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

Jon1952

silvercar said:

Jon1952 said:

Just switched to E.ON from Tomato (or rather trying to.....British Gas are blocking the move currently. They seem to think that taking on Tomato's few customers is a big deal (for a company with a churn of over a million a year...really?). The E.ON tariff is interesting, in that you get 6 hours at 'overnight' rate, and (if you link teir app to the car) charges the car - at times they determine - during the day - at night rates. You tell them when you need it full supposedly and it decides when to do it. Interesting bit is that during the 'car charge segments' all your house electricity is also at the cheap rate.

We will see how this works out......

There are 2 similarly named e.on next drive tariffs. One is smart and can charge the car at times they determine, giving your house the cheap 6.5p rate whenever your car charges as well as midnight - 6am. The other gives a cheap rate midnight - 6am only. Check the standing charge and non discounted rate on the tariff you choose. Be aware that they are different tariffs and the smart one seems to have some teething problems, anecdotally.

The smart one is going to be 'interesting' since we have batteries and the E.ON app will not interface with them. so if (for example) E.ON want to use 11:30 to 12:30 to charge the car (and the app tells the car to do so) at the moment this would come out of our house battery (which ontakes from the grid midnight till 6, then powers the house the other 8 hours). I would need to jump in and change the schedule on the battery so it was charging rather than discharging for the 11:30 to 12:30 slot. Given that the timings onf the E.ON car charge slots are not fixed, I can see a tedious task....

born_again

Jon1952 said:

silvercar said:

Jon1952 said:

Just switched to E.ON from Tomato (or rather trying to.....British Gas are blocking the move currently. They seem to think that taking on Tomato's few customers is a big deal (for a company with a churn of over a million a year...really?). The E.ON tariff is interesting, in that you get 6 hours at 'overnight' rate, and (if you link teir app to the car) charges the car - at times they determine - during the day - at night rates. You tell them when you need it full supposedly and it decides when to do it. Interesting bit is that during the 'car charge segments' all your house electricity is also at the cheap rate.

We will see how this works out......

There are 2 similarly named e.on next drive tariffs. One is smart and can charge the car at times they determine, giving your house the cheap 6.5p rate whenever your car charges as well as midnight - 6am. The other gives a cheap rate midnight - 6am only. Check the standing charge and non discounted rate on the tariff you choose. Be aware that they are different tariffs and the smart one seems to have some teething problems, anecdotally.

The smart one is going to be 'interesting' since we have batteries and the E.ON app will not interface with them. so if (for example) E.ON want to use 11:30 to 12:30 to charge the car (and the app tells the car to do so) at the moment this would come out of our house battery (which ontakes from the grid midnight till 6, then powers the house the other 8 hours). I would need to jump in and change the schedule on the battery so it was charging rather than discharging for the 11:30 to 12:30 slot. Given that the timings onf the E.ON car charge slots are not fixed, I can see a tedious task....

There is a way to fix the wiring so that you do not use the battery to charge the car. Best to get installer back to sort your problem, or another electrician who knows how to sort this issue.
Has cropped up here before & wiring diagrams were given.

MWT

Looks like Tomato have made it into administration, probably with Alvarez & Marsal given the change in registered address filed today...

They will be remembered for the administration of Avro and other energy companies... 

Swipe

EssexHebridean said:

I shouldn't think anything about this SOLR situation is going to be easy. I confess to being VERY glad Octopus weren't given it - last thing any of their existing customers need is that sort of chaos impacting on the customer service!  

It's the last thing existing British Gas customers needed too

EssexHebridean

Swipe said:

EssexHebridean said:

I shouldn't think anything about this SOLR situation is going to be easy. I confess to being VERY glad Octopus weren't given it - last thing any of their existing customers need is that sort of chaos impacting on the customer service!  

It's the last thing existing British Gas customers needed too

Oh I'm sure, but at least BG customers didn't have a decent level of customer service in the first place!  

hobbgoblin

Am I right in thinking that British Gas will bill at whatever rate they inform you of eventually.  But it will be backdated to the date of administration?

I ask as if you have an electric car your life will have got very expensive?

 Mine on Tomato would have been about £6 on Tomato, but as an estimate £30 on BG. Do that for too long and I will be looking at a massive bill.

I am tempted to try to switch and see what happens.

MWT

hobbgoblin said:

Am I right in thinking that British Gas will bill at whatever rate they inform you of eventually.  But it will be backdated to the date of administration?

Yes, the effective date will be 9th November, and the tariff you should assume, until advised otherwise, is the standard BG variable tariff for your region.

You should also assume that you are on either a single rate or E7 version depending upon your meter type as recorded in the central database, if you think you are on an E7 tariff type, take care, as the switching times may be different.