Dodgy energy advice means you may miss the best deal

EVEN THE ENERGY OMBUDSMAN IS CONFUSED!

I’ve just spent 10 months fighting Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) concerning inaccurate tariff advice.

I am a negligible user of gas in the summer months and suspected as far back as 2004 that a No Standing Charge (NSC) tariff would be cheaper than my Standing Charge (SC) tariff.

In December 2010 I challenged SSE that it’s “Domestic Standard Nil Standing Charge” (NSC) tariff should result in a saving of £34/year (based on my 2009/2010 gas usage readings) relative to the comparable Standing Charge (SC) tariff option. SSE initially falsely claimed that the NSC tariff would result in a saving of only £1.70/year relative to the comparable SC tariff option. It took a further 5 emails and persistent pressure before SSE finally admitted, but only after I had emailed my calculations to them and referred them to the pricing conditions on their own website, that my calculated savings of £34/year were correct!

I then tried to get SSE to accept the fact that “the NSC tariff is always cheaper, or no more, than the comparable SC tariff”. This stems from the fact that the NSC kWh surcharge (currently 5.3 p/kWh) which applies to the first block of units used in any one quarter (currently 625 kWh) is invariably virtually identical (in this case NSC surcharge is 5.3p * 625kWh = £26.87/quarter) to the quarterly standing charge in the SC tariff (in this case £27.35/quarter).

Put simply, any consumer who uses less than the quarterly block allowance will make a saving whilst any consumer using more than the quarterly block allowance will be no worse off. The NSC tariff is good news for consumers with low summer gas usage (eg. people with energy efficient houses, people with solar water heaters, etc) but bad news for the utilities as they have to read the meter every 3 months and will loose some revenue.

SSE persistently denied that my conclusions were correct but has failed, despite repeated challenges, to provide a calculated example of where my findings are in error.

In January 2011 I took this case to the Energy Ombudsman who has found in my favour on virtually all counts and requested SSE to pay compensation. HOWEVER, to my surprise, the Energy Ombudsman has failed to insist that SSE substantiate its claim that my findings regards the relative cost of NSC and SC tariffs are in error.

After 10 months, approximately 60 emails and many hours spent on the phone I am left to conclude;

– SSE staff (even senior customer services staff) appear to be incapable of understanding their own tariff structures and providing accurate tariff advice to customers.

– queries addressed to SSE are frequently met with replies that are either; not relevant to the question, evasive, contradictory or implausible.

– the Energy Ombudsman service is slow, ineffective at addressing the core issues of complex complaints and too willing to accept unsubstantiated claims made by the utilities.

– the compensation payments offered are derisory relative to the time and costs experienced by consumers and are totally inadequate to prevent the utilities from repeating their misleading and inaccurate claims.

– I remain confused whether my understanding of NSC tariffs is correct or not!

Has anybody else had similar problems with SSE?

‘But most worrying was the fact that in nearly a third of the 72 calls we made energy suppliers didn’t tell us about their own cheapest deal – despite the fact that we asked for this specifically’

This statement clouds the results- energy suppliers are different companies- Scottish Power scored 11/12 3 others scored 10/12 so out of the same results you could say the following statement:
‘The Majority of the big six scored 10/12 or above’

This study was really silly- its just a bandwagon study- really poor work Which?