were on E7 and they did not allow you to go onto single rate.

I also had a quick look at your docs you provided a link for. You are estimating that without storage heaters and heating at night almost half of your usage is at night?



That is a percentage that is completely unrealistic and something that most users with storage heaters would wish they had.

The last line shows 502KWh day use from 1st of April to 10th of July, with 695KWh at night. That is outside the heating period, but you believe you use almost 60% outside of the heating period at night?

You can take this of course to court, but be aware that 

- the energy supplier will bring up the decision of the energy ombudsman as proof
- your ignoring of simple facts like that the night usage was 0 for six years without you questioning it
- unrealistic estimates of your night usage

will not help your case.

As advised earlier, try to reach an agreement with them to recalculate your bill based on single rate. That is something that you can proof, the setup only allowed for single rate and not for E7.

in_my_wellies

Keep_pedalling said:

I don’t get your objection about using you current usage to estimate past usage, surely if you have adjusted your use because of increased energy costs, your objective will have been to shift more on to the cheaper night rate so your percentage of daytime use will have dropped and it would work to your advantage., but even if that was not the case I can’t see another way of doing it.

I'm another who can't understand why you didn't agree to the new meter being fitted and then monitoring normal usage. My E7 meter failed after building work (in January) I realised when I next read my meter in May that it was stuck on 'daytime' readings. I contacted them and a new meter was fitted, my usage was monitored for about 4 weeks (I think) and a new bill was prepared. 
as Keep_pedalling suggests my use of electric during those 4 weeks could work to my advantage 

pochase

in_my_wellies said:

Keep_pedalling said:

I don’t get your objection about using you current usage to estimate past usage, surely if you have adjusted your use because of increased energy costs, your objective will have been to shift more on to the cheaper night rate so your percentage of daytime use will have dropped and it would work to your advantage., but even if that was not the case I can’t see another way of doing it.

I'm another who can't understand why you didn't agree to the new meter being fitted and then monitoring normal usage. My E7 meter failed after building work (in January) I realised when I next read my meter in May that it was stuck on 'daytime' readings. I contacted them and a new meter was fitted, my usage was monitored for about 4 weeks (I think) and a new bill was prepared. 
as Keep_pedalling suggests my use of electric during those 4 weeks could work to my advantage 

Do you have storage heaters? If so than a monitoring your night usage in May to determine your night usage in winter would have worked to your disadvantage. Your night usage in May would have been much lower than in winter with storage heates charging ove rnight.

in_my_wellies

pochase said:

in_my_wellies said:

Keep_pedalling said:

I don’t get your objection about using you current usage to estimate past usage, surely if you have adjusted your use because of increased energy costs, your objective will have been to shift more on to the cheaper night rate so your percentage of daytime use will have dropped and it would work to your advantage., but even if that was not the case I can’t see another way of doing it.

I'm another who can't understand why you didn't agree to the new meter being fitted and then monitoring normal usage. My E7 meter failed after building work (in January) I realised when I next read my meter in May that it was stuck on 'daytime' readings. I contacted them and a new meter was fitted, my usage was monitored for about 4 weeks (I think) and a new bill was prepared. 
as Keep_pedalling suggests my use of electric during those 4 weeks could work to my advantage 

Do you have storage heaters? If so than a monitoring your night usage in May to determine your night usage in winter would have worked to your disadvantage. Your night usage in May would have been much lower than in winter with storage heates charging ove rnight.

No, I've never had storage heaters. Back then we used an emersion heater, dishwasher, washing machine and iron and it was cost effective for us. My job got me up at 5 so I could use a couple of hours then too before I left for work. With those gadgets the time of year made little difference. Perhaps the only difference, Feb v May, was lighting

Had we had storage heaters then I agree it would not have been a fair comparison 

Jyana

pochase said:

Some of the information you are giving does not really match up.

• Shortly after moving into a property in 2016 I began an economy 7 tariff, which commenced in July of 2016.

Keep_pedalling The property I lived at the time was heated entirely by electric heaters. We did not have storage heaters due to the fact that the property was not occupied during the day; all that stored heat would just have been used to heat an empty flat which seemed a waste. Also there was an initial capital cost for the storage heaters that we could not afford. Why go Economy 7 then? I told that was the only option for my account, and I could not change to a standard tariff. This was later discovered to be an administrative fault with the energy company's IT system, and the current occupant of that property is on a standard tariff.

Either you were on a single rate and changed to E7, or you were on E7 and they did not allow you to go onto single rate.

I also had a quick look at your docs you provided a link for. You are estimating that without storage heaters and heating at night almost half of your usage is at night?



That is a percentage that is completely unrealistic and something that most users with storage heaters would wish they had.

The last line shows 502KWh day use from 1st of April to 10th of July, with 695KWh at night. That is outside the heating period, but you believe you use almost 60% outside of the heating period at night?

You can take this of course to court, but be aware that 

- the energy supplier will bring up the decision of the energy ombudsman as proof
- your ignoring of simple facts like that the night usage was 0 for six years without you questioning it
- unrealistic estimates of your night usage

will not help your case.

As advised earlier, try to reach an agreement with them to recalculate your bill based on single rate. That is something that you can proof, the setup only allowed for single rate and not for E7.

I got as far as the first thing on the list, the fridge freezer running at only 0.12kwh a day and find myself asking where I can get my hands on one of these wonderous machines. Then see the PS4 is down on the list at 40 watts, being used for 2 hours so 0.08kwh, and realise that this list is not realistic at all is it.

EssexHebridean

@DavidWT - I'm not passing judgement, simply questioning what seems - as others have also pointed out - to be a faintly implausible situation. There's absolutely no need to be rude, or indeed as defensive as you have been. 

DavidWT said:

To answer your specific question yes, the engineer confirmed that only the day meter advances regardless of time and as for my peak usage being exceptionally high how could possibly know that? All I've told you is I have storage heaters, you have no other information as to my usage habits.

Right - hang on, now I am confused - earlier in the thread you were very clear that you did not have storage heaters...

DavidWT said:

Keep_pedalling The property I lived at the time was heated entirely by electric heaters. We did not have storage heaters due to the fact that the property was not occupied during the day; all that stored heat would just have been used to heat an empty flat which seemed a waste. Also there was an initial capital cost for the storage heaters that we could not afford. 

My assumption regarding your usage was based on that statement given by you - that you were using standard electric heaters to heat your property. That is how I can know that your peak time use would be very high - simply because ANYONE heating a property using standard electric panel heaters or similar will have high daytime electricity costs. it's not a criticism of you - simply an unavoidable fact once you confirm that your heating is using the single most expensive way possible to heat a regular property. If in fact you DO have storage heaters then that changes the picture entirely - however we can only comment here based on the information we are given, and in fairness, if that information is incorrect, we can hardly be blamed for then forming conclusions as a result! 

DavidWT said:

 If you don't lock your car does that me it's ok for me to steal? There is no difference here.

Clearly it doesn't - however, if I didn't lock my car and you did steal it, I would certainly be apportioning a good bit of the blame for it's loss squarely at my own door for being a fool and not ensuring I had done  my own due diligence - in this case, locking the car before leaving it! The act of the theft would be on you - the act of enabling it to happen in those circumstances would be entirely on me though, as unpalatable as that might feel! 

As I believe I mentioned, we are also E7 - at this time of year, and with the storage heaters in use, we average upwards of 90% off-peak use. In the summer, it's more like 60%. Across the year, it usually works out at a 12 month average of 25% peak/75% off-peak. That includes heating our water on the off-peak (We haven't used the boost function during the day at all in the last year), and load shifting nearly all significant appliances (WM, DW, occasional load in the drier) to off-peak. Also, probably in the region of 95% plus of our showers over the year are taken on off-peak also. We don't use electricity for cooking other than the microwave - if we did then this would make a significant difference to the figures. We very occasionally run an oil filled rad for a small top up of heat where needed too - on the peak rates as a rule. Realistically, if we were using even 1kWh "regular" heaters instead of the NSH's, then there is simply no way we would achieve a 50/50 split across the year - it just wouldn't be possible. This is why others are saying that the figures on your spreadsheet aren't looking reliable. How have you measured the power consumption of things like your fridge freezer? My small under-counter freezer averages just under 0.75kWh per day - I would expect a fridge freezer to be using that sort of level at absolute best, and probably a little more. 

Remember - if you are planning to take this to court, then you will have exactly the sorts of things that are being put to you here thrown at you by the other side - and probably far, far worse, too.  It would be best not to be lobbing insults back in that situation as it might not go down well! 

markin

Ps4 when Gaming should be around 130w range, The laptop i would think should be in the 45-60w range.

pochase

@EssexHebridean

I assume it was supposed to say 

All I've told you is I DON'T have storage heaters,

His tables show that he is running the heating for the hall radiator for 7 hours during the night, but also 14 hours during the day. You would not do this with storage heaters.