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

Bendo

Apparently smart meters only record half hourly slot usage?

How has this clown got a supply licence?

lohr500

My money says he won't have a supply licence for much longer.

bagand96

JohnPo said:

Tomato billed me from 14/11/24 onwards - they did not setup the direct debit although I gave them the details when signing up.  I have raised a complaint as my contract shows the rates off-peak 4.77p KWhr, mid-peak 13.37p and standard rate rate 22.16 with standing charge 40.82p and no mention at all of these being prices excluding VAT but they just added 5% on the bottom on the Dec and Jan bills. Have paid the Dec one in full by bank transfer but will pay Jan's bill less VAT and deducting Dec's VAT and send them an email explaining why - referencing the complaint made on 03 Jan - which so far they have not replied to.

Let see how this goes - if they fold - I will make sure I have got a paper trail so that when Barrett Smith & Brown get hold of debt and start chasing - I can tell them where to go.

But what rates were you shown on the website when you signed up?

I'm on the same tariff as you and joined the same week. On the website graph when I signed up I was shown 5..004p / 14.0427p / 23.2628p with standing charge of 42.8563p.

My contract came through and like you says 4.77p / 13.37p / 22.16p and standing charge 40.82p.

The contract rates are excluding VAT, but when the VAT is added it matches what was shown on their website at sign up.  I do think there was (is?) some confusion as somewhere else they stated all rates include VAT , but in my case at least the rates are correct based on the web quote.

masonic

bagand96 said:

JohnPo said:

Tomato billed me from 14/11/24 onwards - they did not setup the direct debit although I gave them the details when signing up.  I have raised a complaint as my contract shows the rates off-peak 4.77p KWhr, mid-peak 13.37p and standard rate rate 22.16 with standing charge 40.82p and no mention at all of these being prices excluding VAT but they just added 5% on the bottom on the Dec and Jan bills. Have paid the Dec one in full by bank transfer but will pay Jan's bill less VAT and deducting Dec's VAT and send them an email explaining why - referencing the complaint made on 03 Jan - which so far they have not replied to.

Let see how this goes - if they fold - I will make sure I have got a paper trail so that when Barrett Smith & Brown get hold of debt and start chasing - I can tell them where to go.

But what rates were you shown on the website when you signed up?

I'm on the same tariff as you and joined the same week. On the website graph when I signed up I was shown 5..004p / 14.0427p / 23.2628p with standing charge of 42.8563p.

My contract came through and like you says 4.77p / 13.37p / 22.16p and standing charge 40.82p.

The contract rates are excluding VAT, but when the VAT is added it matches what was shown on their website at sign up.  I do think there was (is?) some confusion as somewhere else they stated all rates include VAT , but in my case at least the rates are correct based on the web quote.

They seem to have fixed this problem. My contract (from earlier this month) shows the same rates as everywhere else.

debitcardmayhem

Bendo said:

Apparently smart meters only record half hourly slot usage?

How has this clown got a supply licence?

He really doesn’t understand does he , as for recording every half hour, yes but not every half hour ,
20 million plus smart meters being polled 48 times a day. The mind boggles

EDIT of course he doesn’t know about gas meters either, imagine if they supplied gas too 🥸

masonic

Bendo said:

Apparently smart meters only record half hourly slot usage?

A very strange take indeed. As a banker/software engineer, he should probably consult with whomever put together the following email sent out to new customers:

Should be clear enough to anyone with a bit of knowledge of the system that even for TOU tariffs the outgoing supplier loses the ability to pull data before the last day or so becomes available. Plus the start and end reads for a supply agreement may differ from the total consumed between start and end dates.

Bendo said:

How has this clown got a supply licence?

By buying an energy company that already had one.

Ildhund

debitcardmayhem said:

... 20 million plus smart meters being polled 48 times a day. 

Just in case anyone gets bamboozled by this interesting little discussion, there is no question of 'meters being polled 48 times a day' as many uninformed people have claimed.

Suppliers will usually poll meters twice a day, once to get the midnight register readings and once to get the 48 usage figures. With everything working flawlessly, 'they' (the supplier) will have all usage data for the entire period from taking over the supply to relinquishing it, but of course it doesn't always work flawlessly, and I can imagine that a complete set of half-hourly data over a long period is a rarity. It's not even certain that the meter itself will record all 48 figures for every day of its working life and store the latest 19000 or so of them.

That said, the difference between (the sum of Hh usage figures) and (the difference between opening and closing meter readings) for a given period as reported by my SMETS2 meter has (almost) never exceeded ±1Wh. 

JohnPo

bagand96 said:

But what rates were you shown on the website when you signed up?

I'm on the same tariff as you and joined the same week. On the website graph when I signed up I was shown 5..004p / 14.0427p / 23.2628p with standing charge of 42.8563p.

My contract came through and like you says 4.77p / 13.37p / 22.16p and standing charge 40.82p.

The contract rates are excluding VAT, but when the VAT is added it matches what was shown on their website at sign up.  I do think there was (is?) some confusion as somewhere else they stated all rates include VAT , but in my case at least the rates are correct based on the web quote.

When I signed up the website showed the prices without stating in any that they were excluding VAT ! - I saved screenshots during the sign up process.

masonic

Ildhund said:

That said, the difference between (the sum of Hh usage figures) and (the difference between opening and closing meter readings) for a given period as reported by my SMETS2 meter has (almost) never exceeded ±1Wh. 

The issue is when the change of supplier reading doesn't validate and an alternative reading is set by the DCC based on EAC. This could result in you being charged for the same units by both suppliers if they both don't use this reading to scale their final/first bill. To avoid this scenario, it has been made a regulatory requirement for suppliers to use the DCC's validated reading. For TOU tariffs, they would need to apply a scaling factor to the first and/or last bill.

Regarding polling of data, the last day of supply will rarely be available/complete by the time the ceding supplier loses access. Usually, data becomes available during the following day, sometimes it takes more than a day.

Newbie_John

Unless they pulled data more frequently, if you know customer is leaving why not attempt to pull it hourly so you get their final consumption, bill them, close the account - oh yeah, Octopus is unable to do it - having hundreds of IT people it can't do it.. it can only get the data for the past day, once a day - TE with probably 1 developer can access data multiple times a day already..