EON Direct debit set up but payments not collected.. where do i stand!?

maccervoy

Can anyone shed some light on this situation for me?

About 18 months ago we moved into our new home and changed our energy supply to EON, we have one direct debit set up for £19 a month for electricity and set up a direct of about £40 for our gas.

We checked and had received the letter from EON stating that the direct debit for £40 is in place and our bank details show that it is still set up... however.... we recently had a large bill for our power after a meter reader came around.We had a letter from eon saying that they will readjust our payments to £220 pm and when asked why so high they informed us that we're only paying £19 a month!

So.... where do we stand with this, as we just assumed out payments were coming out of our bank , but apparently they werent and now we have this huge bill of over £800 to pay!!...

As this is eons fault for not collecting this money when they clearly stated they would, are there any laws or previous cases where they give some king of concession on payments?....

please help!!

kind regards

Neal

withabix

You are liable to pay for the gas/electricity you have used.

You should however be able to request that you pay back the arrears over a longer period, as it is clearly their fault.

Always a good idea to check your bank statements monthly or more often online, as you never know who might be milking your bank account.

macman

How could you not notice £40 a month not going out over 18 months?
You have to look at it this way-you have had a free loan off them over 18 months totalling nearly £800.
Ask them to spread the repayments over a longer period.

Cardew

Did you have gas bills during this 18 month? If you didn't you have a case to get away with some of your debt.

If you did get bills, did you check them?

Loads of people come on MSE and say similar to you, we didn't notice we were not paying etc!!

It seems most of them are really asking if they can get away without paying!

MrsTinks

£220 is a bit much - a reasonable offer to them would be to repay the debt over the period it was accrued or if you can then over a shorter period because you can't change suppliers so long as you have debts

Moral of the story though is to check your direct debits - is this the only surprise bill you're going to get? I'd want to know if it was me (But then I have turned compulsive obsessive about my finances and online banking since my lightbulb moment some years ago I feel physically sick if I can't check my bank accounts and see that everything has gone out... not suggesting you should be THAT obsessed but definitely start checking DDs etc regularly even if only to keep an eye on fraud etc)

E.ON_Company_Representative

Hi maccervoy,

This sounds like a nightmare; I hope I can give you some useful advice.

Often when accounts are first set up we quote the monthly amount for each fuel separately. For some reason in this case the gas Direct Debit amount of £40 has been cancelled and not claimed. Have E.ON explained the reason for this cancellation?

If it has definitely been cancelled due to a system error or by a member of E.ON staff and this was not relayed to you at the time, then I feel E.ON should hold some responsibility. You may have a case for some financial reduction to the amount outstanding, however how much would really depend on the finer details.

No matter what the circumstances however I would expect the new Direct Debit amount to be enough to cover your future consumption and be calculated to include the previous underpayments, but in a similar time frame to the error (18 months). This would reduce the new amount to a lower amount than the £220 E.ON has already suggested.

Like any case this will depend on the exact details of what’s happened, whilst E.ON have made mistakes, you have also failed to monitor your payments and as Cardew mentions if bills were sent you have a responsibility to check these also, remember the bills are for your benefit, they’re to ensure your charged correctly and your payments are accurate.

All of theses things will have an impact on the outcome of your query, if you have raised this with us and not had a satisfactory response, please ensure you follow our complaints procedure until an amicable resolution is met.

Any questions please feel free to give me a shout.

Brian