Tomato Energy (Electric Only Supplier) - Too Good To Be True ?

Gerry1

@masonic @Bendo @TroubledTarts

It happened to me.

No, there was no "sorry you are leaving us message" because I'd left the relevant supplier many months before, and long before they went bust.  BG were appointed the SoLR but the only way I noticed the overcharge was that BG had erased all previous bills and issued one new one to replace the whole lot.  However, I noticed the start date was several months earlier than when I had actually joined BG.  BG had charged me again for the period of a few months, both the standing charge and the kWh usage.  The only clue was the different start date.

WibbleBaaaaaa

knight123 said:

Other than the £40/£80 compensation for delays, does anyone know if I have any rights regarding them honouring the tariff I signed up for? I have a contract with them which says 'Your contract is for 12 months starting from 28/02/2025 and ending in 28/02/2026' and has the lifestyle rates in it, but if the switch still hasn't happened, I'm worried they'll suddenly change the terms and put me on an updated one with less favourable rates.

They will honor the contract so do not worry, because all that has really happened with TE concerning failed switches is that they were simply overwhelmed by the inlux of new customers jumping to them because they are the cheapest supplier across the entire Uk. and being such new company they stumbled somewhat under it all, but the pause they took with new customers will soon be over, and for us TE customers the more they get the better and more stable TE will becomes, so stay the course and stay positive.

masonic

Gerry1 said:

@masonic @Bendo @TroubledTarts

It happened to me.

No, there was no "sorry you are leaving us message" because I'd left the relevant supplier many months before, and long before they went bust.  BG were appointed the SoLR but the only way I noticed the overcharge was that BG had erased all previous bills and issued one new one to replace the whole lot.  However, I noticed the start date was several months earlier than when I had actually joined BG.  BG had charged me again for the period of a few months, both the standing charge and the kWh usage.  The only clue was the different start date.

So you happened to move to BG and during your time with them they took the opportunity to rewrite history? This is quite shocking!

masonic

lohr500 said:

masonic said:

I looked into this before signing up. They've not reserved any right to bill customers on a tariff other than the one they signed up to. Nor do they have provisions to estimate TOU data. Which leaves them with very few options.

The Tariff Information document that was emailed to me by TE when I signed up in late August last year contained this clause:


Implementation Where your tariff has a smart meter requirement, you agree that we can take half hourly meter readings. If we are using third party software to connect to specific devices, we cannot be liable for issues or losses arising in relation to the failure or non-availability of such third-party software or applications. Where connection to the smart meter is lost, you shall be required to submit meter readings in monthly intervals until the connection is fully working or the fault resolved. We may apply appropriate unit rates and estimates of your usage in such instances. 

I don't know if the document changed for later customers, but I do think it could get messy if they or affected customers can't retrieve the half hourly data for whatever reason.

Rightly or wrongly, my understanding is that the meter "should" be storing a rolling 13 months of half hourly data. If this is the case, then the data is in there somewhere and hopefully TE can find a way to extract it!!
But if they or the DCC can't then what happens?  

In the absence of half hourly data, all that is left are the meter register readings which obviously won't give a breakdown of the tou consumption.

TE could do the decent thing if billing defaults to the meter readings and charge all the usage at the 5p unt cost.Or agree some other weighted rate which would be acceptable to most customers. At the end of the day though, who knows!!

I was fortunate that my half hourly data for August to November was accessible through Glowmarkt/Bright and n3rgy and so I was able to calculate exactly how much I should have been billed for. The Ombudsman agreed with me and instructed TE to issue a refund.

Yes you're right, that is still there, though "connection to the smart meter is lost" probably wouldn't cover "we can't read it but everyone else can". I missed that sentence in any case and was focusing mainly on the tariff-specific paragraph and the broader T&Cs document (where all they have are conditions 11.5-11.6 covering total import readings, not variation to unit rates). Not specifying an actual policy or fallback tariff and using vague terms like "appropriate" opens them up to quite a lot of risk if the customer disagrees with them about what an appropriate average rate to charge would be. Your example shows this in action! Even Octopus, who are usually very generous, put  a rather draconian backstop of billing missing data as Flexible in their contract to protect themselves.

I do agree with you that I'd be very nervous had my data not been coming through to MyWatts smoothly after switching.

Bendo

Interested to see how it pans out for Largs. Even if they sort out their mess of not being able to read some meters, they won't be able to pull his data (unless they already had and their broken systems just failed to present it).

I'm pretty sure at some point once a starting read is agreed with the new supplier, Tomato will be after something, the question is what?

Gerry1

masonic said:

Gerry1 said:

@masonic @Bendo @TroubledTarts

It happened to me.

No, there was no "sorry you are leaving us message" because I'd left the relevant supplier many months before, and long before they went bust.  BG were appointed the SoLR but the only way I noticed the overcharge was that BG had erased all previous bills and issued one new one to replace the whole lot.  However, I noticed the start date was several months earlier than when I had actually joined BG.  BG had charged me again for the period of a few months, both the standing charge and the kWh usage.  The only clue was the different start date.

So you happened to move to BG and during your time with them they took the opportunity to rewrite history? This is quite shocking!

Yes, happened four times in total.  They corrected it but the same thing kept repeating.  They said they couldn't stop the system repeating the cycle endlessly, so they made a one-off payment to offset it.  Spent many hours trying to sort it out (one call was in a queue for over two hours and then it dropped out without reaching an agent).  Held out for £100 compo - and got it.  Always keep records, BG have a nasty habit of erasing previous bills and issuing one mega-bill so it would be all too easy to miss.

JKS$(

I remain a very happy TE customer, but still having final bill issues with Octopus..

I've supplied photos of meter readings post switch & data usage from Glowmarkt & asked why they can't work backwards to provide a more accurate final bill. 

CS has ignored this question twice, but now says they'll provide a new final bill using the last photo meter reading, taken 11 days after the switch. 

Thinking about raising a formal complaint but before I do - is there any reason why a supplier can't work backwards from usage data to calculate a bill? Some weird regulation somewhere?

(brief recap - recently moved in & my energy use is much lower than previous occupant. Final bill was estimated using mostly her usage data. I don't have access to meter & rely on others to supply readings at their convenience)

Bendo

The final bill is supposed to be based off what is validated by a 3rd party and used by both the gaining supplier and the losing supplier. Seems with switches to Tomato something often goes wrong. Probably not helped by their CEO at one point claiming smart meters only send TOU data not index reads, but who knows.

crumpet_man

Slightly off topic but does anyone pay the TE DD from Santander 123 Lite?  AFAIK Tomato are not on the list eligible for cashback but yesterday on my 123 lite account I received "backdated cashback for Tomatoe Energy £0.98" note the e in Tomato is not my misspelling.  The monthly DD payment shows "Tomato Energy"

The cashback amount does not tally with any TE bill but I just realised that I had been paying £250 to Octopus which maxes out the energy cashback at £5 which means I should not get any cashback for Tomato.  

tlcgrantham

crumpet_man said:

Slightly off topic but does anyone pay the TE DD from Santander 123 Lite?  AFAIK Tomato are not on the list eligible for cashback but yesterday on my 123 lite account I received "backdated cashback for Tomatoe Energy £0.98" note the e in Tomato is not my misspelling.  The monthly DD payment shows "Tomato Energy"

The cashback amount does not tally with any TE bill but I just realised that I had been paying £250 to Octopus which maxes out the energy cashback at £5 which means I should not get any cashback for Tomato.  

I got 80p backdated cash back yesterday as well for the 2nd month when I didn’t receive cashback. For the 1st and 3rd months I have already received the correct cashback.