Faulty Eon Meter led to a very high Estimate

katymcduk

December 2010 I had been contacted by Eon regarding a faulty meter. They had not had any electric readings since October 2008.

I arranged to have a new one installed on 29th December. And later got the following email:

When a meter is deemed faulty, the usage is estimated by the meter readers, this is done to strict industry regulations.

I can confirm that your meter stopped around 9 October 2008, from this date, you have only been charged a small amount of usage and standing charge.

The meter readers have only estimated usage from 03 December 2009 to when the meter was changed on 29 December 2010.

A new statement has been generated which you will receive within the next 10 working days

I can confirm that your balance is £795.28, this includes usage up to 19 January 2011.

Once looking into how eon had estimated this bill i found that from December 2009 - January 2010 they had estimated i used £210 IN ONE MONTH!!! I sent an email explaining that i didn't undersatnd how they estimated it to be this much. I recieved this in reply:

Firstly, please except my apologies that the faulty meter was not spotted earlier.

To go through the points in your email, we do not personally restrict access to any of our meters and see it as a joint responsibility to read and check the meters. In some cases I have come across, I am aware that some letting agents lock meter cupboards which it is your responsibility to obtain a key from them to access the meter.

Previous to the fault you were paying £71 per month, which was more realistic amount to pay for energy at the time, you were incorrectly refunded £291.87 on 16 April 2010 and the direct debit was lowered to only £32 per month, which is too low.

As advised previously, there is an industry regulation in place, where a meter is found faulty, a third independent party will estimate the yearly usage. The regulation does not take into account usage after the meter has been changed. This does form part of our terms and conditions under section 5 which I have attached.

When the meter reading is given to us from the 3rd party, we bill the usage for whole period of the fault and spread over the whole period, I do understand this can be frustrating but it will look like we have billed higher usage in the summer than what you normally use.

Your meter stopped around 9 October 2008 as you were only charged £5.57 for the period from 9 October 2008 to 8 April 2009 excluding VAT, adjustments and standing charge. To take some responsibly for the delay in recognising the fault the estimated usage starts on 3 December 2009 meaning you had free electricity for 14 months from 9 October 2008 to 3 December 2009.

I can't work out how a third party can estimate this as the meter reading for the 1st month that the new meter went in was only £38.16 per month. I live by myself, travel alot, only have the heater on for about 1 out of 12 months.

Im not saying i wont pay it but i refuse to pay it when the estimate has been plucked out of thin air!

Please Help me.

Katymcduk

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Hi katymcduk,

There is a department within E.ON that will deal with accounts that have had a stopped meter.

I think the best thing to do would be to call them and ask them to go through the calculations with you.

If you email me with your details using the email address in my profile page and can provide further details.

Helena

katymcduk

I have called the person that has delbt with my faulty meter and they were the responses i got. Everyone i speak to over the phone just doesn't listen to my problem and just keep repeating that the estimate is worked out by a 3rd party even though its not what im calling about. I do have the breakdown on my Eon energy account online and that is where i got the £210 for one month from!

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Hi katymcduk,

I think you may need to escalate your complaint as you have spoken to an agent twice and this has not been resolved.

I would advise you to follow the complaints procedure on the bill, a complaint handler will take ownership of your account and discuss this with you.

Helena

mattcanary

I would add that it is certainly not the job of a meter reader to estimate someone's usage if their meter is faulty. That is garbage. I work as a meter reader (not Eon) and we would add a note to our handheld machine stating the situation. This then gets sent to the offices to investigate the matter.

t4mof

mattcanary wrote: »

I would add that it is certainly not the job of a meter reader to estimate someone's usage if their meter is faulty. That is garbage. I work as a meter reader (not Eon) and we would add a note to our handheld machine stating the situation. This then gets sent to the offices to investigate the matter.

It won't be the meter reader estimating the usage, it will be the system that processes the meter reads before sending the read to the supplier for billing.

This is to ensure the supplier are paying for the same amount of usage they are billing for.

katymcduk

t4mof wrote: »

It won't be the meter reader estimating the usage, it will be the system that processes the meter reads before sending the read to the supplier for billing.

This is to ensure the supplier are paying for the same amount of usage they are billing for.

It wasn't even Eon that have estimated my bill, it was a third party. But they wont tell me where they get the estimate from. I thought the logical way would be to just quote the price i was paying per month from the years before my meter stopped working but i dont know how they managed to get 210 pounds in one month when i never used anything close to that living by myself!

sweetnorthenlass

if you PM me I will send you all the letters i had to write to eon. had the same thing. ended up taking months to solve and really stressed me out... i ended up leaving and the cancelled their bill

[Deleted User]

katymcduk wrote: »

It wasn't even Eon that have estimated my bill, it was a third party. But they wont tell me where they get the estimate from. I thought the logical way would be to just quote the price i was paying per month from the years before my meter stopped working but i dont know how they managed to get 210 pounds in one month when i never used anything close to that living by myself!

The letter states you had an incorrect refund

katymcduk

t4mof wrote: »

Yes, the 3rd party will be their Data Collectors (meter readers and data processors). To ensure they are paying for the energy that they bill for, all reads have to be validated by the Data Collectors (not the meter readers themselves but the data processing side of it). This will have been estimated from previous data held on that system - it's not plucked out of thin air.

Without actually seeing the bill it's difficult to know why that has translated into £210 for one month. I would assume your bill would have covered the whole period? From how I understand it, your total charges are £795 from December 09 to January 11 - which works out at an average of £61 a month which is in line with your original usage before the incorrect refund when you were paying £71 a month. Or have I misunderstood?

The £795 was after everything that i have been paying. I was in credit of £214 so it was over £1000 in total. £210 in one month is can not be right as i live by myself in a one bedroom flat, never put the heaters on and travel alot.

katymcduk

[quote=[Deleted User];41066150]The letter states you had an incorrect refund[/QUOTE]

Yes the email does state that i had an incorrect refund but even with that taken into account that was for a years usage and before the meter got changed i was in credit of £214.