Tomato Energy Lifestyle Tariff... Smart Meter related question

lohr500

Hi @Steve139

To answer a couple of your questions that haven't been answered already.

Firstly, the MyWatts website is part of Tomato Energy. It's the online platform they use to show your usage, display your bills and where you can enter your electricity meter readings.

Many of the Directors who are involved with Tomato Energy are also involved with MyWatts.
Do a search on Companies House website and you will see the linkage.

Although there is a mobile phone image on the website, there currently isn't a phone App for MyWatts, just the website.

After you sign up with Tomato Energy, you get logon details for MyWatts and your data starts displaying.

In the early days after Tomato launched their Lifestyle tariff (August/September/October) it could take weeks for any usage data to appear on MyWatts. I understand data is now available within hours or a few days of sign up.

Also in the early days, when the data did appear it was sometimes completely incorrect and for many customers, including myself, the half hourly kWh usage data was 30 minutes out of line with reality. As a result, the calculated costs were also incorrect.

When I escalated the error to Tomato, I was assured that MyWatts was a work in progress and that the half hour error would not be carried forward into the monthly billing.


This leads on to my second answer, which is why I left Tomato.

Despite the assurance that the half hourly error would not be carried forward to billing, my September and October bills were both incorrect. 

I exchanged numerous emails with Tomato and had several lengthy phone conversations with their senior customer service manager explaining the root cause of their error. I even offered to be a guinea pig to test a trial bill for them in September to help them make sure they had ironed out the error.

They didn't take me up on the offer to test their billing in September and when the incorrect bill arrived they said they would block the Direct Debit payment until the error was resolved.That never happened and they took the incorrect amount anyway.

Roll on to the October bill which was also incorrect. Again after I spoke with them, they assured me that payment for October would be stopped until the bill had been recalculated. It wasn't and again they took the incorrect amount.

After yet more emails and phone calls, they agreed to credit me for the overcharges based on my own calculations and offered £30 compensation for the inconvenience.

At that point I decided they were not a company I wanted to do business with so I switched to another supplier.
Initially they blocked my transfer request on the basis of unpaid debt for the November bill which I had yet to receive,  contravening the Ofgem rules for switching. After yet another phone call the block was lifted and I switched away in mid November.

When the November bill finally appeared on MyWatts, the value was correct, but there was no credit for the September and October overcharge and no sign of the £30 compensation.  

I have filed a complaint with the Ombudsman and await a decision.


There are just too many issues going on in my opinion to choose Tomato:

The unit costs and standing charge for several of the Lifestyle tariffs are incredibly low compared to the competition, which in itself could be seen as a red flag.

The errors they have made on the billing are unacceptable and in my opinion demonstrate a business that is trying to run before it can walk.

Their onboarding of customers with SMES1 meters, only to then find out they can't read the half hourly data is for me another red flag. If they had carried out adequate beta testing before launching, they would have recognised the problem.

They have issued different quotes for the same tariffs, some with VAT some without. This is causing customer confusion.

They launched their equivalent to Octopus' Agile tariff and as far as I am aware have so far been unable to explain clearly to customers how the prices will be calculated so customers can plan their load shifting to optimise their usage in advance. 

They appear to be on the "Naughty Boy" step with Elexion who as I understand it, play a key part in the energy billing process. https://www.elexon.co.uk/article/public-notification-of-tomato-energy-limiteds-lack-of-progress-against-its-efr-milestones/

It is possible that Tomato will resolve their challenges and turn out to be a great low cost supplier. 

For those who are sticking with them, I guess the worst that can happen if they fail is that customers get moved to a supplier of last resort (SOLR). Because of our very high off-peak usage, I wasn't prepared to find myself in that scenario and be stuck with a single rate tariff for days or weeks until I could move again.. 


If you are happy to take the risk with Tomato and don't worry about the prospect of possibly ending up with a SOLR then there is no denying the unit costs are very attractive.

And because the payment is Direct Debit based on actual bills rather than a monthly budget plan, your financial exposure is minimal.

tlcgrantham

When you go live with Tomato you will be able to log in to myWatts it’s not an app but it is their equivalent of an online account. You can see your current and historical costs and use, tariff details and meter readings. We use 5000kwh per year with no EV solar, battery and am currently averaging less than 15p per kWh on the basic Lifestyle tariff. Please read through the other thread first before you sign up as some report problems. I’ve not had any and my bills so far have been correct.

JohnPo

Steve139 said:

@QrizB... it's the builder Miller homes, all the their properties up here in the NW seem to be built this way, it costs them less to build. I will look into the storage heaters but suspect right night it's not something I can afford to do ie swap all the wall convector heaters with storage heaters, so focusing on switching suppliers for the tie being.

By the way do you use this myWatts thingy and do you have an app link for it?... I found the webpage below but not app itself on google play.



 

Nope - no app - just a website - it works on my phone in browser - but that is it.  It does however update frequently during the day compared with Octopus who I was with previously - actually more reliable in terms of data updates (i.e. no missing data) than the bright app that I also have.

Spoonie_Turtle

Steve139 said:

@Spoonie_Turtle... I'm in my 60's, retired and frankly not very technically minded, please explain what you mean by power draw screen and how can I keep track of the daily usage cost if the IHD is not updated with the current correct Unit Rate?

Also, I assume Bills generated by Tomato Energy will show a breakdown of usage during each time period when calculating the total bill due?

Bills, yes, I'm not sure if it's been specifically addressed as I've only skimmed the rest of the thread but in theory (Tomato incompetence notwithstanding) you should be billed based on usage data.  The IHD is not used for billing at all which is why it's not seen as a massive problem if it's incorrect.

For changing the screens, along the bottom of your IHD you might have different symbols which are also touch-screen activated.  I'm afraid you'll have to either just try for yourself or look up online how to do it (or post a photo of your IHD on here and others might be able to help).  But it'll be the screen that shows something like 562W or 1.57kW, and should change within about 10 secs of turning on the kettle or another appliance.

If the IHD won't be made accurate for cost, your account with Tomato should show accumulated cost data.  Again, if they're competent enough for that.  (Sorry, not really sure how else to put it.)  I didn't know the Bright app allowed a custom tariff so I've learned something new today!

masonic

lohr500 said:

At that point I decided they were not a company I wanted to do business with so I switched to another supplier.
Initially they blocked my transfer request on the basis of unpaid debt for the November bill which I had yet to receive,  contravening the Ofgem rules for switching. After yet another phone call the block was lifted and I switched away in mid November.

When the November bill finally appeared on MyWatts, the value was correct, but there was no credit for the September and October overcharge and no sign of the £30 compensation. 

@lohr500 , I'm curious, when your final bill arrived, did they have TOU data right up to midnight of the switch date? Suggests they were able to pull up to the minute data right up to the changeover if so, which I didn't think was possible. Or did they use the change of supply reading to calculate the last part of the day?

lohr500

masonic said:

@lohr500 , I'm curious, when your final bill arrived, did they have TOU data right up to midnight of the switch date? Suggests they were able to pull up to the minute data right up to the changeover if so, which I didn't think was possible. Or did they use the change of supply reading to calculate the last part of the day?

Interestingly, the last half hourly usage entry in the TE November billing data was for the period 20:30 to 21:00 on the 11th November.After that the matrix is blank for the rest of the day. The final TE bill was based on the readings in the matrix, so they made no estimate for the missing usage from 21:00 to 00:00.

UW picked up their 1st set of readings from the smart meter on the 12th November.

I didn't stay up to capture the meter readings at midnight on the 11th, but at around 20:30 on the 11th November the combined meter reading from registers 1 & 2 was 69596.

The opening readings from UW total to 69604.

So 8kWh of usage between my manually captured reading at circa 20:30 on the 11th, to the UW opening reading on the 12th.

Bright shows 2.8kWh usage between 20:30 and midnight on the 11th.
But a further 2.39kWh 00:00 to 00:30 and 2.89kWh 00:30 to 01:00.on the 12th.

I guess if the opening UW readings weren't taken exactly at 00:00, then this would explain the difference.
Or perhaps there is some industry formula applied to estimate the gap which gets applied to the new suppliers 1st reading?

The difference is negligible so I won't lose any sleep over it 

Qyburn

Steve139 said: 

I will look into the storage heaters but suspect right night it's not something I can afford to do ie swap all the wall convector heaters with storage heaters, so focusing on switching suppliers for the tie being.

You could do them one at a time starting with the most used areas. If you choose models with their own timing, and don't exceed the rating of the existing connections, you won't need any wiring changes.

Steve139

Many thanks to all for your responses... these MSE forums really are brilliant! you learn so much

I'm going to take the plunge and give TE a go keeping my fingers & toes crossed that I don't end up spending all my time on the phone to them!... but I need a quick way to reduce my bills, without for the time being spending money on some storage heaters. I got lumbered with EON Next when my previous energy supplier went bust and I've been waiting for an opportunity to switch suppliers.

Ildhund

lohr500 said:
Or perhaps there is some industry formula applied to estimate the gap which gets applied to the new suppliers 1st reading?
  

There sure is, but it's tortuous reading unless you're an industrial lawyer (and probably even if you are): 275_05_A_Section_S_Annex_S-2_v22.0_v0.10.pdf

Actually, Octopus do a pretty good job of explaining the process that even I could understand: The secret life of an opening meter reading | Octopus Energy

lohr500

Ildhund said:

lohr500 said:
Or perhaps there is some industry formula applied to estimate the gap which gets applied to the new suppliers 1st reading?
  

There sure is, but it's tortuous reading unless you're an industrial lawyer (and probably even if you are): 275_05_A_Section_S_Annex_S-2_v22.0_v0.10.pdf

Actually, Octopus do a pretty good job of explaining the process that even I could understand: The secret life of an opening meter reading | Octopus Energy

Thanks for that. The Octopus explanation makes sense.
I think in my case, the closing and opening readings could be out by around 8kWh.
At 5p a unit, I'm not too concerned. I'm just happy I am no longer with Tomato!