Our guaranteed standards

Your supplier must offer you an appointment within a specified period of time which is:

• during the energy supplier’s normal working hours

• a standard 4-hour appointment window for commencing the appointment

• not unreasonably withhold appointment windows of not less than 2 hours

• within a reasonable time from the request being made.

If we cancel or rearrange your appointment without previously agreeing with you, and with less than one day’s notice, you’re entitled to set compensation of £30.

If you report a faulty meter to us, we guarantee to investigate within 5 working days. If a fault is found, we’ll either fix or replace the meter. We’ll also confirm the expected timescale you can expect work to be completed in.

If we either fail to attend our appointment, or do not correct the fault within the timescale we specify, we’ll compensate you £30.

If you fail to pay us for your energy supply, we might have to disconnect your supply. We’ll reconnect you within 24 hours, provided that you agree on a repayment plan with us, or you:

• pay us the money you owe us

• pay us the cost of disconnecting and reconnecting

• give us a security deposit if we request it.

There are some exemptions to the Guaranteed Standards, under which we are not required to make a compensation payment. These are:

• We and you disagree over whether a standard was not met. If that is the case, we’ll explain to you how you can raise a dispute with Ofgem.

• You told us that you did not want us to take any action.

• We reasonably consider the information given by you to be inconsequential.

• You have tampered with your meter, have attempted to restore the supply that we or the network companies disconnected when we had a right to do so or have not paid the charges due as a result of that behaviour.

• It was not reasonably practical to meet these Guaranteed Standards because of:

  • severe weather

  • the behaviour of a person not working directly for us

  • we’re unable to access a relevant building

  • we would be in breach of any regulation

  • the effects of an event covered by Part 2 of the Civil Contingencies Act, 2004 (war, terrorism, threat to national security)

  • other circumstances beyond our control, so long as we took all reasonable steps to prevent them from occurring and affecting us.

In these Guaranteed Standards, a working day means any day other than a Saturday, a Sunday, Christmas Day, Good Friday or a day that is a bank holiday. Working hours are 8am and 8pm on working days, and 9am and 5pm on any other day. Any contact outside these hours will count from the next day.

You do not need to apply for compensation. Any compensation owed to you as a consequence of us contravening the promises made above will be automatically credited to your bank account or sent to you via cheque. This will be paid to you within 10 working days, and, if we don’t make the payment in time, we’ll pay you another £30 within a further 10 working days. This late payment will only be made once.

If there’s a fault that’s the responsibility of the electricity distributor or gas transporter, and they decide you’re owed compensation, they may pay the money to us and we’ll pay it on to you. If we fail to pay you this compensation within 10 working days, we’ll pay you an additional £30.

Back billing is when a 'catch up' bill is created to cover the amount owed by a customer for electricity or gas which has not previously been charged for, going back over a period of time.

Back billing may happen if the customer’s account has previously been billed using underestimate meter readings for a period of time, where a change of tenancy has occurred and no bill has been sent to the new occupier and this is then corrected, and a bill has not been produced with in a certain billing period.

Energy regulator Ofgem has also set out back billing rules to help protect micro businesses when they receive an energy back bill.

Back-billing can be for any amount but is limited to 12 months from finding an error to a corrected bill being issued.

Under the Ofgem back billing rules, you can't be charged for any unbilled energy used more than 12 months ago.

This protection may not apply if you've behaved obstructively or unreasonably in a way which prevents us from accurately billing you. For example, if you've prevented us on more than one occasion from taking a meter reading at your premises, or if you’ve stolen gas or electricity from us.