Eon energy reviews: Give your feedback

Completed my move away from E.ON (due to non competitive prices at the end of a collective deal). Final bill has been produced 14 days after the leaving date so small credit due back within 10 days.
Quick turn around and the final bill was exactly as expected.

Over the two and a quarter years of being a customer, the only minor complaint has been the direct debit being moved upwards when not necessary. But you can adjust that online yourself.

@Malc/Helen E.ON Reps
Seeing all the changes being done to the look of the website, I'm glad to leave as the new look makes for more mouse clicking to get where you want to be. Not a fan of this new look at all.
If you get price competitive I would return in the future though but I'd still hate the website look .

Quick update to say that the credit balance was repaid into bank account 7 days after the final bill was produced.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc wrote: »

Hello Eggatha and welcome to the Forums.

I'm sorry you feel your complaint has been poorly handled. As you're not happy with our response/resolution, you've done the right thing in referring this to the Energy Ombudsman. Their decision will be binding on us but not on you....

Just to clarify the situation, the ombudsman's resolution is only binding upon a supplier IF the customer accepts such resolution in full and final settlement of the complaint.

It would appear from this other thread
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=5665198
that Eggatha has now elected to reject that proposed resolution from the ombudsman too.

So that's the end of it ... unless Eggatha gets a court order (and I can't see that happening)

Thank you for linking to this thread Malc- I'm still getting the hang of navigation on here

When I eventually got to the bottom of what happened, it transpired that EON had set up two accounts with different numbers. We paid a bill over the phone using a debit card (the bill itself was unexpected, as we'd understood that we'd been on a dual fuel direct debit scheme and we knew that we'd had been paying direct debits). Unknown to us, the call handler apparently applied the payment to the wrong account before merging the accounts together, and we have been told that the disputed balance was never paid off when we made the payment. As you have said, any balance owed should have been transferred to the live account when the accounts were merged; we understood that the payment we made cleared the disputed balance before merging took place so there was no debt to transfer. EON now claim that they didn't apply the payment made to the in-debt account. Obviously we have no way of checking that, because the account ceased to exist as far as we knew- until the day that the letter threatening action for non-payment arrived, over 3 years later.

The above is a very, very long story cut short, and summarises a protracted correspondence with a complaints department who couldn't understand the case at all. It worries me greatly that nobody in the complaints resolution team (or, presumably, the account management department) could understand their own payment and accounting system until I pieced things together from our own documents.

Frankly, I'm sorry that I ever bothered looking through my own documentation in a bid to resolve it, because as soon as I unearthed the possibility of EON having mismanaged payments to the two accounts and messing up the merging process, a member of the complaints team transferred funds without our agreement from our live EON account (not bank account) to pay the disputed bill. We have still never seen any evidence from EON that this amount was ever actually owed- as far as we were concerned, we'd paid the bill three years previously and had a receipt for it- let alone given options to pay off in installments, as the regulations state we should have the chance to do.

The licensing standards oblige suppliers to review accounts annually, and update customers with new payment arrangements. Over a period of three years, EON failed to notify us of any outstanding debt (debt that we couldn't possibly have been aware of, since we'd been given a receipt for paying it) and I believe that this therefore breaches their licensing agreement.

That said, my concern now is the bigger picture. I had understood that we were protected by the back-billing regulations and the licensing standards. However, it would appear that suppliers have free rein to mismanage payments and accounts, fail to meet their obligations to annually review accounts, and demand enormous sums many years after customers have paid the bill, as long as the original bill was sent within 12 months of energy use.

I will be reporting what I believe to be a breach of the licensing standards (failure to review accounts annually) to OFGEM- I know that they cannot intervene in our particular case, but they should have the opportunity to investigate EON. I will also be asking OFGEM to consider protecting consumers by extending the back-billing regulations to prevent customers being forced to pay for a supplier's accounting error which is over 12 months old. Finally, I will be contacting as many consumer groups as possible to raise awareness of this loophole, as I don't think customers are aware of the limitations of the back-billing regulations.

Whilst i agree it doesn't sound like you have been treated well Eggatha, i think you might have a slight misconception.
I believe the back-billing regulations relate to live accounts which you say have been paid by a Direct Debit. Whereas closed accounts with no live gas or electricity can be chased for outstanding balance for up to 5 years. If that amount was outstanding on the closed account when the accounts were merged they are able to pursue that payment.