E.On and EDF customers overcharged due to ‘weak gas’
Millions of customers of two of Britain’s largest energy suppliers, E.On and EDF Energy, have been overcharged on part of their gas bills, according to regulators. It is thought that customers of British Gas may also have been overcharged, for a period of up to five years.
The Telegraph reported that Ofgem found that both E.On and EDF had taken a ‘different interpretation’ when calculating the potency of the gas a customer uses.
The companies have repaid a total of £4.6m, with E.On reimbursing customers to the tune of £2.5m and EDF placing £2.1m into the EDF Energy Trust Fund, after the error.
The problem arose when it was discovered the companies were using the wrong calculations to determine the calorific value of consumers’ gas. Calorific value is used because the actual thermal energy used in gas varies depending on location. Companies are instructed by Ofgem to round the figure down to just one decimal place, but all three companies in question were seen to be using three or four.
A spokesman for E.On, who made the charging errors between 2007 and 2008, said: “In January 2008 we credited our gas prepayment customers with an extra £20 as part of an agreement with Ofgem to return £2.5m following a mistake in how we calculated gas prices in the preceding year”
Both EDF Energy and British Gas also mage immediate changes to the way they calculated their calorific value, after Ofgem contacted them. While EDF donated £2.1m to their Fund, British Gas last week repaid a total of £10m to consumers who had been overcharged.
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