[meldrewreborn]

I fully expect that Eon Next will require proof of missbilling and in any event would you have faith in them getting the corrective action correct. So customers in this situation should download their half hourly data and work out for themselves how much they’ve been overcharged. Although in these circumstances an argument could be made for requiring Eon Next to provide that data in an easy to understand format - it is after all their error.

[meldrewreborn]

Originally Posted by geoffers

@RobJM - well, as I expect most E7 users know but the rest of us don't... It looks like there's an ALCS calendar in the meter which controls the circuit switching.

/p9

Most customers on E7 wouldn’t have a clue about ALCS switching - why should they? They’re put on a tariff that sets out their pricing at set times daily, and then expect their supplier to bill them properly. There are some (very few) people like us forum members who recognise when something is wrong and delve into the weeds to find out why.

if should be automatic that putting a customer onto an e7 tariff ALSO requires a resetting of the ALCS timing - that’s a straightforward policy to adopt.

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by meldrewreborn

Most customers on E7 wouldn’t have a clue about ALCS switching - why should they? They’re put on a tariff that sets out their pricing at set times daily, and then expect their supplier to bill them properly. There are some (very few) people like us forum members who recognise when something is wrong and delve into the weeds to find out why.

if should be automatic that putting a customer onto an e7 tariff ALSO requires a resetting of the ALCS timing - that’s a straightforward policy to adopt.

@meldrewreborn - unfortunately it's not just the customers who don't have a clue: the majority of front-line C.S staff don't seem to have a clue either, though they're probably just following on screen scripts (and it's not just EOn: OVO, Octopus et.al. judging by all the other threads out there)

It seems that even when problems being discussed in those threads get escalated to tech support teams, they are still getting fobbed off with excuses which smack of "the blind leading the blind"

Agreed - it should be simple to make sure that the ALCS calendar and the ToU billing should match up, and presumably (maybe) in most instances they do since surely there would be far more people complaining of similar billing issues.

Is it a chicken and egg situation?

• Assuming the meter is set up with particular ALCS timings, should they adjust their billing ToU to match the ALCS timing calendar?
• Or if the billing is set to a particular time of use, should they adjust the ALCS calendar to match the tariff timings
• or are they billing using day/night register readings which for some reason don't match the ALCS calendar
• or if they now have access to ½ hourly consumption data, why bother to use day/night registers at all - ie still use the ALCS calendar to switch the 5th circuit, but bill the ToU according to the times in set in the calendar (similar to Next Drive ToU billing)

So having to deal with individual problems case by case, maybe it's a case-management/reporting/follow-up/education issue with not enough trained staff available with the detailed knowledge to address the issue : who knows?

[doverboy]

Originally Posted by RobJM

I find myself in the same boat, going around in circles on WhatsApp with them, every contact someone different, always resulting in "it's within the 2 hour tolerance"

My ALCS is set 00:30 to 08:30, confirmed on meter, however the off peak tariff hours are 01:30 to 08:30, so an hour every day at peak rate instead of low rate.
Also that first hour of the storage heaters coming on is always the most power hungry.

Hi Rob,
It is my experience with E.ON Next that very few understand Economy 7, this goes for both the Energy Specialists and the Smart Meter Team. They are too willing to push the narrative of a 2-hour tolerance on timings whenever a discrepancy is apparent, this originally derives from the off-peak distribution band in the UK of 22:30-08:30 and is the DNO tolerance. I did explain to a couple of Specialists six months ago when they acknowledged that there was a lack of understanding, that the E7 time is fixed by region of the UK.

It is standard practice for energy suppliers to only have customer service / energy specialists for customer facing duties, managers, technicians and smart meter people are not available directly.

It appears that there may have been an error made to your ALCS switch contactor timings, maybe when your smart meter was installed. Historically an increment or decrement of just five minutes or so may have made for distributor load smoothing reasons, but this is not your case. Suppliers hold meter configuration settings for each of their customer accounts; configuration changes such as for the tariff, TPR (Time Pattern Regime) register timings and ALCS timings are downloaded to meters via the DCC in 48-hours.

[meldrewreborn]

Originally Posted by DebF_EONNext

Hey @Beasel welcome to the community and thanks for taking the time to post!

I'm not going to lie metering isn't my strongest point but I didn't want to leave you without a response! I can see that our lovely members have been supporting you here which is great to see!

I know this has probably been considered but you have mentioned your off peak times (night rate) being 0000-0030 / 0230-0730 / 2230-2400 - Have you given some allowance for GMT / BST clock changes as this may cause the meter to be out by 1hr.

The other thing I would suggest (which you may have already done) would be a kettle test - so during your off peak 10.30pm off peak time turn on a few more things boil the kettle a few times and see which reading is moving. If it is register 1 try again 1 hr later (to allow for changes in bst/gmt) if it is still showing register 1 is moving rather than register 2 it could be that rather than your timings being wrong we have your readings transposed on the system instead, which is something that we can update for you.

Usually if your readings are out by less than 2hrs we wouldn't send an engineer as this is within tolerance levels. Also was this an issue before your meter exchange or has it only been since you had your smart meter installed?

Sorry, but I don't think your post isn't that helpful. Try running a kettle test when the meter is in the basement, or when the switching of the 5th feed is controlled by the meter, which is set up by Eon Next.

What would be helpful would be a definitive statement from Eon Next about how any "time tolerance" is applied in respect of E7 times. Some of the "energy specialists" seem to think this means that customers can be charged peak rates for up to 2 hours of their off peak periods. A search of the internet reveals that the tolerance is a bonus whereby some suppliers add extra time to the off peak period, not take it away - which seems to me to be fraudulent. Some clarity is required.

[RobJM]

Originally Posted by doverboy

Hi Rob,
It is my experience with E.ON Next that very few understand Economy 7, this goes for both the Energy Specialists and the Smart Meter Team. They are too willing to push the narrative of a 2-hour tolerance on timings whenever a discrepancy is apparent, this originally derives from the off-peak distribution band in the UK of 22:30-08:30 and is the DNO tolerance. I did explain to a couple of Specialists six months ago when they acknowledged that there was a lack of understanding, that the E7 time is fixed by region of the UK.

It is standard practice for energy suppliers to only have customer service / energy specialists for customer facing duties, managers, technicians and smart meter people are not available directly.

It appears that there may have been an error made to your ALCS switch contactor timings, maybe when your smart meter was installed. Historically an increment or decrement of just five minutes or so may have made for distributor load smoothing reasons, but this is not your case. Suppliers hold meter configuration settings for each of their customer accounts; configuration changes such as for the tariff, TPR (Time Pattern Regime) register timings and ALCS timings are downloaded to meters via the DCC in 48-hours.

I've even copied and pasted what needs to be done from what I've found on the Internet, and sent that to them, but still get the same result, within tolerance.

"The fifth contactor is activated by the Auxiliary Load Control Switch according to a calendar set by the supplier and sent to the meter by an Electricity Configure Auxiliary Load command. The calendar should, and will normally, match the tariff timings"

I also copied and pasted a quote from someone who moved to another supplier because of this and their settings were synced the next day.

[meldrewreborn]

@RobJM

have you raised it as a formal complaint? If they have dismissed your complaint you should go to the ombudsman.

in your case the calendar doesn’t match the tariff timings - that’s the problem that they are refusing to acknowledge.

[RobJM]

Originally Posted by meldrewreborn

@RobJM

have you raised it as a formal complaint? If they have dismissed your complaint you should go to the ombudsman.

in your case the calendar doesn’t match the tariff timings - that’s the problem that they are refusing to acknowledge.

No I haven't yet, not sure if I will , might be switching if I find a better deal. Maybe I should though.

[meldrewreborn]

@RobJM. You can do both.

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by meldrewreborn

...If the meter has only a single register then TOU is only possible with using half hourly data from the meter. This is a sensible use of smart metering. If a tariff has essentially two rates ( as in E7) then either the TOU data can be used or, if the meter has two registers, then readings from those could be used. The result should of course be the same. If a smart meter isn’t connecting to the supplier then a two registers meter can support E7 (via manual readings) whereas TOU just wouldn’t be capable of working.

@meldrewreborn - interesting (and just to throw in some more confusion)

Although I'm billed on my ½ hourly ToU usage based on "local time = midnight to 7am", a couple of months ago I discovered that my meter seems to have been reconfigured with 2 Active Import registers, plus the tariff switch timing set set to 00:30 - 07:30 UTC (which currently is switching tariff between 01:30 to 08:30 BST)

Out of interest, I'm going to compare my day/night register readings to the ½ hourly ToU consumption to see if they indeed do match

Even more strange, even though it is only a 4 terminal meter one of the menus shows options to view/test ALCS but there's no 5th auxiliary terminal to energise 😲