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

bristolleedsfan

niktheguru said:

as I only requested it earlier in the week and it just feels short notice!

Switches should take maximum 5 working days, British Gas and Octopus offer switches in within 3 working days.

niktheguru

Not a great start to be honest. Switch hasn't happened and i wasn't told anything about it. Spoke to someone in Tomato customer services and was given a very wishy washy answer of "they're unable to switch my MPAN number" so i'm unable to switch to them at the moment. Apparently this is due to the area i'm in (London) and they're having difficulty switching customers with some mpan numbers.
 
When I asked so what do I do, I was met with a pause and then a you just have to wait. Then when I asked if anyone would contact me or inform me, i was told, "er, why don't you call back next week"

Not particularly impressive, but what can you expect.

WibbleBaaaaaa

Well it took me 3 days to move from octopus to TE, which was finished on Sunday there, and my data on mywatts appeared also on Sunday st 9am in the morning, so i am very happy that it went through this quickly and everything seems to be fine, all i am waiting for now is my final bill and refund of credit from octopus.

But having stuck with agile since october, i am now enjoying TE lifestyle, and even it they go bust, and i end up back qith Octo, i really have nothing to lose at this point because my agile was up for renew in 2 weeks and my Sc was going up from 62 to 67, so that 42p from TE was just worth the risk now.....i suppose that insane SC weill teach me to live in such a rual area called Scotland. lol

WibbleBaaaaaa

(sorry can't seem to find how to edit my last post)........so.....

I was wondering for anyone who has switched from Octo or TE with a smart meter, do i have to give TE my last meter readings, or will it all be done automatically between Oct and TE, as mine are still at 0000 on my TE acount at present, so i wonder if i have to give a reading, as i took a video of the meter at 00;00 on Sunday morning with the time, date and meter reading, so i have proof if they need it.

Thanks you for any advice. ):

masonic

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

(sorry can't seem to find how to edit my last post)........so.....

I was wondering for anyone who has switched from Octo or TE with a smart meter, do i have to give TE my last meter readings, or will it all be done automatically between Oct and TE, as mine are still at 0000 on my TE acount at present, so i wonder if i have to give a reading, as i took a video of the meter at 00;00 on Sunday morning with the time, date and meter reading, so i have proof if they need it.

Thanks you for any advice. ):

They do suggest you give them a meter reading in MyWatts. I didn't because my situation was complicated (usage on two registers and Octopus the first only rather than the total).

wrf12345

" suppose that insane SC weill teach me to live in such a rual area called Scotland. lo" Devon is only a touch under that, as well, I think London is good but  not moving there to save 20p a day when everything else is mega expensive.

Newbie_John

WibbleBaaaaaa said:

(sorry can't seem to find how to edit my last post)........so.....

I was wondering for anyone who has switched from Octo or TE with a smart meter, do i have to give TE my last meter readings, or will it all be done automatically between Oct and TE, as mine are still at 0000 on my TE acount at present, so i wonder if i have to give a reading, as i took a video of the meter at 00;00 on Sunday morning with the time, date and meter reading, so i have proof if they need it.

Thanks you for any advice. ):

Email them.
I think TE doesn't care about them but they will be needed for Octopus to bill you correctly and there was a case here not long ago when someone was charged 10x for the last day. I've provided my readings but still had no bill from Octopus and switch was 4 months ago - all they're missing is the last day data. No rushing as I can still use free coffee, wheel of fortune and there is a chance that in 8 months it will be free 😜

WibbleBaaaaaa

Ok thank you all for the advice, just popped my meter reading onto mywatts......good stuff.

Thanks you.

sebtomato

Ildhund said:

lohr500 said:

How does that work with TOU type tariffs like TE Lifestyle and many of the Octopus tariffs?

You'll have to ask them. As I understand it, at least some of the Octopus schemes depend on dynamic ALCS (e.g. Snug), where the supplier sends a request to the meter to change the switching times of connected equipment. For billing to work, the tariff table will have to change accordingly, so electricity delivered during cheap periods is recorded on the cheap rate register. Because the meter's randomized offset applies to both the tariff change times and the switching times, the midnight-to-midnight totals of Hh data should be the difference in total readings ±1Wh, but there will be no precise correlation between a specific register's readings and the content of the buckets for the half-hours it nominally covers.

I don't know how TE go about it. If they supply electricity at specific rates during specific half hours, then the sum of the half-hourly figures should match the difference in readings exactly. I can't see any reason why half-hourly usage data stored in the meter shouldn't be identical at the retrievers' end, so MyWatts and Bright should show the same. It's unlikely that the contents of any particular bucket will vary depending on who retrieves it, so a MyWatts/Bright discrepancy can probably only be attributed to missing buckets at one or the other. It's a simple matter just to count the number of non-null buckets received for the day; if it's less than 48, try again. 

This is all a bit convoluted, and it could well be that my thinking is less clear than it needs to be. IOW, E&OE.

Tomato don't support management of ALCS schedules, I asked them. Basically, not a good option for people on economy 7, who need a specific circuit to be activated during off peak hours.

bazray

Ildhund said:

bazray said:

... the total monthly usage is slightly different on Mywatts its 197.164 kwh and on Bright its 199.112. 

How does MyWatts arrive at that figure? It's common for consumption over an extended period to be taken from meter readings, and in fact that's what suppliers are bound to do for billing (subtract the reading at the beginning of the billing period from the reading at its end to find the period's consumption). This may not always tally exactly with the sum of half-hourly usage data over the period, but rounding won't normally give rise to an error bigger than 0.001 kWh.

Can you see any differences between MyWatts' half-hourly figures and Bright's?  

The Mywatts just pulls the data for the month, in this case it was January from 1st to 31st and so does the bright app. It does say next to the figure "estimated total" on Mywatts but if they both get data from the same source then I would think they should be exact. Under the meter readings it has my opening meter read from December 21st then an automatic reading on January 31st then another on February 3rd. Next meter read is due March 3rd it says. I think I will contact them and ask whats going on. I'm not too fussed about being slightly out but it is a bit weird if they get data from the same source. I have noticed a few gaps on the mywatts app in the 30min  usage data, on the 31st Jan there's about 8 hours missing. The bright app has them all, so it seems the mywatts isn't recording the data properly.