British Gas billing (EV tariff)

Fedupevdriver

Hi - I wonder if anyone is facing the same issues that I am...?
I charge my car overnight on the BG EV10 tariff, which should give me a 7.9p kWh rate. Several times (I estimate around 10) I have woken up to see £10 plus on my home energy monitor. My Ohme charger app indicates that I have used around £2.50 - which is about right because I have a 60 kWh battery on the car and I add around 50% to (30kWh  x 7.9p = £2.37). 
When I've phoned/emailed/chatted to BG, I'm told my smart meter readings are correct and everything is fine. 
Furthermore, I haven't been able to check my energy usage on the BG website for about 2 years, despite repeated reporting this issue.
My last round of emails told me that 

1. check my energy usage on my bills (is this even possible? Do bills show how much you use on any given day when I charge my car?)
2. they showed me some calculations (where the maths was wrong and they said that 7.9p, or £0.079 to you and me, was £0.79)
3. the home energy monitor was showing the correct tariff (I took photos to show it isn't)
4. the home energy monitor is only an estimate anyway, and you shouldn't pay too much attention to it
5. everything is fine - my usage and billing is correct (my direct debit is over £150 /m when there are only 2 of us in the house, we have solar panels, are on the BG PeakSave scheme and have gas central heating.

Now if anyone out there can explain to me if I'm misunderstanding something or if my maths is wrong, I'd be very grateful. I've been communicating, if that's the right word, with BG for over a year, and am getting nowhere.
Does anyone know how to elevate this beyond the usual complaints department? Or should I know go to the Ombudsman?

Thanks
Fedupevdriver

MattMattMattUK

Fedupevdriver said:

Hi - I wonder if anyone is facing the same issues that I am...?
I charge my car overnight on the BG EV10 tariff, which should give me a 7.9p kWh rate. Several times (I estimate around 10) I have woken up to see £10 plus on my home energy monitor. 

If you are on a multi-rate tariff which is not E7 which you are and on top of that an EV tariff which are mostly classed as experimental, then the IHD becomes close to useless for cost purposes, although the usage figures should still be accurate. 

Fedupevdriver said:

 My Ohme charger app indicates that I have used around £2.50 - which is about right because I have a 60 kWh battery on the car and I add around 50% to (30kWh  x 7.9p = £2.37). 
When I've phoned/emailed/chatted to BG, I'm told my smart meter readings are correct and everything is fine. 

They they probably are, but it would be nice to be able to verify.

Fedupevdriver said:

Furthermore, I haven't been able to check my energy usage on the BG website for about 2 years, despite repeated reporting this issue.

Why are you still with them?

Fedupevdriver said:

My last round of emails told me that 

1. check my energy usage on my bills (is this even possible? Do bills show how much you use on any given day when I charge my car?)
2. they showed me some calculations (where the maths was wrong and they said that 7.9p, or £0.079 to you and me, was £0.79)
3. the home energy monitor was showing the correct tariff (I took photos to show it isn't)
4. the home energy monitor is only an estimate anyway, and you shouldn't pay too much attention to it
5. everything is fine - my usage and billing is correct (my direct debit is over £150 /m when there are only 2 of us in the house, we have solar panels, are on the BG PeakSave scheme and have gas central heating.

1. They do not show you on a per day basis, but they do show totals on each rate. 
2. Who is "they", and where were these calculations? Unless they were on a bill they do not really mean anything.
3. Ok
4. That is true and with multi-rate tariffs other than E7 they are not usually designed to cope with that. 
5. You need to calculate your usage, generation, export, import etc. but talking in £ not kWh is a bad start anyway. Your Ohme charger should give you your total EV usage, you can calculate what that costs, you can check your meter readings to see what your total usage is and then work out what the rest of your usage is and what it should cost. 

Fedupevdriver said:

Now if anyone out there can explain to me if I'm misunderstanding something or if my maths is wrong, I'd be very grateful. I've been communicating, if that's the right word, with BG for over a year, and am getting nowhere.

No one can because there is not enough information available to us.

Fedupevdriver said:

Does anyone know how to elevate this beyond the usual complaints department? Or should I know go to the Ombudsman?

It is unclear what you would actually want to take to the ombudsman, at the moment your complaint seems to be "I do not understand", which is not a complaint that the ombudsman will accept.

What you need to do is raise a formal complaint with BG about not having access to your online billing including thirty minute data, if they fail to resolve that within eight weeks then you can take that to the ombudsman. 

You also need to work out if your energy usage is accurate, using the meter readings and the Ohme charger readings. I am unsure if BG use thirty minute readings or a second register for EV tariffs, I think the former, but I am sure someone else can confirm.

born_again

In home device can not handle different priced tariffs when you look at then in monetary values.

OHME can handle this, as it does exactly this for me on Octopus.
Octopus also so 30 min sections on your bills, so you can see exactly how much you used in each period.

Time - Tariff unit kWh cost - kWh used - Actual cost. 

Fedupevdriver

Hi,
Thanks for your thoughts.
In the interest of brevity, the actual history of all of this is a lot more detailed than I wrote in my post.
Yes, I do have the readings from my Ohme charger, in kWh which I shared with BG. The "they" of which I speak is the customer complaints manager I've been in contact with. I don't charge my car every night, maybe on average twice a week. On the occasions when I don't charge the home energy monitor displays what you would expect - around £1. When I do charge it can show upwards of £10 being used (unreliability of home energy display noted). A complicating factor is that this doesn't happen every time. 
This is why I posted - can anyone explain if I'm doing anything wrong?
The reason I'm still with them is that I think it's easier for me to keep lines of communication open as a current customer (access to my account etc) rather than as a former customer. Clearly, if I don't feel that I trust the billing process, I will definitely seek another energy provider. I'm seeing first if anyone else has the same issue.
I think you're right in advising that I really need to try (I have, I assure you, tried many times) to get them to sort out the access to the thirty minute data as otherwise it's almost impossible for me to check and maybe disprove the accuracy of my bills.
Again, thanks for your advice.

born_again

TBH. If you are not happy, vote with your feet & switch to another supplier.

We run 2 EV's do not charge that often. Maybe a total of 8 times a month. Only one needs a regular charge for commuting.
We are on Intelligent Octopus 22:30 to 05:30 off peak @ 7p.
Bonus is it is a dynamic charging tariff. So yesterday we had a lot of washing, which required tumble dryer to be used. Plugged car in & got a daytime charge. So all the house & car charging was at 7p even in the daytime. So that was 11:20 to 13:30 (stopped charging once dryer was finished)
So I charge car as much based on heavy house usage, as much as car needing a charge. So very few overnight charges.

Fedupevdriver

Hi born_again,
thanks for your contribution. Yes, my Ohme charger tells me everything I need to know from their end of things - time of charge, time spent charging, estimated costs, energy used, and it has a price cap so it doesn't use anything above the 7.9p limit. I've shown this to British Gas, but I'm not convinced that they're really bothered.
When I've spoken to their advisors, they've all started the conversation with the phrase, "Yes, we've had a number of EV drivers expressing the same concerns" or words to that effect.
And I am definitely going to change provider, once I get a reasonable explanation from them.
I'll plod on!
Thanks.

vic_sf49

It won't fix your BG issue, but have a look at the Bright app*. It can show you your half hourly / hourly / weekly / monthly data, in a nice format.

I found it handy, as data wasn't updating in that app, so contacted their customer services, who told me my smart meter wasn't acting smart any more. BG couldn't sort that out past "we're looking into it", so I switched to Octopus, and it worked immediately.

*other apps are available, but I can't think of their names. Is Loop one too? I've used a couple, but prefer Bright.

Fedupevdriver

Hi vic_sf49

I will certainly look into the app and swithching supplier. Octopus is high on the list. I'm rolling dice one last time with BG to see if they'll consider a deeper investigation.
I'm not holding my breath.

T
hanks

Brunosausage

We are having the exact same problem. Our monitor in the house hasn’t worked for years, they wouldn’t give us a new one. My gas usage has been hit and miss on the BG app but luckily my electric graph was fine until 25/02/25. We went on an EV rate in November. When I got my December bill I queried it because it didn’t match the usage on the app. She looked into it thoroughly and everything was correct. I didn’t accept this and she looked into it thoroughly again and insisted everything was working. When my January bill came I noticed straight away that my night time reading hadn’t changed since 11/12/24. We were being charged the day rate all the time. She had looked into this thoroughly twice and didn’t notice it. Completely incompetent, it should have been obvious. She still said it was right so I phoned. Spoke to someone who said the timer switch wasn’t working and engineer was booked for 6/03/25. He came and changed the meters and I now get me gas usage on the app but no electric. Phoned again an they said the electric meter wasn’t changed just the gas. He did do both but the new electric one isn’t even sending reading to them. I’ve got access to my graph in the app so it’s easier for me to check because you can see how much has been used every 30 minutes. 

When the EV rate stopped being charged the clock on the meter went wrong but it was showing the EV rate between 12-5  in the app. even though we were being billed daytime rate. We were setting the car to come on after midnight and sometimes delaying the washer, dishwasher and tumble dryer to come on after midnight. Looking at the usage graph my usage was going up my more than 3.5kwh 9.00-9.30. The timer is wrong on the meter. I’ve worked out that i have been overcharged by about £270. I have given BG this information and compensation started at £30, then £50. Last Friday I gave them until 28th March to resolve or I will be going to the ombudsman. Yesterday £150 compensation was offered if I closed the complaint straight away. This is for the overcharge and compensation for my time. BG have never acknowledged that I have been billed incorrectly despite that my EV reading hasn’t changed since December. I have already had my electric off for a couple of hours when they change the meter that doesn’t work. Another couple of hours on Tuesday when they hopefully fit a meter that works. Our meter is set up to send readings every 30 minutes.  BG will tell you it’s on the website but I couldn’t find it. I would insist they provide you with this because I would say your clock is wrong and your car is starting to charge too early. BG staff have absolutely no idea what to do when something goes wrong. I think they think we are all as stupid as them and will accept what they say.