Tomato Energy - No data, no bills

wilson2810

I'm hoping i'm a lucky one and wont ever have to pay for my usage but i suspect this wont be my luck... 

I switched over 31 August 24 - i've managed to see around a weeks worth of usage from then to now, other than that its 'your data will be available soon'. 

My DD has been active since the swtich being live - i've called them more times than i care to admit as i'm STILL in my 3rd month, awaiting a bill! 

This is getting ridiculous. I can hardly say i want a large bill landing with me weeks before Christmas! 

cannugec5

When you say your Direct Debit is ‘active’ do you mean they are or are not collecting any money from your bank? You don’t need to be billed for a DD to be collected. 

If they are not taking the money I would suggest you put the monthly amount into a designated savings pot so it is ready, with a little additional interest, when they do catch up. 

Presumably you can read the meter ON THE METER rather than any app to determine actual usage. This will give you the required information as to whether your savings pot is sufficient. 

lohr500

I am also with TE and also saw a delay with my 1st bill. 
And when it did arrive it was incorrect due to TE not correctly assigning the actual half hourly usage to the correct billing timeslots.I am still awaiting a credit for the overcharge.
Also, for some customers, including myself, even when the MyWatts website does display data, it is incorrect both on time of use and on the unit cost rate applied to some timeslots.

If you haven't done so already, if you can, I would recommend you install the free Bright energy app on your mobile phone. Once you have done this, you can set up the Tomato Energy costs for the various timeslots in the App and it will give you a pretty close indication of what your monthly bills should be.

As cannugec5 suggests, at least you could then ringfence an amount of cash to cover the expected bills.

Veteransaver

I've just had my first bill (covered about first 6 weeks)
However it isn't really correct - not badly out and I've confirmed my smart meter usage from Bright and it's fairly close but 2 issues with it having checked my
1. I'm on the wrong tariff - this is partly my fault as I initially signed up on the wrong tariff ( I emailed twice to ask to change and had no response so phoned them and they confirmed i was changed). So I should be on the slightly cheaper and 6 hour off peak EV tariff.
2. More concerning is that the offpeak rates seem to be half an hour out. The offpeak period is supposed to be 1-6am - but it looks like it starts at 00:30 and ends at 05:30. The csv data download shows the slots but it must be the end time shown for each column, ie 01:00 is actually 00:30-01:00 but is being billed at the offpeak eg c5p rate. There are still 5 hours of offpeak, but ending at 05:30 instead of 06:00. Looking at various forums this looks to be a systemwide issue so is going to be interesting and likely to cause a few complaints!

tlcgrantham

Veteran Saver.       Thanks for posting your experience very helpful. Can you accept the errors as they are and adjust your usage?    

Veteransaver

tlcgrantham said:

Veteran Saver.       Thanks for posting your experience very helpful. Can you accept the errors as they are and adjust your usage?    

Well yes I can accept it re the slots times being half hour out, but what if they decide to correct them?! They could be forced to correct them as my contract stipulates them explicitly, and they are clearly wrong.
If they correct them to what the contract states and I've started charging half hour too early then that will actually be more detrimental as every charge session will have the first half hour charged at peak rate. Being charged peak in last half hour slot at the end of the charge session as I have on my latest bill (I've scheduled the car to finish charging at 6am) isn't really an issue as more often than not it's finished charging anyway before 05:30.
I do want them to change the tariff to the EV version though for 6 hours off peak and slightly cheaper rates, it's still around £10 a month saving, but having said that Tomato energy are very cheap so it's not like a can go elsewhere for less.
So at the moment I'm just charging 1am - 5.30am - that's generally enough for me - then I'm covered both ways. But getting any kind of response out of Tomato energy is proving quite painful. I managed to speak to someone there today and quite honestly the customer service was awful. They couldn't even find me on the system, I think because the chap seemed incapable of listening to my account number / address and entering it into the computer correctly - it was honestly the most painful conversation I've ever had, he had clearly had no training whatsoever.
I feel they are likely to go bust sooner or later (because they are so cheap- my average unit price is around 11p a kWh) or be closed down by the regulator, there are going to be so many complaints and they can't even deal with basic customer queries properly, I can't imagine their complaints procedure is going to be very robust. I thought Octopus were bad, although I did get compensation out of them when I took them to the Ombudsman for billing errors, and then got another £30 from Octopus the other day as they still hadn't given me a final bill some 6 weeks after I left.

tlcgrantham

Thanks for your reply. I’ve no EV but on 1:00am-6:00am 5pkwh tariff but only relying on 1:00am-5:30am actually being cheap rate. This still works for me till they sort it out.  I’ve no intention of contacting CS for similar reasons to you.

Veteransaver

tlcgrantham said:

Thanks for your reply. I’ve no EV but on 1:00am-6:00am 5pkwh tariff but only relying on 1:00am-5:30am actually being cheap rate. This still works for me till they sort it out.  I’ve no intention of contacting CS for similar reasons to you.

Are you just using the off peak for immersion / washing etc? Or storage heating too? Often storage heaters do need a bit more than 4.5hours to reach full capacity, but probably acceptable unless it gets really really cold!

tlcgrantham

Veteransaver said:

tlcgrantham said:

Thanks for your reply. I’ve no EV but on 1:00am-6:00am 5pkwh tariff but only relying on 1:00am-5:30am actually being cheap rate. This still works for me till they sort it out.  I’ve no intention of contacting CS for similar reasons to you.

Are you just using the off peak for immersion / washing etc? Or storage heating too? Often storage heaters do need a bit more than 4.5hours to reach full capacity, but probably acceptable unless it gets really really cold!

No immersion or storage heaters but I do use electrical convector heaters in winter instead of gas central heating as well as laundry and dehumidifiers. 

Grahamnoelbutler

I signed up with Tomato on 1st January. As I’m not seeing any usage data I’ve asked on a couple of occasions what’s happening.

I’ve learned today that they have a problem remotely accessing my meter (a new one) and are not receiving data. It could be weeks or months before they have a fix (her words). 

I’ve been assured that none of the usage data will be lost and that there’ll be a discount applied to bills in recognition of the inconvenience.

Can’t say I’m impressed as no issues were mentioned when I joined. 

I’ve cancelled my DD so that payment will not be automatic. If they fix the issue - then I’ll reinstate it.

tlcgrantham

Cancelling the DD might not be wise it could put you in default and affect your credit rating. It’s also pointless as Tomato only take payment after a bill which they can’t issue till the accessing your meter problem is resolved. If they delay billing you by 3 months they will give you a discount. Is your “New Meter” a smets 2 meter as the problems they have is usually with earlier smets 1 meters? By the way which Tariff are you on? They now restrict new customers choice of tariffs if they have older smart meters.