Fuse Energy & OFTM Reviews please ⚡️

Foxy16

Many thanks to all who answered my query on the CV with fuse greatly appreciated. I am so relieved that they haven't greatly overcharged. So do not need to contact them about this, not bothered by a few pence here and there.

Ildhund

Gas hasn't been invented yet where I live, so I've no personal experience to go by. However, this old pedant feels the urge to interject …

Ofgem don't lay down the rules for calculating gas bills. How to convert from metered volume to units of energy is laid down in excruciating detail by the (then) Secretary of State in the Gas (Calculation of Thermal Energy) Regulations 1996, and explained for the average gas customer by the OPSS here: Gas meter readings and bill calculation.

These regulations entered into force long before smart meters were introduced - they'll celebrate their 30th birthday in a couple of weeks' time. The idea of calculating costs daily was probably fanciful back then, but it's of course a realistic possibility now. I don't know if any supplier is actually doing it, but I suspect that OVO's 'live billing' system works out costs for gas daily just like it does for electricity. CVs are determined and reported for a day at a time, so it would seem logical to use each day's value rather than some artificial average over a longer period. Daily costs will be subject to revision as CVs are finalized, but it's unlikely that the sum of a month's daily costs will be identical to a month's costs worked out using an average CV. Perhaps someone with daily meter readings could do a sample comparison.

The daily cost calculation has one disadvantage: it isn't really possible to quote the CV used to calculate a monthly bill without showing acres of sums which most people would both disdain and ignore. This has been known to cause severe friction for customers who expect to see a CV on their gas bill.

gpman

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81874123#Comment_81874123

Thank you for the links. Information is power and I have added these to my arsenal of resources.

But perhaps this is an appropriate time to remind ourselves of a link kindly provided by @molerat about 3 months ago in this very thread; it was issued by Ofgem in 2014 addressed to all domestic gas suppliers and other interested parties.

consumer CV billing

If anyone has any information that would appear to supersede the guidance given then, that would be particularly interesting to hear about.

sheffieldeagle

Anyone having problems logging in to their fuse accounts. Both mine and my dad's are back to new account status and the email link isn't working. Has Martin broken them?

Cheers

The_Green_Hornet

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81877154#Comment_81877154

All working OK for me.

sheffieldeagle

Thanks I will try again.

sheffieldeagle

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81877308#Comment_81877308

All ok now but had to do a new login.

SnowTiger

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81877327#Comment_81877327

Good. I switched from Home Energy to Fuse Energy a few days ago.

I think it will cost me about the same.

A problem I had with Home Energy is that they didn't read my meters every few hours.

brewerdave

Actually downloaded the last 6 month's worth of Fuse bills today to get the latest gas statements.

Using the CV values they list on each months bill, and calculating a weighted average CV I've "underpaid" by ~ £9 but no sign on these statements ,of any corrections for earlier months.

gpman

It's been almost 2 weeks since I last posted here, so I thought it maybe worthwhile updating this thread on what I have gleaned so far.

I've been communicating with Fuse via email as I didn't think the issues were really something that could be easily or clearly communicated by chat, nor that the complexity of some of the issues I raised would be able to be immediately addressed by front line customer support anyway.

So it took a few days to receive any response to my first email, but now I seem to have an active, open case, I have found response times to be much, much quicker; we're talking now typically in terms of hours not days.

I would also say I was impressed that the front line response staff immediately understood all the issues I raised, even if they could not answer them directly. That is usually more than half the battle with most energy suppliers nowadays because you cannot even hope to resolve a complaint without first understanding the complaint. Questions that cannot be addressed immediately by Fuse are escalated internally for further review & investigation. They then get back to you typically within about a day.

Fuse certainly do things differently to almost any other business. They are primarily a digitally based energy supplier and hence appear to place a lot of reliance on what their computer says. The biggest issue with this I think that may possibly result in their eventual undoing is that, as @molerat explained previously, Fuse does not actually produce/issue any invoices (bills).
The bill is generated from the latest data the computer holds whenever you download it. So it can and does change depending on when you download it. (because the data or the software coding has been changed). Where this really could become a huge issue is that Fuse Energy do not have any copies of any bills (because they don't produce them), they can only generate them based upon whatever data the computer holds at the time.
I've never known any business before that does not produce invoices (or at least detailed receipts) and retain them. How do you even begin to manage credit control without invoices? But then I would not claim to be fully up to speed with digital technology. Even the idea of MTD (Making Tax Digital) worries me. At the moment I get by with using my good, old fashioned, tried & tested methods and use bridging software, but for how much longer?

Back on topic, on more positive notes, Fuse Energy voluntarily informed me (i.e. I didn't even question them about this) that they were now aware of Ofgem guidelines to truncate CV to 1dp.
(This has thrown me off my plan of attack a little bit, but I can adapt. Plans should be live documents, as one of my old bosses always used to say)
So it would appear that @molerat has been listened to and understood by Fuse Energy , at least regarding this issue. But unfortunately, it does appear to me (and I believe @molerate has found similarly ) that Fuse Energy have not correctly implemented this guideline. It would appear to me that their downloaded bills show the CV rounded (not truncated) to 1dp. Furthermore, based upon other explanations I have received so far from Fuse Energy, it is clear that the underlying value being used for calculation purposes is currently neither rounded nor truncated to 1dp.
As I had anticipated, Fuse Energy did admit any/all values (about anything) shown on the downloaded bill may be rounded to various levels of decimal places for ease of reading, but that the computer uses many more decimal places in its calculation. That was their explanation offered as to why some mathematical calculations may appear incorrect.
(I'm still trying to get more clarity/detail on this, as this is clearly not the full story)

They have also explained how they calculate the VAT shown of the bills, and as I had anticipated, there is indeed a method behind their apparent madness.
Unlike other energy suppliers (that's a term I see I am going to use a lot with Fuse Energy), what they do is calculate the amount of VAT on each individual element of the tariff. i.e. on the unit rate and the SC. They round this to 3dp.

e.g. say your unit rate is 19.5p/kWh incl vat, that includes £0.0092857... of vat. They round that to £0.009

They then multiply the rounded vat element of each constituent part by the appropriate quantity. e.g. 1000kWh or 30 days.

Then they add them together, and that is the value of VAT you see on the downloaded bill. (rounded to the nearest penny)

What I would advise to any other Fuse customer (or even potential customer), is if you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact Fuse. You will get a response, and it will usually be a full explanation, not a 'tell them anything/tell them what they want to hear' response so that they can tick the box that they have responded and move quickly onto the next customer which I find is what many other energy suppliers tend to do. Just be prepared to accept that Fuse do things differently, things that may initially seem totally alien or even wrong. But it most instances, there does appear to be a method behind their apparent madness.

I think I'm getting there. More updates later.