Changes to billing for Vector Network connected power customers – Time of Usage billing (Peak / Off-Peak)

Hi.

Like you, I’m connected to Vector’s network.

I have a smart meter at home, and I barely read emails from my power company. – In February they sent me an email explaining that as of 1st April I would be switched to Time of Use billing, meaning that whether I wanted it or not, I now have Peak and Off-Peak power rates. – If you have a smart-meter at home, then you do too.

Apparently regardless of which power company you buy your power through, all Vector connected customers with smart meters underwent a mandatory change to their method billing on the 1st April. If you didn’t have Time of Usage billing before, they will now split your bills out to Peak and Off-Peak charges. This just so happened to coincide with when we were all told to live for most of April at home and not to go anywhere.

Peak Hours are: Monday to Friday (incl): 7am-11am and 5pm-9pm.
Off Peak Hours are: any other time of day, and all weekend long.

PUBLIC HOLIDAYS, if they fall on weekdays remain as a mix of Peak and Off-Peak, with the same time splits as above.

I’m sharing this because the differences between Peak and Off-Peak charges on a per unit basis can be significant. – In my case, I’m paying around 15/c per kWh used off-peak, and just under 25/c per kWh peak. A savings of ~10/c per kWh (or a saving of 40% of the Peak, per kWh usage-costs, by changing various timers or behavioural patterns may be worth exploring).

Anyway, I was surprised to find out that they’d done this, so I thought I’d share this in case you didn’t know about this either.

Cheers,  Chris (Grapevine Admin).

Vector Power Outage: Service Guarantee Claim info.

Hi Everyone,

If you were affected by today’s power outage, then you’ll want to read this email… You may be able to make a claim for a prolonged outage under Vector’s Service Guarantee:

https://vectorwebstoreprd.blob.core.windows.net/blob/vector/media/vector/15-08-16-vector_service_standard_doc_res.pdf

Once we learn of an outage on our network, we endeavour to restore the power supply as quickly as possible.
If we don’t restore your power within the timeframes outlined below, we’ve agreed with your retailer to pay you $50*.
That’s equivalent to approximately one month’s line charges for the average household.

The timeframes are:
· 2 hours in the CBD
· 2.5 hours in urban areas
· 4.5 hours in rural areas

0508 VECTOR (0508 832 867) 

If you want to make a claim, you will need some details of the outage, the below references will help you:

Electricity Outage: 11th Sept 2017 6:28am – 5:24pm (11hrs)
Their outage / Job Ref: 1-2535031425
(This is the one which you should use initially, they may simply pay out based on this, and your address being within the known affected area).

I personally logged this at 8:17am Their ref: 1-2535032094 (~9hrs long from that point), you can quote this reference too if it helps, as it establishes a point at which Vector knew about the outage.

Stated cause of outage: Feeder Outage (this is a network fault, which can happen for a range of reasons; they did not tell me that it had been identified as a weather related issue).

You’ll be calling to request a ‘service guarantee payment – claim – use the outage ref to help them to find it, and don’t let them tell you that it was restored before 5:24pm – a partial restoration occurred between 3:01 and 4:19pm. Even at those inside timeframes, the outage lasted from (when I reported it to them 8:17am until 3:01pm which is just under 7 hours, still well outside of their 4.5).

My own ref for my claim (which you shouldn’t need to quote them) was: 1-2536546513 – They have not yet confirmed that it will be paid, as the final details on the job have not been entered into their shared system yet. However, it takes 3-5 mins to call and log a request for a claim. Be sure to get hold of your own claim reference number then you’ll know that they’ve logged it appropriately.

If you do this and want to let me know the outcome please send me a reply email (to: [email protected])

Regards,

Chris.

The last time we all did this, I think we made a bit of a dent and they notably improved services, so there’s no harm in giving this another go. – Last time everyone who called in was able to get a payment.