Problem with electricity supplier
Discussion
I posted this in the Homes section but got no reply, so am trying here.
At the beginning of October 2017 I changed my electricity supplier from E.ON to Together Energy (TE). This should have lead to an annual saving of approximately £500. I have a dual supply, one for normal electricity and one for the economy seven, although I don’t actually use any electricity on the economy seven supply.
On takeover I notified TE of the readings verbally, and they in turn notified E.ON. TE started to collect charges monthly via DD and E.ON levied their final bill (in paper form). TE have an online customer portal which is used to notify meter readings and access bills and balance.
This went fine for the first few months, TE emailed at the end of each month for a meter reading which I supplied via their online portal. But in January 2018 it all went pear shaped.
When I tried to notify readings one of the supplies had disappeared from their portal. I immediately notified them of this and they advised that they were upgrading their computer system and it should be back shortly. Every month they continued to request readings and every month they claimed the new system would be ready soon. I cannot now access any bills or balance online.
During this period the meters were read personally by one of their meter readers. I think about February 2018.
In May 2018 they asked for readings to be notified via email as they wished to review my DD. I duly supplied them. They claimed they could not understand them and could I send pictures of the readings. I replied that if they got their act together and updated their online portal I could notify them myself.
TE have now decided that they do not support my dual supply and will be transferring me back to E.ON. TE will refund me all payments made and E.ON will bill me for all use.
This is likely to cost me pretty much all the perceived saving, as I only use electricity as obviously a lot more in winter than summer.
Can they do this?
Can I insist they compensate me for the additional cost?
Any other suggestions?
At the beginning of October 2017 I changed my electricity supplier from E.ON to Together Energy (TE). This should have lead to an annual saving of approximately £500. I have a dual supply, one for normal electricity and one for the economy seven, although I don’t actually use any electricity on the economy seven supply.
On takeover I notified TE of the readings verbally, and they in turn notified E.ON. TE started to collect charges monthly via DD and E.ON levied their final bill (in paper form). TE have an online customer portal which is used to notify meter readings and access bills and balance.
This went fine for the first few months, TE emailed at the end of each month for a meter reading which I supplied via their online portal. But in January 2018 it all went pear shaped.
When I tried to notify readings one of the supplies had disappeared from their portal. I immediately notified them of this and they advised that they were upgrading their computer system and it should be back shortly. Every month they continued to request readings and every month they claimed the new system would be ready soon. I cannot now access any bills or balance online.
During this period the meters were read personally by one of their meter readers. I think about February 2018.
In May 2018 they asked for readings to be notified via email as they wished to review my DD. I duly supplied them. They claimed they could not understand them and could I send pictures of the readings. I replied that if they got their act together and updated their online portal I could notify them myself.
TE have now decided that they do not support my dual supply and will be transferring me back to E.ON. TE will refund me all payments made and E.ON will bill me for all use.
This is likely to cost me pretty much all the perceived saving, as I only use electricity as obviously a lot more in winter than summer.
Can they do this?
Can I insist they compensate me for the additional cost?
Any other suggestions?
KevinCamaroSS said:
If you had E7 why did you not use it for laundry, dishwasher etc.?
Our meter supports dual rate tariffs, as does our previous supplier, but when I did some reading before switching it suggests you need to be using circa 40% of your energy at the reduced tariff to see an overall benefit. I calculated we were using less than 5%. We have gas central heating so aside from running the A+ rated dishwasher exclusively at night, and only tumble drying towels at night (noisy plus not overly keen given the potential for nasty outcomes in the event of a fire) there seemed no way to make dual rate pay for us.Ref the OP's issue, if you've been supplied and paid a final bill with your old supplier you have most definitely moved. I can't see why your 'new' supplier would be trying to shove you back in their direction unless they are in financial difficulty? Might be worth a check on moneysavingexpert or similar and see if there's anything shown about this supplier.
If they are insisting you move, I'd simply sign up to switch to the most beneficial rate you can currently get and keep recording meter readings (I always take pics on my phone so I have clear dates and times of readings for reference) so you can supply these new readings via your new-new supplier to your new-old supplier to issue a final bill at the rate you agreed to pay.
Ours took ages to go through due to the meter being incorrectly recorded on the meter database as pre-payment rather than credit. Took 4 months to sort out, but our old supplier eventually held their hands up for the incompetence of their call centre staff and coughed up £150 to compensate for the loss of cheaper energy of not moving as quickly as we should've done.
I suspect they are suffering exactly the same problems of many smaller suppliers who were cheapest on uswitch.
The energy supply business is not simple, many of the 'off the shelf' IT systems are quite limited in scope meaning their capabilities are somewhat hampered. Combine these with the influx of customer due to being super cheap and neither the IT systems or the call centres can deal with the overall volume.
Doesn't help you right now, but may serve as a warning to others reading this.
Did you have an online account with E.On? If so my advice is to check it now see if anything has changed. I would also contact them to determine what they believe is going on - although you will need a bit of patience at the moment as they are going through a bit of a perfect storm resulting in call wait times being loads longer. My gut feel is they will be as surprised as you but I will see if a colleague who works in that area of the energy supply business can give me any more insight tomorrow.
The energy supply business is not simple, many of the 'off the shelf' IT systems are quite limited in scope meaning their capabilities are somewhat hampered. Combine these with the influx of customer due to being super cheap and neither the IT systems or the call centres can deal with the overall volume.
Doesn't help you right now, but may serve as a warning to others reading this.
Did you have an online account with E.On? If so my advice is to check it now see if anything has changed. I would also contact them to determine what they believe is going on - although you will need a bit of patience at the moment as they are going through a bit of a perfect storm resulting in call wait times being loads longer. My gut feel is they will be as surprised as you but I will see if a colleague who works in that area of the energy supply business can give me any more insight tomorrow.
Since the Big 6 suppliers have systems which are pretty much unfit for purpose I doubt whether any of these 'boutique' suppliers has a proper system that can cope with the requirements. I have worked on the inside of a Big 6 supplier, in the systems department and I was shocked how poor the system was.
KevinCamaroSS said:
Since the Big 6 suppliers have systems which are pretty much unfit for purpose I doubt whether any of these 'boutique' suppliers has a proper system that can cope with the requirements. I have worked on the inside of a Big 6 supplier, in the systems department and I was shocked how poor the system was.
But they did have before the upgrade.i think the most important thing here is to find out who was actually supplying your energy during that period. Your agreement and any charges that may or may not be due are with them. It's easy to work out gas, but electricity is more difficult - as i found out a few years back!
After 12 months of supplying energy and not billing you for it, the major electricity companies have an agreement that they won't charge you for it. It's not a right, and they need to actually know who they were supposed to be billing.
Cutting an incredibly long story short, i was given a full refund for 13 months worth of electricity by N Power, as they were billing me, but weren't the supplier. In turn, Scottish Power agreed to write off the charges, because they had all my details, but had chosen not to bill me for 3 years. It was an energy switch gone wrong, but not of my doing.
After 12 months of supplying energy and not billing you for it, the major electricity companies have an agreement that they won't charge you for it. It's not a right, and they need to actually know who they were supposed to be billing.
Cutting an incredibly long story short, i was given a full refund for 13 months worth of electricity by N Power, as they were billing me, but weren't the supplier. In turn, Scottish Power agreed to write off the charges, because they had all my details, but had chosen not to bill me for 3 years. It was an energy switch gone wrong, but not of my doing.
in an effort to find the voluntary code, i found out that this stopped being voluntary in April.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/energy/2018...
edit: just noticed it was October 2017 that this started. Apologies!
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/energy/2018...
edit: just noticed it was October 2017 that this started. Apologies!
Looks like they are going to do it.
"Thank you for your email and please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We are currently working through a backlog of emails. thank you very much for answering the questions and providing the photo of your meter. Upon of review of this information we do not support your meter type I am so sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you as a result your supply will need to go back to your old supplier where you are free to leave them and we will be refunding you all the payments made by you."
"Thank you for your email and please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We are currently working through a backlog of emails. thank you very much for answering the questions and providing the photo of your meter. Upon of review of this information we do not support your meter type I am so sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you as a result your supply will need to go back to your old supplier where you are free to leave them and we will be refunding you all the payments made by you."
If they follow through, ask your old supplier to calculate the difference between the rate they will bill you at for all the energy since you 'left' them, and what the 'new' supplier advertised rate was at the time you signed up. That, as a minimum, is what your 'new' supplier should be paying you in compensation for the hassle/lack of service. Plus something for the aggro of multiple calls - make sure it's logged as a complaint. If they reject then log with the regulator.
In the meantime check what your options are for moving now and crack on with organising that ASAP, but avoid the ones with dodgy feedback lol.
In the meantime check what your options are for moving now and crack on with organising that ASAP, but avoid the ones with dodgy feedback lol.
PurpleMoonlight said:
Looks like they are going to do it.
"Thank you for your email and please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We are currently working through a backlog of emails. thank you very much for answering the questions and providing the photo of your meter. Upon of review of this information we do not support your meter type I am so sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you as a result your supply will need to go back to your old supplier where you are free to leave them and we will be refunding you all the payments made by you."
You have no contract with the old supplier anymore, so you cannot go back to them just like that. What you can do is switch to another supplier at this point in time. Maybe your new supplier will agree to take on the supply back-dated to your original switch. You could potentially ask the original supplier to supply again, but, it cannot be dictated by your current supplier."Thank you for your email and please accept my apologies for the delay in getting back to you. We are currently working through a backlog of emails. thank you very much for answering the questions and providing the photo of your meter. Upon of review of this information we do not support your meter type I am so sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you as a result your supply will need to go back to your old supplier where you are free to leave them and we will be refunding you all the payments made by you."
This is a bit mad, they are even quoting normal and economy tariffs on their website.
http://togetherenergy.co.uk/terms/tariffs/
http://togetherenergy.co.uk/terms/tariffs/
We know what our usage is, put the figures into uswitch and other sites and all the commercial ones assumed the prices would go up by £800-1000, thus making their £750 saving claim valid, according to them.
It actually turned out cheaper working through the figures to stay with our current provider.
It actually turned out cheaper working through the figures to stay with our current provider.
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