Bloody EDF

[Bob Minchin]

I signed up with EDF about 4 months ago and using my previous consumption data for gas and leccy, they came up with £90 per month on a fixed to Feb 2015 tariff. I was happy with this.

Now having read the meters, they have produced a bill showing I've paid them £360 (as agreed) and used £136 of energy & std charges. So I'm £224 in credit.

However they are now saying based on this (statistically unrepresentative amount of information) they are putting up my DD to £118!!!!

HTF do they get away with behaving like this??

I've sent them a snotty email insisting on returning my DD to £90 but yet to hear back from them.

[Dave Liquorice]

Last quarter was summer and quite warm particularly until very recently. Presumably you have gas CH, so that won't have been on. The DD averages the eventual total bill over the year, so you do build up a big credit in the summer and spend it over the winter.

People don't complain or are incapable of doing the maths. Have you bills for the last year or two show average annual consumption? Do the maths and ring 'em up, presented with information that shows that £90/month will cover use they normally agree.

[Nightjar]

I've had a few issues with EDF over their DD amounts. At one point they decided that £1 a month was a proper amount for me to be paying. After some emails, I found out that they introduced a new computer system two years ago (when the £1 a month was calculated) and that they now have a dedicated team trying to sort out the problems it has caused for customers.

Colin Bignell

[Mark]

Often they set the initial DD low to entice you in, but this is obviously not happening in your case.

Because they can. They're in it to make money not be nice to customers ;-)

You could swap to OVO. They pay 'interest' on credit balances.

[PeterC]

Worrying. I've just switched to EDF for the 4-year fix. I used the highest years that I have recorded (added the top Summer and Winter halves) and it was about 2.5% more than Ebico's rate /before/ Ebico's ~10% increase next month. I abandoned EDF once but hoped that it'd learnt something over the years.

[Edgar]

We had a long fight with EDF over this. They "lost" the history of our account by closing it (Presumably at the change of computers.) and created a new account using the last reading of the previous year together with a lot of calculated intermediate points. I can't remember all the details and am not going through all that again.

It took ages to convince them that their new account was wrong. Email after email showing our records of their lost account eventually put things right. But it took a great deal of perseverance to continue. They kept saying "Our figures are correct." and I kept saying "No they aren't." or words to that effect. Fortunately I'm one of those fools who keeps all the old statements and checks the account before paying. I won't do DD.

There was a meter change and a tariff change during all this together with some price changes which made it very important that the intermediate readings had to be taken into account.

I was shocked at the ease with which they could manipulate figures without proper documentation. I wonder who audits their billing accounts. There can't be much of an audit trail. And if there is it's very unlikely to agree with my Invoices except at the beginning and end.

Edgar

[Brian Gaff]

Left hand right hand. they have a tendency for this sort of thing. In common with many companies some people there seem to not tell others what has been going on I understand I had an interesting chat with aperson by the name of, wait for it.. Scattergood-Heath who promised not to much me about. Quite right they won't I've been on blue for some time now and i only pay when I get a bill of real readings not estimated or anything like that. Brian

[Michael Chare]

I used Scottish Power. They also used to recalculate monthly DD amounts. In general if I rang them up to change the amount they did so.

[Terry Fields]

I understand it's 3% annual rate - not bad at today's interest rates - paid monthly as a discount.

[Mark]

It's better than any savings rate I can get nowadays[1]

[1] I am not including pointless deals like a week at 4% (or anything from Santander).

[Bob Minchin]

This morning I have eventually had a response from EDF

They have calculated my predicted energy consumption through to the next review next April and the correct DD payment should be £96 per month. Rather than the 'automatic' figure of £118. A change of £6 rather than £28 PCM So it certainly pays to query DD hikes.

I still don't believe their predictions which show twice as much electricity spend as gas when we have all gas heating but it is easier to give in and accept £6 change until the review in April.

[alan]

Don't they have a facility where you give them your own readings each month and the (variable) DD bill is only based on what you use to date?

[Bob Minchin]

I've not come across that scheme. I believe their financial model is to conduct a review at the end of the heating season and set the DD at 1/12 of the spend in the preceding 12 months. They charge this throughout the summer and build up a surplus which gets set against the winter bills. They benefit from the your cash but they do offer a 6% discount on each bill provided you are always in credit. It appears that until challenged, they use whatever estimation method that is marginally justifiable, to get the DD estimate as high as possible. It is this latter process that gets my goat!