No bill for a year then bam, big bill!

pjacko75

Hello,

This year my mind has been elsewhere due to the birth of my daughter. Earlier this week I realized I hadn't had a bill from Eon regarding my dual fuel account. I calked them up to ask why and all they could tell me was that I was £533 in credit. This couldnt be right could it? The young guy on the other end of the phone couldn't understand it either.

So I went online and signed up to the Eon site and he was right, I was £533 in credit. Only problem is I see i haven't been billed since Dec 2010! I called them again and they claim my account does show I should be quarterly billed but somehow the account had been suspended. After giving them a meter reading it went from me being £533 in credit to me owing them £172! I was fuming! I asked for an explanation as to how this has happened but was told I would get an answer via a call within 24 hours. Still no call now 48 hours later but noticed a £15 gratis credit is now on my account!

Personally i believe this is their mistake. With me not being billed to see where I am up to with my account, I have never been give the opportunity over the past 10 months to increase my direct debit to counter any money I could have ended up owing.

I would like to know if there is anything that could be done about something which was not my fault that has resulted in me owing them so much? After the promise of a call back and a cheap offer of £15 off my bill I believe they should be doing more than this lousy token gesture.

Any feedback would be highly appreciated!

DUTR

You have used it, so you have to pay, the accounts are in credit from the time the 1st payment is recieved, then when a bill is issued , the debit is reduced from the credit on the account.
Many people have families and manage to pay the bills , so there is no reason why you and your partner are not able to do the same.

HappyMJ

What do you want?

I'd increase your direct debit to pay it off over the next 10 months. Last December was very cold I think everyone used a lot more than average.

pjacko75

Look, I'm not daft enough to miss the point in that I used the energy so I pay for it. I just think that after 3 months I should have had a bill to see of I needed to up my payments or not. Same 3 months later and so on.

Now it's nearly November and money I'd prefer to be able to spend on my children for Christmas/Birthdays is going to be spent upping my direct debit to cover the yearly bills missed and then a further increase to get me up to the monthly average they say I have to pay so I'd neither be in credit/debit. I'm now paying nearly £100 a month instead of £60 which to my family on our income is a lot more than we would have liked.

My original argument is that if I would have had a bill every 3 months I'd know where I stood. Now I do I think an explanation is in order after a promise of a call within 24 hours.

Not after it wiping clean or any sympathy, I posted here to get advice or see if anybody else may have experienced this with Eon or any other supplier

pothole50

Just a thought they have now billed you from last Dec 2010 have you checked that they have not charged you at the new rate increases.
If you only used £705 then your DD should not be £100 a month. British gas tried this with me last year up from £43 to £69 a month I queried it on the phone dropped to £59, still not happy best way is to email them you can get you point across better with a few fiqures written down. Other posters are correct you use it you expect to pay for it, but you got £15 out of them and your DD should be about £70.

Antispam

Whatever the rights and wrongs the fact remains you used the energy and it will have to be paid for. The back billing code will not apply the the best you can hope for is reach an agreement to pay over time. If you knew you hadnt been billed surely you would have put something by. Even being in credit and had the winter we had last most bills now are over 1k per annum unless your a very low user, we have also had huge price rises since December. Ring your supplier and try and reach an agreement

£80 - 100 per month direct debt is pretty normal now

DUTR

pjacko75 wrote: »

Look, I'm not daft enough to miss the point in that I used the energy so I pay for it. I just think that after 3 months I should have had a bill to see of I needed to up my payments or not. Same 3 months later and so on.

Now it's nearly November and money I'd prefer to be able to spend on my children for Christmas/Birthdays is going to be spent upping my direct debit to cover the yearly bills missed and then a further increase to get me up to the monthly average they say I have to pay so I'd neither be in credit/debit. I'm now paying nearly £100 a month instead of £60 which to my family on our income is a lot more than we would have liked.

My original argument is that if I would have had a bill every 3 months I'd know where I stood. Now I do I think an explanation is in order after a promise of a call within 24 hours.

Not after it wiping clean or any sympathy, I posted here to get advice or see if anybody else may have experienced this with Eon or any other supplier

It depends on your price plan, my bills are every 6 months since switching to online 17 or whatever they call it, but you should get 2 per year,ring them and they can issue you a bill straight away.

E.ON_Company_Rep_Chris

Hi pjacko75

I’m sorry that you’ve got this to sort out so soon after having your little girl. I understand that not receiving a bill from us for a while hasn’t been number one on your list of priorities.

Your post suggests that you were paying £60.00 a month by Direct Debit so built up a credit balance. We weren’t sending any bills so we hadn’t actually charged you for any gas and electricity or reviewed your payments for you since December 2010.

We bill our Direct Debit customers six monthly now, so you should have had a bill from us in June. Now that you’re registered online it reverts to quarterly billing because you can give us your own meter readings.

I’m disappointed to see that you haven’t had a call back or any explanation as to why your billing was suspended- or how we’ve calculated your new monthly payment. This ought to have been logged as a complaint and certainly appears to have been treated as such (with a credit to your account for poor service). Can you call back and ask to speak to a manager?

From what I can tell it looks like your payments would have gone up anyway because our two price increases since your last bill, this in itself will have a significant impact at this time of year so we need to look into what we can do to help get those payments down.

Under the circumstances we’ll give you as long as it took to send you a bill to repay your £172.00 balance, I make that £17.00 a month for arrears. The rest is to cover your forecast use, you can get this amount down my making sure that you’re on the right tariff, have you looked into one of our online deals?

I hope this helps a little pjacko75 , start off by speaking to one of our managers and let me know how you get on.

Amanda