EDF DD insanity

littleteapot

Not a rant, it just amuses me the total disconnect between billing systems, customer service, and reality and thought I would share here

NB: E7 electricity only - eastern - no gas

When I switched to a relatively expensive 2 year fix in April 2022 in anticipation of further large price rises in September 2022, my DD payments where recalculated at £160 per month which was about right based on the previous 12 months consumption and the new unit prices.

However my wife and I made a concerted effort to reduce our consumption over that summer and winter, plus I came off the fix and reverted to SVR in Jan 2023 when EDF's E7 night rate dropped to 7p/kWh. I have been providing monthly-ish readings since May 2023.

In Feb 2023 their billing system rightly calculated that I had accrued a large credit balance, which was refunded automatically but they didn't recalculate the DD amount (I think their archaic billing system only does this in July).

So a couple of months ago I decided to request a DD reduction to £100 on the basis that my calculations from regular meter readings showed a significant accrual of credit.

When I switched to the new 12 month fix a few weeks ago, their system correctly calculated that my bill based on last 12 months usage would be ~£97 per month.
 
So I requested a reduction of the DD to £100 on the basis that this would cover a good year, and the accrued credit would cover a colder than average winter. But they declined it on the basis that it 'would not cover the cost of my predicted usage'.

As I'm perfectly capable of saving money during summer to cover high winter usage, I decided I would like to switch to variable DD, but despite what others have said and their whatsapp chat agent, this option wasn't available on the web-based my account nor their app, and that I needed to call customer service. After a long wait I got bored of that and decided to do nothing and see what came out of EDF's sausage machine in July.

So today, rather than doing the sensible thing of refunding the credit and then reducing my DD to the right amount (~£97) they've decided to keep the credit balance and reduce the DD to £50 per month!

It makes no odds to me, it just made me laugh.

Slinky

I can't wait for the day I'm free of EDF forever. A long boring story of why we moved to them, but having just got solar panels installed, we've transferred to Octopus, where I can see what we're using in half hour segments. EDF give you a vague idea of where you are with them every six months.  Since they got wind of us moving, our account went from £598 in credit to zero. I'm still waiting for the final bill, no idea if we'll actually get any money back, I seriously hope so as Octopus calculated our DD needed to be £168 a month, not the £261 that EDF were taking.

Terrible archaic billing system, the only thing going for them was cheap rates for E7 in the Eastern area, which were no use to us, otherwise there's much better options elsewhere.

dunstonh

EDFs old system (which most are on) was never designed for live data and frequent changes.  They tried to bolt things on but it was just at sticking plaster that often led to strange outcomes.  The move to the new software should change all that.   People are already being moved to and hopefully, I won't be at the end of the queue and I suspect you will feel the same way.

If it wasnt for their low pricing for Eastern, I wouldn't be with EDF.    

My only fear is that whilst they are moving to Kraken, they may find some way to handicap it.    In the investment world, FNZ power more investment platforms than any other.  However, each platform providers sets their own configuration and controls their own front end. Some providers have chosen to turn off all the decent functionality and show very little of the data that is actually possible with the software.

Robin9

EDF's billing system is  nothing if not entertaining

Mobtr

littleteapot said:

Not a rant, it just amuses me the total disconnect between billing systems, customer service, and reality and thought I would share here

NB: E7 electricity only - eastern - no gas

When I switched to a relatively expensive 2 year fix in April 2022 in anticipation of further large price rises in September 2022, my DD payments where recalculated at £160 per month which was about right based on the previous 12 months consumption and the new unit prices.

However my wife and I made a concerted effort to reduce our consumption over that summer and winter, plus I came off the fix and reverted to SVR in Jan 2023 when EDF's E7 night rate dropped to 7p/kWh. I have been providing monthly-ish readings since May 2023.

In Feb 2023 their billing system rightly calculated that I had accrued a large credit balance, which was refunded automatically but they didn't recalculate the DD amount (I think their archaic billing system only does this in July).

So a couple of months ago I decided to request a DD reduction to £100 on the basis that my calculations from regular meter readings showed a significant accrual of credit.

When I switched to the new 12 month fix a few weeks ago, their system correctly calculated that my bill based on last 12 months usage would be ~£97 per month.
 
So I requested a reduction of the DD to £100 on the basis that this would cover a good year, and the accrued credit would cover a colder than average winter. But they declined it on the basis that it 'would not cover the cost of my predicted usage'.

As I'm perfectly capable of saving money during summer to cover high winter usage, I decided I would like to switch to variable DD, but despite what others have said and their whatsapp chat agent, this option wasn't available on the web-based my account nor their app, and that I needed to call customer service. After a long wait I got bored of that and decided to do nothing and see what came out of EDF's sausage machine in July.

So today, rather than doing the sensible thing of refunding the credit and then reducing my DD to the right amount (~£97) they've decided to keep the credit balance and reduce the DD to £50 per month!

It makes no odds to me, it just made me laugh.

What they’ve done is correct. You have an annual review which was obviously in February when any credit is automatically refunded. Then there is an interim review where they try to work out roughly what you’ll use until your next annual review & adjust your d/d accordingly. They’ve reduced it because you’re in credit, they would have increased it if you had been in debit. They’ve never refunded twice a year 

littleteapot

Robin9 said:

EDF's billing system is  nothing if not entertaining

Rather like French cars!

Scot_39

EOn used to automatically refund.  Money in bank before paper bill on annual review.

EOnNext seem to default to rolling into DD recalc.

They I believe use a variant of Octopus Krakken ? from a few posts here -  new tech not old.

Curiously in early Mar before the cap price change they were offering a feature on line to request a refund  - saying my account preauthorised for refund.

Of course they didn't tell me it was there - I had to look in a second level page - I only looked at the DD page to see if had anything about them putting the £67 ebss back on DD automatically.

Perhaps me failing to request was seen as tacit permission to roll over.

Or perhaps the systems are just deliberately more cash flow positive for suppliers.

For a few £100 in my case not an issue - and not worth trauma of dealing with customer service (its taken them 3.5 months to fix my ihd to show dd not standard credit rates since Apr change to tariff name which no longer has DD in it - the reason ?) but the remaining credit was again factored into new lower DD in July cap drop.

I don't even pay summer usage - so know credit won't last long come winter - especially if a cold one.

dealyboy

Also a member of the smug club ... I pay whole of bill monthly by DD; I prefer this variable direct debit and can manage the seasonal differences.

The only discrepancy is that the billing period is actually 6 weeks with an estimate for the next bill being 3x the previous, this is used for the current balance. I suspect this is a leftover from the fixed DD method, which I've never had.

I presume the 'whole of bill' DD method is not available or suitable for some.

EDF Eastern E7 SVT - DD whole of bill monthly. Smart meter SMEGS 2 30 min. reads.

brewerdave

I switched away from EDF just over a week ago - they produced a (correct) final bill in 6 days ,including the weekend! Then asked me why I was leaving -  My reasons ?-1. not waiving the exit fees (even tho' others have had it done)  when I moved to their SVT from a fix taken out before HMG started throwing money at consumers & 2. their archaic billing systems !!