Gas Meter Still Increasing Whilst Gas Isolated (Siemens/Landis+Gyr E6S)

samn9

I am moving in the right direction with them. 

They have refunded most of the over charges. 

The issue I have remaining with them is they have got confused about the first week of April , which is the week before I had my faulty meter replaced, and want to charge me £72 for gas for that week. (My bill was £13 for the rest of the month once the smart meter was in, so you can see the comparison to what I actually use!)

They are like a brick wall - they keep constructing sentences that are ambiguous or make no sense and don’t engage with what I am spelling out to them. 

I had an automated email saying I had the right to escalate the complaint to a senior person as so much time had passed without it being resolved. However I’ve been ignored when I have asked for this. 

On the radio this morning, heard their advert talking about their award winning customer service!!

Never had such a bad experience in my life. 

MeteredOut

So I got back in touch with EDF around a month ago suggesting it was time to get the issue resolved once and for all by taking my usage since the faulty meter was replaced last December and using that to reassess my bills back to my date of joining EDF in 2021 and during which time the faulty meter was over counting actual usage.

I've had to chase a few time, getting various excuses including stuff being on old systems, but the response today has been the best:

I trust you are well, I have recivced feed back regarding the matter you have contacted us about and was advised that you have to contact the energy Expect as they have to provide with a resolution.

I responded with a simple 

What is the energy Expect you refer to?

I suspect if they mean the Ombudsman, but how can they continue to get it so clueless?

If they do mean the Ombudsman, they are wrong, as the final decision was that my usage was to be "reassessed back to your date of joining" by EDF, based on actual readings post installation of the smart meter.

It's well over 2 years since I first notified them about the issue with the since-replaced meter.

MeteredOut

Robin9 said:

Have you advanced your complaint to 

complaintresolution@edfenergy.com

For future reference for others - this email address no longer acts as a fast-track way to access the complaints escalations team - emails are bounced back.

Phones4Chris

@MeteredOut Have you in any of your resent communications with EDF used the words "I want my Complaint to be escalated", 
and then add "and resolved in accordance with that stated by the Ombudsman back on ....(date to be added) with which they said EDF agreed (the give detail of Ombudsman solution).
If not, try that wording and see what happens.

If that fails then try this -
I always thought the correct email address was ComplaintResolution@edfenergy.com
NOTE - the capital letters in the address.
Again state the detail of what the Ombudsman said.
It may be a possibility that it still bounces because they didn't email you first - my contact ws 2 years ago in reply to their initial email (or they still may do it differently now).

So if you are still getting nowhere then try CEO-Team@edfenergy.com

If that fails, try as a last resort - simone.rossi@edfenergy.com
He is (still) the CEO. I'd suggest your email subject is "Sorry to bother you - can't resolve complaint"
Start your email with an apology for bothering him, then explain the saga. In my case he got the CEO-Team to contact me, but they may call themselves something else now, or even handle it differently.

Good luck.

MeteredOut

Phones4Chris said:

@MeteredOut Have you in any of your resent communications with EDF used the words "I want my Complaint to be escalated", 
and then add "and resolved in accordance with that stated by the Ombudsman back on ....(date to be added) with which they said EDF agreed (the give detail of Ombudsman solution).
If not, try that wording and see what happens.

If that fails then try this -
I always thought the correct email address was ComplaintResolution@edfenergy.com
NOTE - the capital letters in the address.
Again state the detail of what the Ombudsman said.
It may be a possibility that it still bounces because they didn't email you first - my contact ws 2 years ago in reply to their initial email (or they still may do it differently now).

So if you are still getting nowhere then try CEO-Team@edfenergy.com

If that fails, try as a last resort - simone.rossi@edfenergy.com
He is (still) the CEO. I'd suggest your email subject is "Sorry to bother you - can't resolve complaint"
Start your email with an apology for bothering him, then explain the saga. In my case he got the CEO-Team to contact me, but they may call themselves something else now, or even handle it differently.

Good luck.

Thanks for this. I suspect my original complaint has long been closed, but I've made it clear I wanted a new opened when i didn't get a quick resolution to them implementing the resolution. I've also pretty much done what you said by quoting the ombudsman's resolution to them and have already asked for it to be escalated. 

Pretty sure that email addresses is not case sensitive, and the lowercase one worked previously but will try that. (EDIT: still doesn't work).

I can still communicate with the Ombudsman even though the case is closed, so that's next but will also consider your escalations to the CEO team.

MeteredOut

EDF eventually said they would not do anything without the Ombudsman, so I went back to them and they contacted EDF.

EDF have come back with a record of what I've used per day with the new meter, and that matches my records, so they're going to re-bill based on that. This will be from the date I joined EDF, towards the end of 2021, to the date when the new meter was installed at the end of last year.

By my calculations, the average usage per day during that 2 and a bit year period was 75% higher that the figure EDF have provided, and I'm due around £1,800 back based on a straight line basis of applying that reduced usage to past bills. Let's see how EDF calculate it though.

SAC2334

Bendo said:

What are you waffling on about smart meters for Gerry when you have been told time and time again this isn't a smart meter.

He is pointing out that the electronic gas  meters are at fault whether they are smart or dumb and they cannot be anywhere near as reliable as anlogue mechanical meters .Anything controlled by a battery and a circuit board with soldered joints and an LED screen  can be  suspect .

I spent 20 years reading gas meters in their thousands and only found one instance of an old imperial gas meter index definitely faulty but as soon as BG started installing the electronic meters I started seeing all sorts of faults with one meter displaying the numbers back to front in a mirror image , , blank screens by the thousand , battery fail or battery low is also not taken notice of by any suppliers  or I would not have  be seening them in big numbers .

A gas meter with a battery can flatten its battery in two years 

 My neighbour works for a meter refurb company in South Wales and tells me they are getting hundreds of smart  meters coming in with flat batteries which are only 2 years old .The reason is that they installed the smart gas meter and could not for some reason install the smart electric meter so now the gas meter is running the battery down continually trying to pair with the electric meter which is not present .
 
The larger business meters are still analogue with a smart module attached which seems a better way   

Chrysalis

samn9 said:

Update on my dealings with Octopus. 

They had lost my faulty gas meter instead of testing it, replaced it with a smart meter, then after some arguing (and providing hours of video footage) agreed to accept it was faulty.

they were going to look at 3 months of usage with the new meter to calculate old usage then repay me. 

The 3 months is up and they have emailed me. About my ELECTRICITY meter, which was never in dispute . They are saying that the day/night on the old meter must have been transposed, based on my 3 months usage, and so either I can drop my complaint, or they will increase my old electricity bills and leave me even more worse off. 

No mention of my gas meter whatsoever and the £1000 a month bills on that. 

I checked my old electricity bills and I have no idea what they are talking about. Nothing was ever transposed. The bills correctly say I use more in the day; and get charged more in the day. 

Utterly useless people. 

Have read a lot of your posts as well as meteredout, congrats to both of you for being persistent and gathering as much evidence as possible.

I feel there is clear industry problems when it comes to testing and monitoring meters.  The defacto seems to be by default the meter is considered to be working normally unless proven by a meter validation test to be faulty, whilst having no rules requiring these meters to be tested within X amount of weeks of being reported as faulty.  It honestly feels like a miracle has occurred that meteredout managed to get his/her meter tested.

I also agree with the point made earlier in the thread by someone on them looking for patterns to identify a trend, I question how they could do that without much data to look at.

I myself have had two instances of faulty meters, the first one was gas, this occurred nearly two decades ago and back then the process seemed far better, I contacted my supplier (which I think was southern electric or something similar) and without much hassle they took the meter, tested it, and I got a refund a long with a new meter, the new meter had considerably lower readings.
The other instance was much more recent, my electric meter, was giving very inflated readings, it did pass a creep test (metering when no usage), however meter readings were inflated vs testing I did, and very inconsistent day to day by large amounts with same usage pattern.  In this case I had the same problems as is often reported on MSE, my supplier Octopus dragging their feet on a meter test, for whatever reason they just didnt want to do it.  I had booked in a smart meter, which eventually became obvious would happen before it could be taken for testing, so I had to make a decision and decided to go ahead with the meter swap, aware it would weaken my case, but the readings were so inflated I just wanted a properly functioning meter.  So I allowed the meter to be taken away (the guy doing the work confirmed there was nothing on job for it to be tested), and I kept an eye on my new readings on the new meter.
The new meter had consistent readings, the readings were also considerably lower, well outside of what might be considered variances due to lifestyle variances or typical error margins, Octopus were ghosting me, refused to agree to deadlock as well, so after a two month timeout I went to the ombdusman which is when Octopus started taking me seriously and reimbursed me a chunk of the inflated expenditure.
Now I am not liked much on here when I mention this, some have claimed its just a goodwill to shut me up, but suppliers dont pay 4 figure sums as goodwill, and I still have the email which clearly states they accept the meter was faulty.
My meter also was outside of its certified period, and was the same model as some meters that were in the press some years ago confirmed to have a faulty batch (it wasnt the same batch though). 

I dont know what the solution is, logically I think there should be the equivalent of a servicing for meters, but that would just raise SC for everyone to pay for it.  So I think a middle ground would be when a customer requests a meter test it has to be sent of within 30 days or the supplier has to accept the meter as faulty.  A rule like that would obviously make them much more enthusiastic about carrying out tests.  My guess is the suppliers have had issues getting customers to pay for tests that ruled the meter within specification, so have become defensive over getting them tested.

I think the idea of putting labels on the meter clearly labelling it should be tested was a good one.  I also accept I may have gone about it the wrong way as it was somewhat of a gamble, but I was getting impatient and it had been dragging on for months.

MeteredOut

Latest update: Nothing back from EDF, so I contacted the Ombudsman again. They replied stating EDF had said they had been in touch with me and sorted things out. I informed them I had received no communications,.

The Ombudsman then provided me with the details EDF had provided to them, which was:

- EDF had worked out how much I was overcharged back to the date I first raised the issue with them, not the date I joined them, as per the Ombudsman's decision
- In that calculation, they applied a straight line apportionment of usage over that period of time, not a bill-by-bill usage calculation, meaning their proposed refund was around 2/3 of what it should have been even for the reduced period of time, since it did not take into account that the majority of recorded usage by the faulty meter was during the months when unit rates were at their highest.

I again informed the Ombudsman I had received no communications from EDF.

But, just yesterday, I received an (automated) email from EDF saying by DD was being lowered - I checked my account, and EDF had given me the credit they had calculated a couple of weeks back, based on the reduced timeframe and straight-line apportionment of usage. 

I reckon I've received around 40% of the total amount I'm due back with that credit

It's back with the Ombudsman. 

MeteredOut

7 weeks on and no progress. My case handler at the Energy Ombudsman was off work due to personal reasons and I've basically been ghosted by them since then. One person did pick up the case mid December but they too have not responded to any queries via their poral.

I've just phoned the Ombudsman and apparently EDF have asked me to provide any information that shows the re-billing was not correct (mid Dec) but no-one thought to tell me that. But, I reiterated in the strongest terms that both EDF and the Ombudsman have all the necessary details already.

I've been promised a call back from the Ombudsman in the next 24 hours. I've basically said to them either move it forward, or tell me (and EDF) that they are doing no more and I'll take it down the small claims route.

If that's the way it goes, I'll also invoke the Ombudsman's own complaint process.

https://www.energyombudsman.org/unhappy-with-our-service

Complaints that we can investigate

Under our complaints procedure we can investigate complaints that involve allegations of poor service or performance, for example where we’ve:

• mistreated you;
• failed to follow our processes;
• failed to keep you updated on progress; and
• caused unnecessary delays.

I've got a valid complaint against the last two there. The fact they've also marked the case as "Closed - Resolved" on their system when it clearly is not also suggests I may have a complaint against the second point too.