Has anyone else tried to get information from AGL about their electricity usage? I rang the number on the account to explain my query: Our recent bill showed our usage to be more than an average five person household. We are two persons with no air-conditioning or pool, and with gas hot water and cooking.
I was advised to send a photo of the meter which I did.
This was the reply from AGL:
Thanks for contacting us regarding your account.
Unfortunately, it looks like you’ve sent us a photo of Smart meter.
This type of meter will not be able to read manually.
There is a number to ring if one still has queries (there’s a hole in the bucket…). I wondered if anyone else had been given this run around by AGL and whether there was any other way to find out why our usage seemed so high.
Depending on your locality you should be able to get an account from the regional network (mine is Ausnet Services) and download spreadsheets of your use, as well as have online displays. You might be well placed to follow that up.
Another very fine Australian business, not. Considering how ‘customer focused’ they claim to be the collective ownership should be ashamed, but none of those entities probably understands the concept.
Since Ausgrid would be the supplier for any of your retailers, it seems AGL should be willing to provide the data you need but since they are AGL (I won’t go there, this is a community forum!)…
You could try formalising everything in writing, but IME AGL is not impressed by anything, including their own paperwork. I have found them to be as Trustworthy as a reality show host/property mogul who got elected to high office across the pond.
Once you work this out you should shop around! There is a consistent message here, although the site can be anecdotal rather than research. Unhappy customers are more likely to post than happy ones, and sometimes the happy ones resemble bots as much as customers, despite the claims of veracity checking.
Thanks agin. I put in a complaint to EWON and lo and behold, within hours we received an email from AGL called ‘Energy Insights’. It purported to advise us about where our electricity was being used and when. All very interesting and timely except that almost three quarters of our bill came under ‘Other’. So that’s after fridge, stand-by power, entertainment, lights, dishwasher, washing machine etc had all been accounted for, the biggest amount by far was ‘Other’!
As a result of this experience, even my husband is talking of looking for another provider!! That’s amazing because we have been loyal customers of AGL since forever. We moved here three months ago, so they’d have umpteen records of our usage for the same billing period (this house is smaller and has a gas oven, old house had electric).
What they should have sent you is an hourly use accounting. Here is a snippet of mine (pre-solar). There are 48 period reports per day from my smart meter.
When one gets quotes for solar a good company will ask for that, and tell one how to get it in their service area. Your next complaint to EWON might be AGL’s answering the question they wanted to answer, not the one you asked (although you might not have phrased it explicitly enough).
Well here we are a month later. EWON referred the matter to AGL and they contacted Ausgrid about the meter readings. AGL then told us that the meter readings were correct. They appear to think that is the end of the matter as we’ve heard nothing since. I have asked them again how they think it could be that our usage could be more than an average five person household when we are two persons with gas hot water and cooking and no air-conditioning or dryer. So still waiting on their response.
It is unlikely Ausgrid has as poor record keeping as AGL is reputed to have, but it could happen where their systems have crossed customers. I presume you long ago confirmed the NMI on your meter is the one you are being billed for?
Unfortunately the answer to that is conjecture as they see it and ‘not their problem’ because the bill is based on the meter, and the meter has apparently been verified and is the only evidence. For you to challenge that might take your hiring a sparky to do a ‘leak test’ on your home power to see where it is being used.
Is the high bill every month, or was it a once off? If it is every month you may realistically have something you are not aware of going on, be it a ‘friendly neighbour’ or a rogue device. AGL might agree to help with getting it done, and they might be asked to agree to pay for it if the problem is not inside your premises, but first make sure the NMI on your meter is the one shown on your bill.
Thanks very much for those tips. I had not thought of checking the NMI, but it is correct. I have had an electrician check and he could not find a faulty appliance or anything drawing unexpectedly large amounts of power. Nevertheless for a day recently when we weren’t even here the usage was high. The latest offer from AGL is for them to test the meter for a fee of $676, refundable if the meter is found to be faulty.
Considering your problem as described on the forum, the sparky should have clamped* the main breaker, not just individual appliances or circuits (unless he did all the circuits individually and aggregated the results) to compare against what Ausgrid and AGL ‘see’. If he did not, nor suggest it, you might be well advised to try another sparky. It might be more or less than $676 and any sparky should be happy to quote it, but in the absence of identifying rogue appliances or finding an extra power line going off to a neighbour that might necessarily be your next step whether through an independent sparky or AGL. I expect AGL’s fee will be the highest, possibly set that way to dissuade customers. If a sparky finds a meter problem AGL will have to verify it and correct it at no cost to yourself.
I cannot think of anything else you can do.
* clamped - in context I mean a current sensor and data logging device that senses and records current, usually up-loadable to a PC for generating a report. Simpler ones will just display a total for the period. The link shows pretty basic ones.
Thanks once again for your help. We’ve decided not to risk the $676 fee in case it’s a matter of the power going elsewhere (it’s hard to know whether it’s a faulty meter or ‘leakage’). We’re beginning to think that that must be what’s happening because recently there was a whole day that we were away and yet the usage for that day showing on the AGL website is 18Kwh (btw the house is a semi). Because we’re renting, we have to hope that the owners might approve an electrician coming to do a more thorough investigation (the first person was a friend who is qualified to do testing and tagging on appliances)…or we might be moving anyway! But thanks for your attention to our issue.
An interesting comparison.
In our two person household, gas HW and cooking, dishwasher etc, but tank water hence pump and treatment UV.
Typical daily use 8kWh or less.
When away average per 24hrs drops to 3kWh.
We took readings off our meter at the same time each day over several months, before solar PV installed. Our AGL bill also shows a comparison to typical households. Your bill must be unbelievable?
We now have a smart meter. It can still be read to show the culumulative usage and has a led that flashes to indicate each 0.001Wh as it is used.
There is plenty of good advice from @PhilT on what to do to identify the real cause.
One of our sons is in a unit complex and the ID number on his power meter does not match the bill!
That type of error has been mentioned previously. It does happen.
‘Leakage’ the amount of power you indicated if leakage is hard to accept, even if there were some very serious wiring defects in the property. Easy for a licensed reputable electrician to check.
The likely explanation is noting your are in a semi. Firstly that the power circuits are transposed with the adjoining property. A very serious and dangerous situation your electrician should be able to quickly identify. Or secondly there is a deliberate cross connection where your power is being consumed next door. Again in the category of serious and dangerous.
Hopefully it is none of the above.
If you do find an issue that explains the usage, and it is not your fault or error, make sure you get a signed report from the electrician with the full details. It would seem likely that you may be able to make a claim against AGL or the landlord for the power you have not consumed and cost of the electrician. That assumes you have informed the landlord or agent and they have chosen to take no action within the time required by your state tenancy legislation.
Thank you very much Mark. I have managed (I hope) to show the usage for the day in question, 27 March, when we were absent for the whole day. It sounds from what you say that we would be justified in asking the landlord for an electrician to check out the set-up?
Two simple observations from your record. There is a fairly constant background power draw of 0.35 to 0.45kW per hr.
That is significant over 24 hours, approx 9.6kWh. A fridge might use between 1-2kWh over a day. Or if you leave 4x100W old style recessed flood lights on continuously, which I assume you don’t.
The other is if you were out all day, were you still out in the afternoon between 1:30pm and 3:30pm? There is a large power draw in those 2 hours totalling 5kWh! Assuming you were the details evident on the spreadsheet also point to a major issue. Even if the meter has a calibration issue, why would the power increase so significantly and for that one window when you were not home?
As @PhilT suggests an electrician should be able to check the household power with a clamp meter while observing the actual meter and verify the meter is updating accordingly at the same time. The other suggestions re monitoring - data logging might not be needed depending on what is observed or found?
Another suggestion would be to make sure you have some extra ice in the fridge, close it up, turn off everything in the house at the wall including every light. Don’t turn off anything in the meter box. Go out for a drive, coffee etc and return after more than 4 hours. Perhaps in the afternoon be away between 1:30 and 3:30? Get your power usage report from AGL ASAP. If it does not show zero for the four hours, that would be great evidence to send both to AGL and the landlord/agent with a very polite but demanding letter for immediate action and remedy. The landlord is the one responsible regardless for the property. AGL may or may not feel inclined to assist. The local supply authority might also be interested.
Thanks again for all the help. We have now asked the agent to send an electrician, and I will report on the outcome. We have offered to pay for the electrician if it’s our fault…at least we’ll know what’s happening. And yes, we were actually away Tuesday to Thursday that week, so for the whole 24 hours on Wednesday 27th.
Just an update. We finally prevailed on the agents and they eventually sent an electrician. He turned everything off and told my husband that the meter didn’t register anything…I had already taken readings from the meter and compared them to the usage shown online for the same period. They don’t seem to align (‘usage’ is higher). The electrician suggested that maybe the small device which transmits the data might be faulty or that there is interference, but he didn’t seem to know how to establish that. We’re giving up; hoping to move in the next couple of months.
Thanks to everyone who tried to help.
I hope you will be publishing a warning for the next occupant! Perhaps leaving a note somewhere they will find it as well as formally lodging the issue with the agent/owners.
