Is there a duty of care or OFGEM rule on Energy companies to..

DisabledDan

Is there a duty of care or OFGEM rule on Energy companies to make their billing match what a reasonable person might expect if they built a spreadsheet using the same data.

It is not rocket science, for example

Electric rate x Electric usage 
Gas Rate x Gas Usage
Electric Standing charge x number of days between reads provided
Gas Standing charge x number of days between reads provided

Calculation of the m3 to kWh using the Calculations shown on the bill

Appropriate VAT at 5% 

Reasonable Rounding (are there rules for that these too).

Totalling as required.

If there are idiosyncrasies then should the customer not be told about them? 

Spoonie_Turtle

Do your bills not show that information?

molerat

My spreadsheet always comes to within 1p of the bill.

What problems are you having ?

DisabledDan

It is just that each company seems to have it's own way of calculating and they don't tell you.

For example some firms round every calculation, but not necessarily the same way.

Some use questionable calorific values which again are rounded. These numerous rounding calculations may be minute amounts but multiply them by millions of customers and they add up.

Some do not bill on the reads and date provided, for example, you give them a read you took on the 10th and they count it to the 9th but somehow they still count standing charge to the 10th. They never tell you this nor can I see it in their terms.

Some bill you monthly and yet somehow charge you for 32 days standing charge.

I was just wondering if there are any rules they have to adhere to or a duty of care under consumer legislation?

I heard on the radio that key terms must be made prominent before contracting and anything money related is a key term, I have been with all the top firms and quite a few small firms.  They all seem to make it up as they go along. 

PeterGr

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/guidance-all-domestic-gas-suppliers-how-calculate-calorific-value-used-domestic-consumer-billing

elsien

“ Some use questionable calorific values which again are rounded. These numerous rounding calculations may be minute amounts but multiply them by millions of customers and they add up.”

But if they are minute amounts for each individual, then surely any duty of care for that individual has been met?

MattMattMattUK

DisabledDan said:

It is just that each company seems to have it's own way of calculating and they don't tell you.

For example some firms round every calculation, but not necessarily the same way.

They do not round every calculation, but they normally truncate the displayed figure to a number of significant figures or decimal places, because showing a calculation of £1.063484068186468468406854065165 would help no one.

DisabledDan said:

Some use questionable calorific values which again are rounded. 

The calorific values are published and are nothing to do with the energy suppliers, the figure for each billing period is set by the published data from the grid.

DisabledDan said:

These numerous rounding calculations may be minute amounts but multiply them by millions of customers and they add up.

Some are rounded up, others are rounded down, they they balance themselves out overall. Fractions of a penny do not materially impact individual bill payers and the supplier has no net benefit from the combination of rounding up and rounding down.

DisabledDan said:

Some do not bill on the reads and date provided, for example, you give them a read you took on the 10th and they count it to the 9th but somehow they still count standing charge to the 10th. They never tell you this nor can I see it in their terms.

They do not bill on the date/read provided because if you give a read in the middle of the day then there will likely be further usage that day, so they take a figure that can be used as the end of day of the previous day. The standing charge is billed per day so that is an easy figure to calculate because it is just the number of days in the billing period. They do not need to tell you nor put it in their terms and conditions as it is in the billing regulations.

DisabledDan said:

Some bill you monthly and yet somehow charge you for 32 days standing charge.

They bill you once per month, but that billing period can and does vary slightly, it is not always on exactly the same day of the month due to weekends, bank holidays, read dates etc. You will only ever be billed for 365/365 daily standing charges in a year, however how many in each particular billing period can vary. 

DisabledDan said:

I was just wondering if there are any rules they have to adhere to or a duty of care under consumer legislation?

There are rules although nearly none of them relate to consumer rights, most are under the energy supply regulations and none of what you have said breaches any of them. When you say "duty of care" that appears to be entirely the wrong term

DisabledDan said:

I heard on the radio that key terms must be made prominent before contracting and anything money related is a key term, I have been with all the top firms and quite a few small firms.  They all seem to make it up as they go along. 

They are not making it up as they go along and you seem to be misunderstanding what terms are. Billing for energy is quite prescriptive and none of what you are saying indicates any issue with the billing, only your perception of it. 

DisabledDan

DisabledDan said:

Is there a duty of care or OFGEM rule on Energy companies to make their billing match what a reasonable person might expect if they built a spreadsheet using the same data.

It is not rocket science, for example

Electric rate x Electric usage 
Gas Rate x Gas Usage
Electric Standing charge x number of days between reads provided
Gas Standing charge x number of days between reads provided

Calculation of the m3 to kWh using the Calculations shown on the bill

Appropriate VAT at 5% 

Reasonable Rounding (are there rules for that these too).

Totalling as required.

If there are idiosyncrasies then should the customer not be told about them? 

I seem to have triggered something so I will try to make myself clearer.

It is quite simple, I just want these core numbers to match the data on the bill, they certainly used to, as I said the numbers are not rocket science.

I have found some suppliers to not match because they bill 32 days standing charge when the number of days between bills was 29 or 30 days.

As I said, some round, not cut, their separate calculations, these rounded numbers are then added together and may be rounded again on say VAT.

Others truncate your read to the day before which messes up the calculation because if you take the read on the 15th and they use the 14th it is bound to go wrong, but nowhere on their website or bill do they inform you of this.

Thanks for the OFGEM guidance on Calorific value, maybe there is a similar prescribed PDF for how bills are provided. 

mmmmikey

DisabledDan said:

DisabledDan said:

Is there a duty of care or OFGEM rule on Energy companies to make their billing match what a reasonable person might expect if they built a spreadsheet using the same data.

It is not rocket science, for example

Electric rate x Electric usage 
Gas Rate x Gas Usage
Electric Standing charge x number of days between reads provided
Gas Standing charge x number of days between reads provided

Calculation of the m3 to kWh using the Calculations shown on the bill

Appropriate VAT at 5% 

Reasonable Rounding (are there rules for that these too).

Totalling as required.

If there are idiosyncrasies then should the customer not be told about them? 

I seem to have triggered something so I will try to make myself clearer.

It is quite simple, I just want these core numbers to match the data on the bill, they certainly used to, as I said the numbers are not rocket science.

I have found some suppliers to not match because they bill 32 days standing charge when the number of days between bills was 29 or 30 days.

As I said, some round, not cut, their separate calculations, these rounded numbers are then added together and may be rounded again on say VAT.

Others truncate your read to the day before which messes up the calculation because if you take the read on the 15th and they use the 14th it is bound to go wrong, but nowhere on their website or bill do they inform you of this.

Thanks for the OFGEM guidance on Calorific value, maybe there is a similar prescribed PDF for how bills are provided. 

Hi

The wording of your post suggests you've seen multiple billing issues with different suppliers.

You say:

"It is quite simple, I just want these core numbers to match the data on the bill, they certainly used to, as I said the numbers are not rocket science."

It's the premise of your question that is being challenged and making it difficult to answer. Perhaps you could give some specific examples of the inconsistencies you describe?

I routinely check my bill and haven't seen any of the issues that you describe, and they're certainly not things I can recall seing evidence of on this forum in the past. That's not to question your ability to crunch the numbers, but your experience seems to be very different to the norm.

DisabledDan

Thanks, I started off with a spreadsheet many years ago to compare suppliers, then it morphed into a bill checker, then I started using an app and the numbers did not match.  So I went back to the spreadsheet and broke down each section on the bill, cross checking the calculations which found the issues I mention above.  Like many people I have been SOLR'ed numerous times and when moving to a new supplier I find differences in those broken down areas.   

One supplier confirmed the 32 days and said "it will call come out as normal by the end of the year", so I stuck all their bills in a spreadsheet and there was no logic to the number of days charged.

I have had all sorts of issues over the years, sometimes a new charging period is created because they counted the read from the day before.  On others the computer went into some sort of loop and I had between 10 and 16 tariffs per month. quite how your average consumer is supposed to be able to work that out I don't know.

With one of those moves I found I was overcharged just under £2 per energy, no big deal and I was paid it back, but what about the millions who did not spot it and paid. This was based on the change of supply reading which I gather is an official line in the sand as far as OFGEM are concerned, but I had already paid for that and they did it on the wrong date because of this line in the sand.  

I can't say all customers were overcharged, but if they were and there are millions of customers then it is a tidy sum.

I have seen posts on another site where people have been overcharged because of a faulty meter or an economy 7 meter heating storage heaters during the day.  They have their way of calculating it, but there were 20 different opinions on how the energy company should correct it.  

I was just wondering if OFGEM has some rules about it or even guidance, it seems to me that the bill should match what a reasonable person might expect if they had the variables from my first post.

molerat

Over the years I have found there are some variations of how the gas bill is calculated.  

I used to be able to work out the correct CV using data from the NG website.  The problem is that the billing figure is calculated as an average of the daily figures but there is usually 3 figures per day and there seems to be no rule over how that average is arrived at.  My current supplier comes in below my calculated average and a previous supplier always above.  My current supplier charges to 0.1 kWh but my earlier supplier charged whole rounded kWh, again there seems to be no regulation over that and both are legitimate methods.  I have just gone with the flow and tweaked my spreadsheet to reflect those subtle variations.