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

JohnPo

Ildhund said:

GSV3MIAC2 said:

Smart meters use hh data for tou billing in most cases. 

Do you have evidence for this statement? I'm thinking of the millions of smart meters like mine, reporting day and night register readings for my ToU Economy 7 tariff. 

Smart meters give suppliers different ways of monitoring usage. A lot suppliers user 2 different registers for Day / Night recording of usage and I believe is how most Economy 7 users are setup with a smart meter.  Where the hours are not fixed - think of Octopus Agile them HH data is the only way they can set that up - others TOU tariffs then it up to supplier what works for them.

Qyburn

Ildhund said:

GSV3MIAC2 said:

Smart meters use hh data for tou billing in most cases. 

Do you have evidence for this statement? I'm thinking of the millions of smart meters like mine, reporting day and night register readings for my ToU Economy 7 tariff. 

I'm on Octopus "Go". My meter was reprogrammed with two registers, but they do not represent the usage at the actual two Go rates.

GSV3MIAC2

e7 was often moved from dumb to smart meters, and some suppliers use r1/r2 on an ongoing basis. They also stick with periods nailed to GMT, and a mystical random offset on half hour time. If they want hh data they need customer approval. 

Most more complicated tariffs, like the tomato ones, anything with more than 2 periods, and (ultimate case) Agile, just use hh readings and overall total. Any r1/r2 split is fictional. EV tariffs often insist on hh data (eg Eon and Octopus eV tariffs) because the supplier likes the extra data. For their smart eV tariffs, where they control charging at random times, hh data is essential, the meter has no idea what the tariff is.

QrizB

GSV3MIAC2 said:

Most more complicated tariffs,... anything with more than 2 periods

Logicor (the company that turned into Tomato) and GEUK (now under the name 100Green) both had three-rate tariffs which, I think use/used three registers. 100Green still have a Tide tariff that might work this way.

The important point is/was that the three rates were at fixed times that could be set into a smart meter schedule, unlike Agile or anythng "smart" where the timings might change day to day. The smart meter system isn't set up to support ad-hoc tariff timing changes.

MWT

JohnPo said:

All the rules about back billing, treating customers fairly etc etc. don't apply to administrators once the supply license has been revoked and any non contractual commitments made by Tomato management will be ignored.

Ofgem have previously warned administrators that they expect the back-billing rules to be followed even after the supply licence has been revoked.

I don't thing that any administrators have tried to challenge that position yet, but this one might be the time that they have a more powerful motivation that usual to do just that....

Bendo

I expect if Ofgem have any sense, they will try and get Octopus to be SOLR, as they have the technology and brains to simply pull all the data from the meters for the past 13 months and produce accurate bills based on Tomato rates, that could then simply be cross referenced against what has been paid already.

It doesn't have to be messy provided they don't jump into bed with the likes of British Gas.

This would also explain why in this instance all switches appear to be blocked, with previous failures, it was possible to switch whilst the solr was being decided (albeit with a risk of subsequent erroneous switches) . Im effect they need to block as much as they can to get the chosen solr to be able to access the data.

Qyburn

Bendo said:

I expect if Ofgem have any sense, they will try and get Octopus to be SOLR, as they have the technology and brains to simply pull all the data from the meters for the past 13 months and produce accurate bills based on Tomato rates, that could then simply be cross referenced against what has been paid already.

I can't see why Octopus would (or should) put in that amount of work, the aim of which is purely to ensure Tomato customers pay less to the administrator.

GingerTim

My 50p long shot is going on OVO being the SOLR.

masonic

I don't think there will be any bids for this one. Likely Ofgem will nominate one of them, and that decision may well be driven by perceptions of who is most capable to deal with the mess.

gopalsingh

I was with Octopus for gas and tomato for electricity. But this morning my online Octopus account is suddenly showing that they are the supplier both electrcity and gas for my address, showing all the smart meter details for my elec also but the elec tariff details it says "Sorry, we weren't able to get the details for your tariff. This should be temporary, but if it persists, contact us". Not sure if they have been appointed as SoLR? My octopus account has definitely changed since yesterday. Would be interesting to see if anybody else was Octopus for gas only and if their online account has changed overnight also to show they are the elec supplier now also... I did put in a switch request to swap elec to octopus a couple days before they went bust but that was declined by tomato and never went through