British Gas - clear and obvious error in recording off peak electricity

BobBlightman

I have an electric vehicle and have been on an EV tariff with British Gas which gives lower electricity costs between midnight and 5am

I have set up my car so it only charges on my home charger between these times, but I have had consistent and ongoing problems with British Gas recording this as peak usage.

For a whole month in March/April this year the reading that they have for off-peak usage didnt change at all, even though I charged the car multiple times in that period. After a lot of time convincing them that they were in error, they finally agreed and gave £120 in compensation.

After this I logged into the BG gas on almost a daily basis to record the readings they were taking. At this stage I think they were only providing 1 reading per day on the website. I noticed something was wrong at the end of June/early July and again after a lot of phone calls they agreed another £50 compensation.

Their new website allows you to see the half hour readings they take, and this demonstrates clearly that something is wrong. Although it shows off peak usage correctly from midnight to 4am, the remaining hour from 4am to 5am is allocated to 11pm to midnight on that same day when the car is not plugged in. This could be a British Summer Time issue, and although not as serious as previous problems when it was allocating all off peak usage to peak, it still means I'm being overcharged. I don't seem to be able to post links here, but if you want to see my proof, post a reply here and I'll try and send you a link


I have spent far too much time trying to sort this out with BG and am now switching to Octopus and will take my case to the Ombudsman.

If any of you are on an EV tariff with BG check the readings!

Keep_pedalling

I am sure there was a similar thread to this last week. BG are a nightmare when it comes to sorting problems I would be looking to switch away ASAP.

Reed_Richards

The  Eon NexDrive tariff is also worth considering.  

Qyburn

BobBlightman said:

Their new website allows you to see the half hour readings they take, and this demonstrates clearly that something is wrong. Although it shows off peak usage correctly from midnight to 4am, the remaining hour from 4am to 5am is allocated to 11pm to midnight on that same day when the car is not plugged in. This could be a British Summer Time issue, and although not as serious as previous problems when it was allocating all off peak usage to peak, it still means I'm being overcharged.

That sounds exactly like a GMT/BST issue. You're charging from 00:00 to 05:00 BST which equates to 23:00 to 04:00 GMT. Do the terms and condition make it clear whether the cheap hours follow local time or remain GMT? I think if not spelled out you'd be entitled to assume local time. A pragmatic immediate fix would be to charge from 01:00 to 04:00.

BobBlightman

Thanks Qyburn for your comment
I agree it sounds like a BST issue, but surely in that case, they'd be charging me for peak usage from 11pm to midnight the previous day not the same day more than 12 hours after I've taken the car off charge and it's not plugged in?

cannugec5

BobBlightman said:

Thanks Qyburn for your comment
I agree it sounds like a BST issue, but surely in that case, they'd be charging me for peak usage from 11pm to midnight the previous day not the same day more than 12 hours after I've taken the car off charge and it's not plugged in?

Does not a day start and end at midnight? 

They cannot have a charging period that crosses two days ( I presume) therefore it must be 00.00 - 4.00hrs and 23.00 - 24.00 hrs. 

So tariff changes can be implemented at midnight. 

BobBlightman

cannugec5

Thanks for your comment, but I'm not sure I understand it

As an example, i plugged in my car on the evening of 19th August, and it was programmed to begin charging at midnight that night and stop charging at 5am on August 20th.I did NOT plug it in again on the night of August 20th

British Gas have charge me for usage on August 20th from 00:00 to 04:00 and then from 23:00 to 24:00 that day (when the car was not plugged in)

This last hour is clearly wrong and that hour should just have been from 04:00 to 05:00 with electricity at cheap rate

I've now left British Gas and they have paid compensation for the overcharging and have waived the exit charges, so they have tacitly admitted that there's an error in their system. I just hope not too many others are affected - that's why I've posted this here

Ildhund

You're quite sure that the misplaced hour's usage was charged at the high rate? You can see that clearly on your account pages?

That pesky BST hour causes untold problems across the industry, and customer-facing energy companies handle it variously badly. I have taken OVO to task about it, in their case because their daily usage charts and tables show usage between 23:00 and midnight as taking place between midnight and 01:00 (an easy fudge to get out of the conundrum, because most customers' usage at that time of night is neither significant nor particularly variable). I picked up on two egregious examples: the first was similar to yours, where an EV owner's chart showed a charging spike during an hour when he knew the charger wasn't plugged in.

The other was more fun: a tenant returned to her cold flat one evening and switched the heating on. Checking her account later, she saw that someone had apparently used several kWh in the middle of the previous night while she was still overseas. She was all for taking the landlord to task until we were able to explain. She complained to the landlord anyway because of other unexplained consumption while she'd been away, and it turned out that communal (24hr!) lighting to the tune of 80W was being charged through her meter.

It makes no difference to billing as far as OVO are concerned, because bills are only raised against meter readings, so ToU charges aren't dependent on half-hourly usage data. The customer has to make sure that the switching times all match, of course.

ags1960

I am having the same problem. The problem only occurred  for me when I got notification in April 24 that I had been migrated to their new system. On their graphs for usage it either shows an hours worth of use at 11pm either on the previous day or at 11pm the same day. I have had this tariff from July 23 and it has worked as it should until they created this new account.  I only noticed as I have a solar+battery storage system, which means that I use very little Peak Rate electricity. From July 23 to April 24 I was averaging 13 kw a month Peak Rate electric. Between April 24 to August 24 my average is now 33kw per month.
I have been banging my head against a brick wall since April trying to get this sorted out.
I would urge anyone with an EV tariff who have been migrated to the new system, to very carefully check their meter and usage graphs  to see if any of the Off Peak Rate is being recorded in the Peak Rate readings.  In fact I would say the Money Savings Site should be highlighting this to the public, as I am sure the original post writer and me will not being the only ones overcharged.

ags1960

Qyburn said:

BobBlightman said:

Their new website allows you to see the half hour readings they take, and this demonstrates clearly that something is wrong. Although it shows off peak usage correctly from midnight to 4am, the remaining hour from 4am to 5am is allocated to 11pm to midnight on that same day when the car is not plugged in. This could be a British Summer Time issue, and although not as serious as previous problems when it was allocating all off peak usage to peak, it still means I'm being overcharged.

That sounds exactly like a GMT/BST issue. You're charging from 00:00 to 05:00 BST which equates to 23:00 to 04:00 GMT. Do the terms and condition make it clear whether the cheap hours follow local time or remain GMT? I think if not spelled out you'd be entitled to assume local time. A pragmatic immediate fix would be to charge from 01:00 to 04:00.

I would agree that it sounds like a GMT/BST timing problem.
As I have the same problem and have had the tariff since July23, I have gone through 2 time changes in the period before BG introduced me to their new account in late April 24. and had absolutely no problems with the timings when the different rates were being charged.
In my opinion this has been introduced by BG with their update to the new accounts.

ags1960

BobBlightman said:

I have an electric vehicle and have been on an EV tariff with British Gas which gives lower electricity costs between midnight and 5am

I have set up my car so it only charges on my home charger between these times, but I have had consistent and ongoing problems with British Gas recording this as peak usage.

For a whole month in March/April this year the reading that they have for off-peak usage didnt change at all, even though I charged the car multiple times in that period. After a lot of time convincing them that they were in error, they finally agreed and gave £120 in compensation.

After this I logged into the BG gas on almost a daily basis to record the readings they were taking. At this stage I think they were only providing 1 reading per day on the website. I noticed something was wrong at the end of June/early July and again after a lot of phone calls they agreed another £50 compensation.

Their new website allows you to see the half hour readings they take, and this demonstrates clearly that something is wrong. Although it shows off peak usage correctly from midnight to 4am, the remaining hour from 4am to 5am is allocated to 11pm to midnight on that same day when the car is not plugged in. This could be a British Summer Time issue, and although not as serious as previous problems when it was allocating all off peak usage to peak, it still means I'm being overcharged. I don't seem to be able to post links here, but if you want to see my proof, post a reply here and I'll try and send you a link


I have spent far too much time trying to sort this out with BG and am now switching to Octopus and will take my case to the Ombudsman.

If any of you are on an EV tariff with BG check the readings!

Can I ask,  the compensation you have received, is it for the cost of the electric overcharged or for the time and inconvenience that they have put you through.