So.Energy & Ombudsman

It has been hard work, but I finally have a sensible final bill from So.Energy. It was only Electricity that was the issue.

The problem was simple - they did not have correct closing readings. I could not give them correct closing readings as their web form for them wanted import AND export and they had failed to make the meter show me me export dispite asking for many months. However, going to Octopus I got clean opening smart meter readings for both. I also have a new local meter display that logs to MQTT which is nice.

So they estimated my export very low, and they had a correct import reading from smart meter. All they had to do was correct the low export estimate.

So.Energy ignored every attempt to tell them the correct readings! All they had to do was update them. Simple as that!

Then they issued a new closing bill with totally new import reading that was completely made up, and wanted a lot more money from me! To me this only makes sense as fraud. They even lied to the Ombudsman saying the new closing read came from Octopus (well, "old supplier"?). Octopus even sent screen shots of what they reported to So.Energy.

It had to go to the Ombudsman. The process was not that painful, and all on-line and forms and online messages and so on. But was tedious.

1. I make a detailed complaint and upload evidence (bills basically, and copy of email referring me).
2. I then add a message saying how it is odd the complaint is logged as "has smart meter: no", and "referral evidence: not included" when I said it was smart meter and had in fact already uploaded the screen shot of the referral and marked it as such.
3. Time passes and state is "additional checks", but they don't say what they are. Lots of time.
4. Lots of time passes, then the ombudsman ask me to confirm some details, even though exactly as stated in the complaint?
5. So.Energy are told of the complaint, and quickly reply with their proposed remedy - see below
6. Finally, after a month, ombudsman tell so.energy to fix the final readings and give me £40 and an apology.
7. So.energy quickly say they have implemented the decision, they have not as they have not done the export reading correction.
8. Ombudsman say so.energy are trying to dispute export with Octopus and want me to raise with Octopus - why? Octopus have a correct smart meter reading so nothing to dispute! 
9. Over 28 days later (yes, they had to reply in 28 days), after chasing, So.energy implement the decision and apologise.
10. I pay the final bill (I don't wait 5 minutes, let alone 28 days). Settled.

The initial response to complaint from So.energy is weird. This is clear cut, simple, wrong import and export readings, and I provided clear evidence (opening bills from Octopus) of that. You would expect the proposed remedy to be to simply fix that, job done.

But no, they say "The reads we have received is[sic] from the customers old[sic] suppliers. The customers account has now be revised and final bill sent to customer". They fixed the import but did not fix the export, and what is with "old suppliers" - this is about "new suppliers", and the reading was not in fact from the new (or old) supplier anyway. It was just fraudulent, in my view.

I have to wonder how the hell most people cope with this crap. I bet most people just pay up. If this is systematic it is a lot of money - who knows?

But final result - actually sorted - after a lot of time spent on this.

During the whole time So.Energy harassed me by email for payment even though they knew the case was with the Ombudsman. They also seemingly cannot actually read emails - claiming simple plain text emails are "blank".

Complaint started 29th Dec, resolved 23rd March.