EON Saveonline 3 & Saveonline 9

Kev27

I also called them today and got a really lovely girl who has sorted the change for 13th September without any questions asked!

Pincher

I think heads will roll in E.On over this reservation issue.

The point of the online automated mechanism is that it saves man hours. I assume some "helpful" call centre staff overstepped her authority, and did the reservation switch manually, which obviously would take some time, as it is a non-automated process. Let us say it takes 15 man-minutes to do this. You can imagine how many 15 mintues E.On call centre staff will have to spend on this activity.

So, the first reaction is damage limitation, by denying reservation is possible. As the dams crumble around them, and they are spending 30 minutes on denials per call, with the supervisors being demanded for each call, they must be calling an emergency meeting, where they realise the fiasco will damage their reputation for customer service, and so they have to allow it after all.

Let us say 500,000 households decide to "reserve" SaveOnline
9 by calling, instead of by internet, and the extra man-hour is 15 minutes per account, that's 125,000 man hours.

Now, assuming they withdraw SaveOnline 9 on 12th September, and a better tariff (FixOnline 10 or SaveOnline 10, wholesale prices falling) appears on 13th September, 500,000 households will call up to cancel the reservation, using the 14 day cooling off period. Let us say it takes 15 minutes to undo the reservation.

That's 250,000 man hours, assuming £10 per man hour, (£6 minimum wage, plus HR costs), £2.5 million pounds because one call centre staff decided to be helpful.

There are ancillary impacts like their call response time lengthens like a rubber band, possibly ending with the call system crashing, and the customer service computer grinds to a halt. Customer service metric goes splat.

Pincher

Just realised.

If I was E.On, I would withdraw SaveOnline 9 tonight.

Lorian

I rang earlier today as saveonline9 doesn't appear as an option for me online. I'm currently on saveonline 8, have been for a few weeks.

The nice lady I spoke to confirmed that saveonline9 would save me money, but only from september 13th and asked If I'd like to switch over on that day, which I did.

I trust this was the right thing to do, I wasn't sure, haven't really being paying attention.

Deneb

Pincher wrote: »

The point of the online automated mechanism is that it saves man hours. I assume some "helpful" call centre staff overstepped her authority, and did the reservation switch manually, which obviously would take some time, as it is a non-automated process. Let us say it takes 15 man-minutes to do this. You can imagine how many 15 mintues E.On call centre staff will have to spend on this activity.

I don't know about 15 minutes. I was on the phone less than two minutes this afternoon. After verifying my account, and me explaining what I wanted to do, it took the very pleasant and helpful lady about ten seconds to process a post dated switch and have it come up as confirmed on her screen.

Mr_K

I took the decision to switch SOL9 now, rather then waiting till September. A couple of weeks in the summer isn't going to make much difference. Might be paranoid, but will EON honour these 'post dated' switches if SOL9 gets withdrawn ?

Pincher

Deneb wrote: »

I don't know about 15 minutes. I was on the phone less than two minutes this afternoon. After verifying my account, and me explaining what I wanted to do, it took the very pleasant and helpful lady about ten seconds to process a post dated switch and have it come up as confirmed on her screen.

After deciding to say yes, they must have streamlined the procedure as well. It doesn't take much time to put you on a list, for processing later. Before, they were just saying NO.

Scenario A
=======

All customers doing it online = zero minute of call centre time.

Scenario B
=======

Now that the exception has been made, and customers feel they have a right to call up and get a reserved switch, it's not just SaveOnline 9 they will do this for, they can and will do it for future tariffs.

There is also the possibility of cancellation before the reservation date comes. Since there is no online option to cancel a reserved switch, there is another call. It's fine for the customer, who just wastes a few minutes reserving and cancelling, but E.On was expecting to spend ZERO amount of time on this previously.



Now they have to raise a software change request,
and some programmer will have to come up with an automated switch reservation mechanism, so that the customer can make a reservation and cancel it online.

Hammer_Time

Hi All,
I just phone eon and asked to transfer from Saveonline 5 to Saveonline 9 on the 13 Sept 2011, which they did no problem. However I asked what will happen if SOL9 is pulled before this date, I was assured that SOL9 will still be available on 13 Sept 2011.

dslator

Just called EON who said I couldn't change to Saveonline9 on the phone!!! They said other people have been allowed to do it on the phone cos the website was down!!! She told me to switch online on 13th September !!!

Rogeradam

Dslator, unless eon have just changed their policy, which I very much doubt, you were misinformed about the need to change online. See post ♯81 from LLyllyll. Phone 0845 301 5933 (online internet support team) and you can get the change done on the date you want.