EDF reversed account charges - Gas & Electricity

plinkiplonk

I had received communication from EDF to send them a meter reading, seeing as they hadn't received one for 4 months and calculated the bills by estimate.

When I entered the amounts into their online system, the indicator switched from a £0.00 balance to around £140 credit. (This didn't come as a huge surprise, seeing as EDF normally tend to over-estimate when no reading is supplied.)

Two days later and I receive another email from EDF with my new bill, and when I open it it contains a list of 6 reversed account charges and totals just over £100 debit.

Now I would like to know how they managed to turn this around so that I still owe them money???

I am not saying this is fraudulent, but there were absolutely no additional reasons given on the bill apart from "we have recalculated some of your previous charges", and I am baffled why they are allowed to get away with such unclear and confusing communications. Is this all part of their ploy to harrass you into installing smart meters nd paying by direct debit???

Thank you to anyone that can shed some light onto this; EDF's customer support was no help at all (big surprise, I know...)

MeteredOut

Stick the conspiracy theories to one side and put this down to pure disorganisation/incompetence by EDF.

Are you actually challenging the £100 debit? If so, put your actual readings from the start and end dates from your bill and/or kWh usage, and tariff rates, any previous bill balance (assuming based on an actual reading) and we can work out your credit/debit position.

Recalculations are probably due to the change in tariff rates in April based on your actual readings.

Robin9

I suspect the reversals will be the computer recalculating the various estimated bills now that it has some actual figures to work from.  That will certainly include the last time unit rates changed on April 1st  and may go further back if say the bill of 4 months ago was estimated - was it?

Scot_39

If any of the previous bills were also based on estimates, in this case probably at least 3 if on monthly billing the amount on those would have been wrong too.

So everything gets kind of readjusted back to last real reading - which essentially means to tge final reading..

When SG ignored 2 sibling and 2 professional meter readings meter readings were on their system but not used for bills - this went on for over 2 years on my elderly mums account. 


Say for simplicity take baseline as 0, your using 100 since last real reading but they underestimate, bill you and you only pay 80

Actual                   100   100  100 100
Accum Actual     100   200   300 400

Billed Estim         80      80     80    80
Accum Estim      80      160   240 320

Deficit                  20       40      60   80

Obviously in this example all 4 bills based on 80 would be wrong.  But they only really have the baseline and the 400 to go on.

And you owe for 80 more units (kWh, m3 etc) than they have billed you for - not just the 20 error on the final bill.

You might think why not just is bill you old bill last  estimate to new measurement - if you like 240 - 400, correcting the 320 to 400 in one go.

Or even simpler bill you the 320 latest estimate - 400 as a one off correction - but note potentially all at current rates. 

That's what SG did on my mums account- but that ignored the fact the error had accumulated over at least 3 price changes and that 3 of 4 intermediate readings they had matched closely times for different price levels - so I made them recalculate. 


So some if not all will go back and try and distribute the long term accumulated error - in fact iirc arguably legally obligated to (its a bit woolly but from memory they are obligated to produce as accurate bill as can to best of their ability given available data).

They now may guess (know) the old bills - all 4 - are also potentially now in error - and so will cancel all 4 old charges and reissue often one final corrective bill for the whole - in your case 4 m period.  They might then produce not monthly bills but tariff price point change revised usage estimates - e.g. if straddles Apr 1st cap change on a SVT.

Some will actually delete the old monthly bills from records as do so making it even more confusing if haven't kept / downloaded.  (They believe them to be in error, so delete)



But the bottom line is the absolute end reading stands and that's what you should be billed for using upto. 

So as long as you have in end been billed to your submitted reading - it should be accurate.

And if you find the explainations difficult, the easiest way to double check is to go back and find your last bill with an actual reading  - and check explicitly the unit charges (and if necessary any final bill including credits for any actual payments made against those errors in previous bills if on SC MVDD etc ) - you have only paid (credit or mvdd) or being billed (normal DD) the equivelent of the 400 actual units used over the 4m covered by estimated bills

One regular poster has a footnote signature comment along lines of - "never pay an estimated bill" - for good reason as from experience it gets messy quickly when let errors compound.

(Ah just posted above as typed this longwinded reply.)

Robin9

Scot_39 said:........................

One regular poster has a footnote signature comment along lines of - "never pay an estimated bill" - for good reason as from experience it gets messy quickly when let errors compound.

That's  me - I ought to change my signature to include "and read and understand all bills"

In addition to my own domestic I look after the contracts and billing for my Church and Church Hall. Last November the comms failed on the Church and I received a slightly smaller gas bill than usual.

Come January I received a December bill of £0.00 for the consumption.   It took 3 months to resolve -  if anyone says Industry/Commercial Customer Service is better than Domestic don't believe them.

Checking my data last week I found the second gas AMR data had failed.  I've now got a direct email up the chain !  Job already passed to their contractors and I would expect all to be resolved by next week.

parent13

I too have just had a totally complicated statement from EDF with reverse charges.  Cant understand why as I always give meter readings every month.  I have gone through my bills and I worked out that the amount I am in credit is wrong and should be over £40 more.  I also looked at my bills on line which seem to jump from this year to suddenly next years usage but dated this year?  I have sent an email with my findings and costings.  You need to be an energy expert to understand their bills.

Phones4Chris

The point about not paying on estimated bills is a good one. Always provide a reading straight away if you get an estimated bill.
Years ago with EDF I used to pay estimated bills where the estimate was as near as damn it very close to the actual. One year where this was the case with a February bill, when they next had a reading in late Spring the February one got recalculated on a revised estimate that was WRONG. EDF's excuse was weather and estimated usage. I had a hell or an argument with them and eventually they adjusted the bills to the readings I provided. That was the last time I paid an estimated bill!

@plinkiplonk Check all the meter readings on the revised billing. I'm not sure how they could go from £140 credit to £100 debit unless the credit figure was actually wrong, or you are a very high user and the billing is based on lots of use since October 1st when the price went up. Check that any previous estimates used do compare to expected usage (even making comparisons to last year). Remember the price dropped last April and July.
@parent13 You've done the right thing there, and are your readings originally provided showing on your meter readings page in your on-line account? Out of curiosity, which and how many estimated readings did they use instead of your readings? Did all this perchance happen when they were changing accounts from the old to new billing systems?