Bulb Economy 7 Transposed Readings

wcvsimon

My mother has economy 7. She has a non smart meter with an LCD display which shows an R1 night time reading and an R2 day time reading. We have observed the R2 reading increasing during the day.

My mother has been entering the night time and day time readings once a month on the Bulb website. That was working perfectly well for several years, bills were correctly calculated based on the entered readings.

In July 2022, Bulb decided to recalculate her bills going back to October 2020. In doing so they transposed the meter readings so that the R1 readings were treated as day time and R2 as night time. As my mother has night storage heaters which are charged at night in the winter, this meant her night time usage was charged at the expensive day time rate, resulting in a massive increase in her bill.

My mother is very switched on regarding bills. She immediately recognised that the recalculated bills were wrong and contacted Bulb. Nearly 8 months later Bulb have still not corrected the bills and continue to issue new bills for this winter based on the transposed readings, charging the expensive day time rate for night time usage, resulting in the monthly bills being about £200 more than they should be.

My mother has contacted Bulb numerous times. Bulb always say they will correct the meter readings on their system and issue revised bills and it will take a few weeks to do but they never do.

We have raised an Ombudsman complaint and they have decided in my mother's favour. They have told Bulb to correct the bills going back to 2020. That decision was 3 weeks ago but Bulb has done nothing.

My main reason for posting this, is to find out if anybody else has had this problem with Bulb ? (i.e transposed night time and day time readings). If so did you manage to get Bulb to correct it ? How long did it take ?

My mother and I are baffled by Bulb's failure to correct this problem. It seems such a simple problem to resolve, just put the meter readings the right way around and recalculate the bill. We are beginning to think that Bulb have deliberately transposed the meter readings to make more money, but that would be fraud wouldn't it ?

EssexHebridean

Yep - Bulb have a habit of doing this, I think that they assume (incorrectly) that the standard is that R1 = day and R2 = night but of course for a lot of folk this isn't the case! Has your Mother sent them a photograph of the meter showing the R2 rate showing as "live" during the day? Having said that, it might be best to give it a bit of time for the Ombudsman decision to filter through - did they indicate a timescale by which you could expect things to be resolved?

It is an error though, nothing deliberate. You'll drive yourself mad trying to find conspiracies like that in it! 

[Deleted User]

There is no industry agreed convention on the use of smart meter registers. All my usage is offpeak and it now accrues on the R1 register. A year ago peak usage was added to R1.

Raxiel

Anecdotal, but might become relevant with the transfer of Bulb customers to Octopus.

When my SMETS1 smart meter was fitted by E.On, R1 was daytime use, and R2 was night time use. When I switched to Octopus and they connected my (at the time dumb) meter to their system, they switched.

Not just billing, they actually remotely reconfigured the meter to record night usage on R1 and day usage on R2 (and correctly billed it as such). Then, about eighteen months later, they switched them back again.

This resulted in a couple of odd bills with massive negative readings, and currently the R1 & R2 totals have a 3:2 split despite my usage being closer to 4:1. As I was on a tariff that charged the same price for day and night consumption, the total still added up correctly and I never had to contact them about it. They never told me they were doing it either, I only realised it had happened after going back through all my bills to figure out why their figure for my day/night ratio didn't match what I expected it to be.

dunstonh

My mother has economy 7. She has a non smart meter with an LCD display which shows an R1 night time reading and an R2 day time reading. We have observed the R2 reading increasing during the day.

That doesnt mean they are transposed.    It could be that the time on the meter is wrong.
Is her E7 circuit switched or timer?
Does the meter show a time?  (and if so, is the time correct)

I cannot answer your other bits, but transposing is not a rare thing to happen.

littleteapot

my old (2004) meter uses reg 1 for night and reg 2 for day. as does my parents relatively new smart meter. I've switched a couple of times over the years and currently on edf, but my parents have always been with eon. There have never been any billing issues for either of us. I assumed therefore the industry convention was reg 1 for off-peak on multirate meters! But apparently not. I'll watch closely and keep all bills and meter photographs especially if switching in future.

wcvsimon

Thanks to everyone for their replies and advice.

Yes, we have supplied photos of the meter. I believe that Bulb were given 28 days to respond to the ombudsman decision. The 28 days is up at the beginning of April.

I think the time on the meter is correct, but we will check that. I dont think the meter is switched remotely.