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

masonic

wrf12345 said:

I think someone said there was an allowance allowed between opening and closing reading, they don't have to be exactly the same - down to the "lovely" chaps at Ofgem.

No, the opening and closing readings must be the same as each other. They are not required to be the same as the actual read taken on switch day.

Newbie_John

TroubledTarts said:

Every month is a win with Tomato for those being billed.

Yep, my goal was to get billed for winter and that's done now - as I've been averaging about 10p/kWh (no fancy solar, battery, gas..) it saved me £700 so far compared to SVR and probably the same to Agile  

Now time to switch heating off and ignore electricity bill till October 😅

bristolleedsfan

wrf12345 said:

I think someone said there was an allowance allowed between opening and closing reading, they don't have to be exactly the same - down to the "lovely" chaps at Ofgem.

"Allowance allowed" aka within tolerance level relates to when opening and closing readings are the same, customer not happy being charged different closing reading than he/she actually took due to opening/closing readings having been decided by data collector aka mysterious third party.

bob2302

bristolleedsfan said:

wrf12345 said:

I think someone said there was an allowance allowed between opening and closing reading, they don't have to be exactly the same - down to the "lovely" chaps at Ofgem.

"Allowance allowed" aka within tolerance level relates to when opening and closing readings are the same, customer not happy being charged different closing reading than he/she actually took due to opening/closing readings having been decided by data collector aka mysterious third party.

From what's been said, it sounds like TE only read 30 minute data. If that's the case, there's double billing on the same energy until you reach the index value from the third-party.

masonic

bob2302 said:

bristolleedsfan said:

wrf12345 said:

I think someone said there was an allowance allowed between opening and closing reading, they don't have to be exactly the same - down to the "lovely" chaps at Ofgem.

"Allowance allowed" aka within tolerance level relates to when opening and closing readings are the same, customer not happy being charged different closing reading than he/she actually took due to opening/closing readings having been decided by data collector aka mysterious third party.

From what's been said, it sounds like TE only read 30 minute data. If that's the case, there's double billing on the same energy until you reach the index value from the third-party.

TE also base their own fictitious "meter readings" on this index value + 30 minute data, so all of your subsequent readings with TE will be higher than those recorded by the meter. I've no idea what happens when you leave and report a lower reading to your new supplier.

QrizB

masonic said:

bob2302 said:

bristolleedsfan said:

wrf12345 said:

I think someone said there was an allowance allowed between opening and closing reading, they don't have to be exactly the same - down to the "lovely" chaps at Ofgem.

"Allowance allowed" aka within tolerance level relates to when opening and closing readings are the same, customer not happy being charged different closing reading than he/she actually took due to opening/closing readings having been decided by data collector aka mysterious third party.

From what's been said, it sounds like TE only read 30 minute data. If that's the case, there's double billing on the same energy until you reach the index value from the third-party.

TE also base their own fictitious "meter readings" on this index value + 30 minute data, so all of your subsequent readings with TE will be higher than those recorded by the meter. I've no idea what happens when you leave and report a lower reading to your new supplier.

I've been wondering that, too. Has anyone successfully left Tomato who can share their experiences?

Or is it all a bit Hotel California?

MWT

QrizB said:

masonic said:

bob2302 said:

bristolleedsfan said:

wrf12345 said:

I think someone said there was an allowance allowed between opening and closing reading, they don't have to be exactly the same - down to the "lovely" chaps at Ofgem.

"Allowance allowed" aka within tolerance level relates to when opening and closing readings are the same, customer not happy being charged different closing reading than he/she actually took due to opening/closing readings having been decided by data collector aka mysterious third party.

From what's been said, it sounds like TE only read 30 minute data. If that's the case, there's double billing on the same energy until you reach the index value from the third-party.

TE also base their own fictitious "meter readings" on this index value + 30 minute data, so all of your subsequent readings with TE will be higher than those recorded by the meter. I've no idea what happens when you leave and report a lower reading to your new supplier.

I've been wondering that, too. Has anyone successfully left Tomato who can share their experiences?

Or is it all a bit Hotel California?

Switching directly from one HH tariff to another HH tariff hasn't really been a common occurrence and it does raise other issues such as the losing providers access to the last parts of the HH data...

I'd be tempted to suggest that a return to a normal tariff based on the daily index readings a day before a switch would make sense, and similarly switching to a daily index based tariff before moving to HH would making things easier...

masonic

MWT said:

QrizB said:

masonic said:

bob2302 said:

bristolleedsfan said:

wrf12345 said:

I think someone said there was an allowance allowed between opening and closing reading, they don't have to be exactly the same - down to the "lovely" chaps at Ofgem.

"Allowance allowed" aka within tolerance level relates to when opening and closing readings are the same, customer not happy being charged different closing reading than he/she actually took due to opening/closing readings having been decided by data collector aka mysterious third party.

From what's been said, it sounds like TE only read 30 minute data. If that's the case, there's double billing on the same energy until you reach the index value from the third-party.

TE also base their own fictitious "meter readings" on this index value + 30 minute data, so all of your subsequent readings with TE will be higher than those recorded by the meter. I've no idea what happens when you leave and report a lower reading to your new supplier.

I've been wondering that, too. Has anyone successfully left Tomato who can share their experiences?

Or is it all a bit Hotel California?

Switching directly from one HH tariff to another HH tariff hasn't really been a common occurrence and it does raise other issues such as the losing providers access to the last parts of the HH data...

I'd be tempted to suggest that a return to a normal tariff based on the daily index readings a day before a switch would make sense, and similarly switching to a daily index based tariff before moving to HH would making things easier...

It's good practice for a new supplier to switch you to a NHH tariff initially until they confirm they can receive HH data. That is what Octopus does, I don't know about others (apart from TE who does not).

MWT

masonic said:

MWT said:

QrizB said:

masonic said:

bob2302 said:

bristolleedsfan said:

wrf12345 said:

I think someone said there was an allowance allowed between opening and closing reading, they don't have to be exactly the same - down to the "lovely" chaps at Ofgem.

"Allowance allowed" aka within tolerance level relates to when opening and closing readings are the same, customer not happy being charged different closing reading than he/she actually took due to opening/closing readings having been decided by data collector aka mysterious third party.

From what's been said, it sounds like TE only read 30 minute data. If that's the case, there's double billing on the same energy until you reach the index value from the third-party.

TE also base their own fictitious "meter readings" on this index value + 30 minute data, so all of your subsequent readings with TE will be higher than those recorded by the meter. I've no idea what happens when you leave and report a lower reading to your new supplier.

I've been wondering that, too. Has anyone successfully left Tomato who can share their experiences?

Or is it all a bit Hotel California?

Switching directly from one HH tariff to another HH tariff hasn't really been a common occurrence and it does raise other issues such as the losing providers access to the last parts of the HH data...

I'd be tempted to suggest that a return to a normal tariff based on the daily index readings a day before a switch would make sense, and similarly switching to a daily index based tariff before moving to HH would making things easier...

It's good practice for a new supplier to switch you to a NHH tariff initially until they confirm they can receive HH data. That is what Octopus does, I don't know about others (apart from TE who does not).

Agreed, it is very unwise to jump straight to a HH tariff, and I'd hope that suppliers wouldn't try to do it.

The bit that is really down to the consumer though is switching off of HH billing before the switch to avoid the lost data triggering billing issues and delays.

I've seen no signs of any industry process that is going to smooth out that flaw in the process ...

Ildhund

MWT said:

... it does raise other issues such as the losing providers access to the last parts of the HH data...

The Hh data are still there in the meter's data store. So are index readings, but access to them needs elevated permissions. Anyone can get Hh data with the customer's permission, so this should in fact be easier than it appears to be with readings. Perhaps the data validator's remit will be expanded to cover this as well, especially since we're all moving inexorably on to MHHS. It's in everybody's interest that every half-hour's usage is billed correctly both by the supplier to the customer and by the generator to the supplier, so data can't be allowed simply to fall into the cracks on a change of supplier.