Eon trying to claim £6,500 payment off me due to their error!!

kippen_noedel

100wpm wrote: »

When I bought the house I had sight of the previous utility bills being paid by previous owners and they had said the electricity was reasonable, the water bills average and the oil to heat the property was pretty good too.

Have to admit I was already very surprised at your usage, now that I see it's all electric, & your home is heated by oil, I am even more surprised.

Is this a commercial farm ?

Premier_2

100wpm wrote: »

In October 08 EON estimated my reading at 26453. I called them to give them correct meter reading as I don't like nasty surprises of owing them more when I get my revised bill. I told them correct reading was 269910. They told me (as they always do when I phone) to ignore last figure so I said fine (meant nothing to me). Then got a revised bill through from them saying "we have used your reading of 26991 and you are £11.20 in credit". Great. So, in Jan 09 they estimated it again and put down 27857. Get a letter in Feb 09 saying they are trying to obtain up to date electricity meter details and can I provide them once again with the serial no. and reading. Gave them new reading of 286396. Heard nothing until get a phone call from Customer Service rep in April 09 saying to be prepared as will be receiving an extra large bill shortly as they have been taking meter readings down incorrectly for a number of years.

In June 09 receive a lovely bill stating "latest electricity reading of 305013 read by you on 16 June 09 means you are now £5,880.72 in debit" !!

My meter reading today is just over 330000 so you can see that there is definitely a good bit of consumption there which I'm not disputing (until I find out what it is here that's taking it all up) but the fact i am being made to pay for someone else's errors when I have been totally innocent in all of this. Its such a large amount to ask to pay up that I don't know what to do.

So all your latest bill have been based on your own customer readings. 6 digit readings despite the supplier repeatedly informing you to ignore the last digit?

Perhaps they decided you were right and they were wrong so have opted to bill you accordingly

25000kWh in 6 months is about £3000. i.e. £6000 per year. I think you'd know about that. An outdoor olympic sized heated swimming pool in the garden perhaps?

Follow the suppliers advice and that reduces to just £600p.a., much more agreeable I'm sure you would agree.
But the customer is always right, eh?

DVardysShadow

100wpm wrote: »

In October 08 EON estimated my reading at 26453. I called them to give them correct meter reading as I don't like nasty surprises of owing them more when I get my revised bill. I told them correct reading was 269910. They told me (as they always do when I phone) to ignore last figure so I said fine (meant nothing to me). Then got a revised bill through from them saying "we have used your reading of 26991 and you are £11.20 in credit". Great. So, in Jan 09 they estimated it again and put down 27857. Get a letter in Feb 09 saying they are trying to obtain up to date electricity meter details and can I provide them once again with the serial no. and reading. Gave them new reading of 286396. Heard nothing until get a phone call from Customer Service rep in April 09 saying to be prepared as will be receiving an extra large bill shortly as they have been taking meter readings down incorrectly for a number of years.

In June 09 receive a lovely bill stating "latest electricity reading of 305013 read by you on 16 June 09 means you are now £5,880.72 in debit" !!

My meter reading today is just over 330000 so you can see that there is definitely a good bit of consumption there which I'm not disputing (until I find out what it is here that's taking it all up) but the fact i am being made to pay for someone else's errors when I have been totally innocent in all of this. Its such a large amount to ask to pay up that I don't know what to do.

This is crazy. But to me, it shows the point of keeping an eagle eye on the meter and understanding what it says - hence I say "The meter. The blddy meter." You are running at about 5000 kWh/ month according to your readings.

I suggest you take a good quality picture of you meter and post it here.

dogshome

Hi 100 wordsPM - 3 phase power is installed in Industrial permises that are using machinery with high power demands, and a Farm could well be in this catagory

To have such a meter in Domestic premises is highly unusual, but over time businesses develop and the time could have come when the Farm needed 3 phase to operate new machinery, and the easy thing for the energy supplier to do would have been to beef up the wiring to the existing meter point, then change the original standard meter located in your house, to a 3 Phase meter.

Once the 3 phase supply was in, then it would have been up to the farms owners to distribute it around the farm to where it was needed.
So the question arises - As almost certainly your meter was supplying power to other buildings on this farm site - Is it still doing so?

If there are other residential or commercial premises on this farm site, switch off the power in the midde of the week and go away for two days, then on your return see who complains. BUT THIS IS NOT conclusive as the power feed for other buildings may not be wired thro' your fuse box, but fed directly from the meter to a fuse box located in the building where the power is being used. Getting in a local electrician to look at the wiring set-up is a more cetain answer
All the best

Payless_2

dogshome wrote: »

Hi 100 wordsPM - 3 phase power is installed in Industrial permises that are using machinery with high power demands, and a Farm could well be in this catagory

To have such a meter in Domestic premises is highly unusual, but over time businesses develop and the time could have come when the Farm needed 3 phase to operate new machinery, and the easy thing for the energy supplier to do would have been to beef up the wiring to the existing meter point, then change the original standard meter located in your house, to a 3 Phase meter.

Once the 3 phase supply was in, then it would have been up to the farms owners to distribute it around the farm to where it was needed.
So the question arises - As almost certainly your meter was supplying power to other buildings on this farm site - Is it still doing so?

If there are other residential or commercial premises on this farm site, switch off the power in the midde of the week and go away for two days, then on your return see who complains. BUT THIS IS NOT conclusive as the power feed for other buildings may not be wired thro' your fuse box, but fed directly from the meter to a fuse box located in the building where the power is being used. Getting in a local electrician to look at the wiring set-up is a more cetain answer
All the best

That's frightening.

100wpm

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Brian wrote: »

Hi 100wpm

The problem with this is, it’s so difficult to actually say what the cause is or what’s stopped this being picked up for so long. The issue with the incorrect bills may pre-date your occupancy and possibly even the account holder before that.

Essentially your previous (and the previous owners) bills may appear reasonable, yet they have been wrong all a long, so there is no comparison for what is reasonable and what isn’t. What size quarterly bills have you been paying if I may ask? What sort of sized property are we talking about?

If the total bill you are in dispute over is around £6000, then the last years worth of usage can’t accurately be £4200, I would from your figures suggest, I either have missed something or something else isn’t accurate here. How long does the new (disputed) bill cover?

Sorry for all the questions.

But yes the best thing is contact the Directors’ Office, call the complaints line first, quicker resolution. The response time for email and letter will be longer due to the seasonal backlog.

Brian

Hi Brian. I mentioned that this has been going on for around 10 years according to E.ON and I have lived in this property 3 years at the end of this month.

The new bill I believe relates to the last 2 years going back from June 09 and then the remainder relates to June towards end of 2010 equalling £6,500 approx. I don't think any of these figures are accurate anymore and need to look into this further with the meter and useage. It is a good size property so yes, you would expect to pay a little more than my previous property and on the bills I have been. However with various economy measures taken at the property I assumed this was why the bills appeared reasonable and indeed previous owners commented that the electricity bills were reasonable too. I have previously been paying around £70.00 a month for my electric at the property. At my previous house I paid around £50.00 so you will see I did not see a problem given my meter was read professionally regularly by EON's staff and the same applied to the previous owners (and probably the owners before them too !).

100wpm

kippen_noedel wrote: »

Have to admit I was already very surprised at your usage, now that I see it's all electric, & your home is heated by oil, I am even more surprised.

Is this a commercial farm ?

It is not a commercial farm just domestic. I have been told recently by an electrician that I have a three phase meter system which goes in commercial properties normally. I don't have an idea about any of this technical stuff as you can probably now realise from my posts but surprisingly neither did EON's professional meter reading staff too (or their telephone staff when i give them a six figure meter reading).

100wpm

Premier wrote: »

So all your latest bill have been based on your own customer readings. 6 digit readings despite the supplier repeatedly informing you to ignore the last digit?

Perhaps they decided you were right and they were wrong so have opted to bill you accordingly

25000kWh in 6 months is about £3000. i.e. £6000 per year. I think you'd know about that. An outdoor olympic sized heated swimming pool in the garden perhaps?

Follow the suppliers advice and that reduces to just £600p.a., much more agreeable I'm sure you would agree.
But the customer is always right, eh?

Yes, they probably thought why does this lady always give us 6 figures when we only need 5 (which they state that they have no recollection of me doing this to their staff - funny how those recordings of telephone conversations actually disappear conveniently isn't it!!) or maybe they actually trained their staff to read meters correctly after 10 years! Who knows?! All I know is that if this is price of electric for me going forward I need to look into useage here which is my problem I know and I'm not disputing that but I feel aggrieved at having to pay a huge bill to them down to their own errors for back payments !!

Thanks for your post.

100wpm

dogshome wrote: »

Hi 100 wordsPM - 3 phase power is installed in Industrial permises that are using machinery with high power demands, and a Farm could well be in this catagory

To have such a meter in Domestic premises is highly unusual, but over time businesses develop and the time could have come when the Farm needed 3 phase to operate new machinery, and the easy thing for the energy supplier to do would have been to beef up the wiring to the existing meter point, then change the original standard meter located in your house, to a 3 Phase meter.

Once the 3 phase supply was in, then it would have been up to the farms owners to distribute it around the farm to where it was needed.
So the question arises - As almost certainly your meter was supplying power to other buildings on this farm site - Is it still doing so?

If there are other residential or commercial premises on this farm site, switch off the power in the midde of the week and go away for two days, then on your return see who complains. BUT THIS IS NOT conclusive as the power feed for other buildings may not be wired thro' your fuse box, but fed directly from the meter to a fuse box located in the building where the power is being used. Getting in a local electrician to look at the wiring set-up is a more cetain answer
All the best

thanks v m. There is a working farm directly behind ours - our farm house is not commercial. Our farm house used to be owned by the father of the farm next door if that makes sense about 20 years ago i.e. the farm next door is still owned by his son and is currently a working farm. That could be something to look into now you mention it! I wonder what he is paying each month out of interest compared to ours (if at all???!)

Our house is a fairly large house so again our new bills might be correct but I still don't see what we are using in the house each day that makes that kind of monthly bill !

ap2000

Get an Owl electricity monitor to monitor live the consumption and the hourly/daily usage, such as:

http://www.theowl.com/index.php?page=about-owl