About Bill Hero Results

How can I claim my refund under the Savings Guarantee?

How can I claim a refund under the Savings Guarantee? Overview The Bill Hero Savings Guarantee ensures that you can claim a refund if the service can not save you money on your first comparison because you're already on a competitively priced plan. Here's a detailed guide on how to successfully claim your refund, including key timelines and optional steps to ensure a smooth process. What happens when the Savings Guarantee is triggered? Our system automatically identifies when the savings available on a first-bill comparison come in lower than the Savings Guarantee applicable for your subscription type. When this occurs, we immediately apply a free two-month extension to your subscription period as a goodwill gesture. If you want to, you can keep your subscription active in anticipation of finding savings in the future, and keep the free two months that our system will have already applied, extending your subscription to 14 months rather than 12 as a thank you for staying with us. Alternatively, you can exercise your right under our Savings Guarantee to cancel your subscription immediately and receive a full refund of your subscription fee. Steps to Claim your Refund 1. Email your claim : To initiate your refund claim, use the link included in your first results email to send an email to Bill Hero with your Savings Guarantee refund claim. The link generates an email template with a unique bill ID code in the subject line. Please do not change the subject line in this email to ensure it is processed correctly. 2. Optional: Attach a Price Change Notice : Sometimes, there can be situations where the Savings Guarantee cannot be met because of a price change in the market. When we compare an older bill with legacy pricing against the full market of alternatives after a price increase, it will artificially make that legacy bill appear to be more competitive than it really is. If you have received a price change notice from your energy retailer, attach this to your email. This allows us to recalculate your bill using updated rates, and compare it with alternatives on a like-for-like basis. However, this step is optional, and your refund claim will still be honoured without it. Refund Review Process Once we receive your email, Bill Hero team will review your refund claim. The review process typically takes 48 hours before approval. Review outcomes The Savings Guarantee applies to the potential savings achievable on the first bills uploaded for your subscription type. If you have set up a combined electricity + gas subscription, the Savings Guarantee is assessed against the combined savings achievable for your first electricity and gas bill. If you upload your electricity and gas bills separately, the Savings Guarantee prices might be triggered preemptively, after the system has assessed only one of your bills. In this situation, you'll be asked to upload the missing bill so the Guarantee can be assessed for you. Refund Timeline After your refund claim has been approved, we'll action the refund immediately. The refund will generally appear on your bank statement within one or two business days of processing. This timeline typically applies to most refunds and depends on the scheduling of your financial institution. However, according to our payment platform terms - we use Stripe.com for our transaction processing - some refunds can take up to 10 business days to become visible in your bank statement, depending on your bank. This delay often arises due to bank-specific processing times that vary between institutions. Sometimes, a refund can take the form of a reversal, which means that instead of a credit refund transaction appearing in your bank statement, the original debit transaction may simply disappear. This can happen when the refund occurs very soon after the original transaction is completed. Confirmation of Refund You will receive a separate confirmation email when your refund has been processed through our billing platform. Audit trail for refunds It's very rare, but sometimes refund payments can go missing. If you believe there is a problem with an expected refund not appearing in your bank statement, the first step is to check if the refund has triggered a reversal, which would cause the original debit transaction to disappear. If your debit transaction is still visible, but no corresponding refund credit is found, contact our support team at [email protected]. Our team can provide the specific Acquirer Reference Number (ARN) for your refund. This number becomes available approximately 3 days after refund initiation and enables your bank to track the refund transaction precisely. ARN numbers become available about 3 days after the refund transaction is initiated.

Why are my results different?

Every Bill Hero results link is specific to an individual bill, and the results for that bill are dynamically generated, meaning that the results are re-generated every time you click on the link. The data from your bill remains the same, but the plans and prices available in the market change daily. Therefore, the savings value found for each bill is an assessment at a specific point in time, and the savings value can change over time as the market plans and prices change. This can mean that your results may be noticeably different when you re-open your results link as compared to the previous time you opened your results - usually it will only be noticeable if it is one of the top-ranking plans that has changed between your visits to view the results. This can also affect the headline savings presented in the summary email and SMS messages that Bill Hero sends for every bill analysed. Bill Hero populates these message templates with the calculated savings at the point in time when the bill was first analysed and compared. If prices have changed in the market since that time, it's possible that the savings displayed could be different when you click through to see your detailed results.

How to set your GreenPower preference

The Bill Hero Subscriber Portal lets you set your GreenPower preferences so they’ll be auto-applied in your comparisons. The portal is available at https://portal.billhero.com.au or via the 'account' icon in the main Bill Hero website menu. Sign in to the Subscriber Portal using your personal email address, then click the green 'Update Preferences' button. You'll see a popup window where you can set preferences for Green Rating, Green Power, as well as your Bothered Threshold. You can choose to set your GreenPower preference at 10%, 20%, 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%. Your GreenPower preference will then be auto-applied to any future comparison results that you open. Tip : Be aware that not all retailers offer GreenPower, so when you apply a GreenPower preference, you will not be shown plans from any non-Greenppower retailers. Also, not every GreenPower retailer supports all the possible proportions of GreenPower. When you pe-select a %, only those plans that are offered with that % GreenPower will be displayed.

How do I use the Bill Hero Subscriber Portal?

Logging into the Subscriber Portal You can access the portal at https://portal.billhero.com.au. It's also available via the 'account' link in the Bill Hero main menu bar You'll need to validate your login using the personal email address that you used when first subscribing to Bill Hero. We offer the Subscriber Portal to support some key interactions including: Setting your Solar and Battery system size Some energy retailers apply eligibility constraints on their plans based on solar and battery system size. When Bill Hero knows your Solar and Battery system sizing, it will filter out any plans that you'd be ineligible for. You can set that up in the Subscriber Portal Accessing your old bills and results We get it, it can be hard to trawl through your inbox to find a previous energy bill when you need to. Bill Hero keeps a list of them for you, which you can access via the Subscriber Portal. Updating your payment card You can click through from the Bill Hero Subscriber Portal into the Billing Portal that is offered by our payments platform Stripe.com. You can then update your payment card or change your subscription settings

How to use the Green Rating filter

Bill Hero has adopted the star rating system created by the Green Electricity Guide. Find out more about Bill Hero's use of Green Electricity Guide star ratings here. By default, your results will load with the Green rating filter set to 'Show all'. This means that every plan relevant to you in the market will be displayed and ranked, regardless of the Green rating for each retailer. However, you'll still see the relevant star rating for each retailer on every card. Note: Green Rating applies to each retailer, not to their individual plans. Filter by Green star rating The Green Rating filter is the first filter you'll see above the cards displayed in your Bill Hero results. You can change the Green rating filter to any of these settings: - 2 stars and above - 3 stars and above - 4 stars and above - 5 star only When you apply this filter to your results, then all the plans from any unrated retailers plus all the plans from retailers rated below your chosen setting will be filtered out of your results. The remaining plans from those retailers rated at or higher than your chosen setting, will be displayed in price-ranked order. The special**Your Bill** card will always be displayed, regardless of your selected Green filter setting. The 'Your Bill' card represents the price you were actually charged in the current bill being analysed. The Green rating for your current retailer will be displayed on the 'Your Bill' card.

How do I use the GreenPower filter?

Retailers offer GreenPower in various proportions of your overall consumption. Every participating GreenPower retailer offers a 100% GreenPower option, meaning that the price uplift will applied to all your kWh consumption. Some GreenPower retailers also offer GreenPower plans where the GreenPower price uplift is applied to only a proportion of your kWh consumption, such as 25%, 50%, or 75%. Not every retailer supports GreenPower, and not every GreenPower retailer supports every possible proportion of GreenPower. The Bill Hero GreenPower filter allows you to select your desired GreenPower proportion, and your results will be recalculated to display the plans that support that proportion, ranked by price, inclusive of the price uplift for that proportion of Greenpower. ⚠️Note When you set the GreenPower filter, you tell Bill Hero to display only the plans that offer a particular percentage of GreenPower and to exclude those that do not. All participating GreenPower retailers offer a 100% GreenPower option, so when you select 100% GreenPower, you'll see plans only from the retailers that participate in the Greenpower scheme - this is a subset of all the retailers in the market, so there will be fewer plans in your results. If you select a different proportion of GreenPower, like 50% or 75%, your results will most likely include fewer plans again because not all participating GreenPower retailers will support every percentage. For example, if you select 50% GreenPower, your results will be filtered to include only plans from retailers that support this option. No matter what proportion of GreenPower you choose, all the relevant plans displayed are always ranked by price. The special 'Your Bill' plan is always included, so you can see the price difference between any GreenPower plan and the price you were actually charged in your uploaded bill. What is GreenPower GreenPower is a government scheme that allows you to buy renewable electricity and support renewable generation by voluntarily paying an uplift in price for some or all of the kWh you consume. When you buy GreenPower, the scheme ensures that an equivalent amount of kWh has or will be generated by renewable generators and contributed to the energy distribution pool. We have more information on the GreenPower scheme here: All about GreenPower You can use the GreenPower filter to apply the relevant GreenPower price uplift to some or all of your kWh consumption under all of the plans presented in your Bill Hero results.

GreenPower price comparison

GreenPower is accredited renewable energy that is offered by participating retailers at a voluntary price uplift per kWh for the electricity you consume. The additional price you pay per kWh eventually goes toward supporting renewable generation. We say eventually because there is a long, complicated and confusing path between you spending extra on GreenPower and renewable electricity generators seeing any benefit. The key thing to understand is that there is no direct relationship between the extra price you pay to your retailer for GreenPower and the funding that eventually makes it to the renewable generators that you want to support. Retailers are intermediaries in these cash flows, and it's no surprise that some retailers engineer things to benefit themselves. Spending above the odds on GreenPower only helps your retailer. See our support article All About Green Power for more information about the GreenPower scheme and how it works. How does Bill Hero include GreenPower in the comparisons? You can apply the GreenPower price uplift to some, or all, of the electricity you consume. Retailers set their own prices for the GreenPower price uplift, and until now, it's been very difficult to find the GreenPower plan that will deliver the best price outcomes for you. Bill Hero makes it easy, by allowing you to include the GreenPower price uplift in your Bill Hero comparisons, so you can see exactly which plan represents the best price for you, at your chosen level of GreenPower. Here's how it works (if the embedded video below does not load for you, its available here) Not every retailer participates in the GreenPower scheme, and not every retailer offers the same set of proportional GreenPower options. When you select any of the proportional GreenPower options in your Bill Hero results screen, your results set will be limited to showing only the plans from those retailers that offer GreenPower at your selected proportional level. You can use the GreenPower tool in conjunction with the Green ranking filter to find the best priced GreenPower plan from the retailers that also meet or exceed your desired Green ranking. ​

Green Ratings

ℹ️ About Green ratings The Green Electricity Guide is researched and created by Greenpeace with advice and support from the Total Environment Centre, which co-created the 2014, 2015 and 2018 versions of the Guide. Bill Hero has no control or influence over the ratings or the methodology used by the Green Electricity Guide. Bill Hero does not benefit financially by using the Green Electricity Guide ratings, and Greenpeace and Total Environment Centre do not benefit financially from Bill Hero's use of the Green Electricity Guide ratings. We've adopted the Green Electricity Guide star ratings because it's the only credible source of information about the Green credentials for energy retailers currently available in Australia. The star ratings data used by Bill Hero are taken from the Green Electricity Guide full report spreadsheet, accessed on Friday 11 February 2022. How is the Green rating calculated? Greenpeace has published a full report outlining the methodology, and providing details on how each provider's score was calculated, plus a spreadsheet of the detailed results. There are 6 ranking criteria used in this most recent version of the Guide: - Providing clean, renewable energy - Ending coal use by 2030 - Halting fossil fuel expansion - Support for new renewable energy - Transparency of marketing - Pollution and environmental harm Greenpeace also awarded a bonus 'community provider' score to some retailers. The highest weighted criteria used in the Green Electricity Guide is the average level of emissions intensity for the electricity sold by that retailer: Emissions intensity is a measure of the amount of CO2 per output of electricity (given in MWh units). This tells how dirty or clean the power is that a provider generates and/or sells to consumers. Theannual average emissions intensity of the National Electricity Market for 2021 was 0.69t CO2/MWh. Renewable electricity produces an emissions intensity of 0t CO2/MWh. The Green Electricity Guide acknowledges that there is no robust direct measure of the average emissions intensity of electricity sold by retailers, and that the technical reality is that once electricity is generated, there is no way of distinguishing coal-generated from renewable-generated electricity as it travels through transmission wires to consumers homes. The Guide estimates the emission intensity for each retailer “by subtracting the proportion of renewable energy generated or contracted from the grid average of emissions intensity.” The Guide claims that “In the absence of concrete emissions intensity data, [this] is a comprehensive way to attempt to better measure the climate impact of a provider.” Each retailer was assessed and scored on these ranking criteria to determine a final score out of 10, measured to two decimal places. This score was rounded to a single decimal place, and converted into a star rating out of 5, including half stars, with 10 possible rating levels: - Score range 9 - 10 = 5 stars; - Score range 8 - 8.9 = 4 ½ stars; - Score range 7 - 7.9 = 4 stars; - Score range 6 - 6.9 = 3 ½ stars; - Score range 5 - 5.9 = 3 stars; - Score range 4 - 4.9 = 2 ½ stars; - Score range 3 - 3.9 = 2 stars; - Score range 2 - 2.9 = 1 ½ stars; - Score range 1 - 1.9 = 1 star; - Score range 0 - 0.9 = 0 stars. Which retailers have been rated? The Green Electricity Guide FAQ states, "We have ranked all the electricity providers serving the National Electricity Market (NSW, QLD, VIC, ACT, TAS, SA) and WA and the NT where there was enough available data to conduct a fair assessment." A small number of retailers are not included or ranked in the Guide. According to the Methodology Overview section of the full report for the Guide, "this is due to a number of factors, including insufficient data made available to the public, or the retailer being a relatively new entrant that has not been operating long enough to be meaningfully assessed." How does Bill Hero display the Green Electricity Guide ratings? We display the relevant retailer star rating assigned by the Green Electricity Guide on the card for every plan ranked by Bill Hero. You'll see one to five green stars on each card that indicate the Green rating for that retailer, as determined by the Green Electricity Guide. The Green Electricity Guide rating relates to the retailer, not to their plans, so when a retailer has multiple plans on offer, the same star rating will appear on each of those plans. Unrated retailers will still appear in your Bill Hero results if you have not selected to filter your results by Green rating. Rather than displaying stars on the cards for these retailers, you'll see the word 'unrated'. Filtering results by Green rating You can filter your results set to display only plans from retailers with a Green rating at or above your chosen level. By default, your results will load with the Green rating filter set to 'Show all'. This means that every plan relevant for you in the market will be displayed and ranked, regardless of the Green rating for the retailer. You'll still see the relevant star rating on each and every card. You can change the Green rating filter to any of these settings: - 2 stars and above - 3 stars and above - 4 stars and above - 5 star only If you filter your results by Green rating, then the plans from any unrated retailers and those from retailers rated below your chosen setting will be filtered out of your results. The remaining plans from those retailers rated at or higher than your chosen setting, will be displayed in price-ranked order. The special**Your Bill** card will always be displayed, regardless of your selected Green filter setting. The 'Your Bill' card represents the price you were actually charged in the current bill being analysed. The Green rating for your current retailer will be displayed on the 'Your Bill' card. The Green-filtered set of plans displayed will be ranked by price, so this provides a mechanism to identify the best-priced plan for you that also meets or exceeds your chosen minimum Green rating. Does Green rating relate to GreenPower? Green rating and GreenPower are entirely separate. Any retailer can offer GreenPower products, and offering GreenPower product says nothing about the average emissions intensity of the energy each retailer sells. The lowest-rated retailers in the Green Electricity Guide can, and do, offer accredited GreenPower products. Green rating is an assessment performed by Greenpeace and Total Environment Centre, and published as the Green Electricity Guide, to identify and rate all retailers according to the methodology developed by Greenpeace and the Total Environment Centre.

Do I need to supply a full year worth of bills?

By default, Bill Hero runs its analysis bill-by-bill rather than using aggregated bill data covering a full year. Of course we understand seasonal variation in energy consumption and solar production, and it may seem counter-intuitive not to base the recommendation on a full year of data. This article explains why we've designed the system this way. As more people install solar, and as the average size and generation capacity of those solar systems grows, the average seasonal variation in energy exported to and imported from the grid is becoming more and more pronounced, and so it's becoming less and less realistic to find a single 'one size fits all' plan that will deliver a competitive result year round. The difference in price between the 'best' year-round single plan on an aggregated basis vs best plans on a per-bill basis can be very significant, so the potential savings available through the per-bill approach can be substantial. Energy plans always include trade-offs between daily connection charges, consumption charges and feed-in tariff rates. For solar customers, the FiT rates that retailers offer are funded by the margin they make on energy. This means that the most generous FiT rates are usually coupled with relatively uncompetitive prices for KwH consumption, meaning that the best summer-time plan when consumption is lower, and exports are higher is less likely to yield competitive outcomes during winter when you'll be importing more and exporting less. Adopting an aggregated 'full year' comparison strategy only means that you'll be finding the 'least worst' compromise annual plan. The optimal strategy for minimising energy costs is not to try to find the 'best' annual plan, but instead to continuously track the pricing available across the market, and switch opportunistically whenever the potential value in dollars saved is greater than your own personal assessment of the effort required to switch. Can you be bothered? The real work in switching is not in completing the application to the next retailer, but in deciding what to do. The switch application process takes only about 10 minutes, and on average, we find about $350 in annualised savings for our new subscribers. Bill Hero keeps the effort expended as low as possible, by automatically running a personalised comparison for you on every single bill, so it takes no work at all for you to see what is available across the market, and understand what your potential savings are. We designed our 'Bothered Threshold' feature to help you tailor the responses the system generates for you – so you can decide to switch only when the identified savings exceed your own value placed on the effort required. We'll let you know whenever we analyse a bill and find annualised savings for you greater than your personal Bothered Threshold. You can change your Bothered Threshold at any time, and even when the system finds savings for you greater than your Bothered Threshold, it's still your choice to proceed with a switch or not. Our system focuses on checking the market on every single bill, and it will let you know whenever savings are available to you greater than your Bothered Threshold. Month by month and bill by bill, the seasonal variations will flow through, and the system will keep you updated on the potential savings based on your Bothered Threshold. No matter what the results Bill Hero presents, or how great are the savings available to you, it's always your choice to proceed with a switch or not. Predicting future consumption Energy bills document historical consumption from the past billing period, so there's a lag in using that data to price the bill against currently available plans, to help make a decision to switch. We've explored how we can reliably predict future consumption to help subscribers move to the best plan for their anticipated consumption in the next billing period. There are two main ways to approach this: algorithmically projecting future billing period consumption or using the previous year's bills for the equivalent period. The algorithmic approach, using average seasonal factors, has the advantage of being simple, but at the individual household level, we've found it unreliable. Actual energy consumption is dependent on the unique characteristics of your home, and the appliances you use and is very sensitive to weather events. Theoretically, we could request a full year's worth of bills and base each analysis on the previous years' consumption for the upcoming period. We've found this also unrealistic to manage at scale since many households do not have easy access to old bills, and many retailers make it difficult to access old bills in their customer portals. For these reasons, Bill Hero policy is to work with the factual consumption data documented in each bill, and we've based our automated processes around this reliable, regular, factual data source. Tip You can upload your own bills at any time, so you can generate indicative results for an upcoming period by sending in a bill for the same period from a previous year. You can do this anytime by sending the old bill as an email attachment to [email protected].

Bill price vs Comparison price

Bill Hero sends an email with a summary of the results found for each bill processed, which includes Bill price, and Comparison price. Bill price is the final price displayed on your bill, showing the amount you need to pay, or the amount your account is in credit for that bill cycle. Comparison price is a value calculated by Bill Hero that represents the charges associated with the current bill period. Comparison price include consumption and supply charges, and any incentives, and discounts that may also apply to your bill. We use Comparison price to compare your bill against all the other plans available and relevant for you in the market. Generally, the Bill price and Comparison price will be the same value, but not always. Here's why these can sometimes display different values. Balance brought forward If there was a credit or debit balance on your account at the start of the billing period, then the final bill price will include that credit or debit. Bill Hero compares on the charges and credits accrued during the billing period, independently of the debit or credit balance for your account at the start of the billing period. We do not include the balance brought forward in the comparison price. Prepayments It's becoming increasingly common that the most competitively priced plans include a prepayment component. Bill Hero bases the comparison on the costs associated with your actual consumption over the billing period, regardless if you've pre-paid for some or all of that consumption. Concessions Concession schemes vary by state, and are dynamically calculated on the base bill price rather than a fixed concession amount. This means that Bill Hero cannot assume the dollar value of a concession present in your bill will also apply to the alternative plans we calculate pricing for. Bill Hero handles this by adding-back any concession present in your bill to find the base price, then we compare on that base price. This allows us to find the best-priced plan for you, excluding concessions. Your eligibility for your concession will not change no matter which retailer and plan you switch to, but the dollar value for your concession credit under that new plan will be different. The best-priced plan excluding concession will still be the best-priced plan after the concession has been recalculated and applied. Bill Hero treats the Queensland Electricity asset ownership dividend as a concession. Once-off fees and credits Your bill can include various one-time fees and charges including credit card processing fees, meter reconfiguration fees, late payment fees, etc. It can also include one-time credits like welcome credits. These kinds of fees and credits do not relate to your consumption or bill period duration, and by definition, they will not apply to future bills, because they are 'one-time' elements. We do not include these kinds of fees and credits in the comparison price