Wonder if someone can please tell me who I can (should) complaint to regarding houshold electricty bills errors - once the suppliers themselves have failed to respond with a satisfactory answer! Apart from huge errors the latest thing is not to send me quarterly bills - the last bill I had was for 8 month usage - oh,. and they have the VAT rate wrong!
Ofgem, Energy watch perhaps? Energy Watch links seem to end up telling me how wonderful they are and then point at Uchange!!!! (to what, I wonder?)
I'm not optimistic that any will help but would like to try anyway.
Are you sure you were looking at the correct website?
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are very usefull in sorting problems, so of course later this year the government will be scrapping them and replacing them with an unknown untested replacement.
I used Energywatch when I needed to complain about Scottish Power. I would advise doing it in writing, if only because ( in my experience ) no-one will believe the gross incompetence the energy companies are capable of unless you have it there on the paper.
I had some success with Energywatch ( £500 off the bill and a no-interest payment plan for the remainder spread out over as many years as it took SP to bill me ), but I had to work them hard. That said, they were helpful and communicative. There are situations in which they can only 'recommend' the energy companies take certain action - you might find a legal approach has more teeth.
In any event you'll have to start with Energywatch or you'll just be referred back to them at a later date.
On Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:59:07 +0100 someone who may be dave wrote this:-
I send in the correct readings and get a correct bill. Despite having a number of problems with previous suppliers, that bit was easy. The incompetence and arrogance was always to do with other parts of the administrative process.
Will not be interested.
They are variable. At times they are the PR arm of the company concerned. At other times they are useful.
Ah that's interesting. It also explains why the phoned me (yes THEY phone ME) back and while never considering apologizing they sent me paperwork to reclaim the vat. What happened was that (for some) reason) they decided my house was a commercial premises and charged be
17.5% vat. This only kicked in above some usage level and so I didn't notice this occasional excess charge. They did repay it - using a method that was so gobbledegook I'm not sure whether it's right or wrong. They then gave me a rebate for the past 4(I think) years! However the following month they grabbed it all back with a huge bill
- god knows how - it all gets so complicated. Maybe just me but I do get the feeling they use and change billing schemes so often as a tool to confuse the consumer. It makes it so difficult to keep track of, unless one sits down for hours working out what the hell they are doing.
A second problem I have with them is that we are on a very old tariff
- that I think - they want to get us off. However it would mean us changing all our storage heaters (I know I know). But they still work fine and have no faults. Problem is the elec co are escalating the
*standing charge* for this tariff - at the last count it was 25% *in one step* ie from one quarter to the next. I just can't see how they can justify such a rise in the SC for that tariff while the main one (everything but the heaters) is only about 2%.
I have written and phoned about the above but get fobbed off all the time.
I also haven't had a bill since last December!
Thanks for the positive advice folks - much appreciated and I'm off to look at that Energywatch link.
Yeah, they call them "protected tariffs" - let me guess, something along the lines of Option 14 ? (where you get daytime "cheap" rate as well as of an evening)
I had Option 14 for a while - something to be wary of, and might be worth checking out is that they're actually reading the meter correctly, especially if your meter is "digital" - they have a range of readings, and IIRC ours was something like display 1 for peak and 4 for off-peak load - this was directly opposite to Economy 7, so they were reading the off-peak as though it was peak usage and vice-versa.
This was despite working for them, and being able to tell them what there the readers were going wrong... I don't think I got a correct bill for 4 years !
You may find that replacing them with panel heaters gives you more responsive heating if you do need to change them eventually...
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