My ongoing EON woes... Advice needed!!!

Missgiggles75

Almost a year ago I switched from BG to EON. at the time of switching I was told by the sales rep that I would never pay more than £88 per month for the duration of the 2 year contract. This was the amount I was paying BG at that time and BG had just announced a price increase, so I thought this was a great deal.

I was happily paying said £88 per month, when I received an email from Eon telling me they were increasing my DD to £180 per month. I rang Eon and was told that for the past 10 months I had been underpaying, dispite never being informed of this matter. In 10 months they had been working off estimates as they had never been to take an actual electricity reading (the meter is located behind the drier so needs my OH to move it! Due to me being on maternity leave I dont get out much!!:))

I strongly opposed this £100 increase, eventually agreeing to pay £110 until this whole issue was sorted. I was contacted a week later when I was asked for my electric reading for the first time. When I gave the guy it, I was told that we had used over £70 electric in a week. I then received a bill saying we had used over 540kWh in a week, when in actual fact the last 30 days total came to 251kWh! It turned out that the 'gentleman' who I spoke to the week previous had entered a completely fictional reading!

Last week I again was contacted by Eon who told me that by complaint had been upheld and they agreed that I had been misold. Their complaints dept offered me a very generous :eek: £20 for my troubles. I obviously refused, explaining that this wouldnt even cover the cost of the phonecalls made to them over the last 5 weeks. I was asked what my ideal resolution would be. I informed the gentleman I would like my 'debt' wiping and to released from the contract so I could return to BG.

He went away and never came back! :rotfl:

Today I was contacted by a new gentleman, who was ringing to offer me 'a fantistic offer' of a cheaper tariff and I can stick with them for another 2 years IF i drop my complaint. After I stopped laughing I politely declined this offer. I explained 'I would rather go cold in winter than stay with Eon'. This made my point very clear im sure.

Eventually he gave me 3 options:
1. An 'Erronous Transfer' back to BG. In which I would be refunded all my payments and a £50 goodwill gesture.

2. Leave Eon and pay the debt off within 12 months.

3. Stay with Eon, accept a 2 year tied in contract and pay the debt off £16 per month. This is the 'fantastic offer' which initially was explained as cheaper but is actually £23 per month more expensive before the £16 per month extra.

I have spoken to BG who have told me that an Erronous transfer can only occur within a month of switching supplier.
BG also said that because I have been misold Eon wipe our account clean and allow me to leave.

Has anyone got any advice/experience in this, as we feel we are now a little out of our depth!!

Thanks x

steph100

If this went to the Ombudsman they would advise that you would need to pay for any energy used, whether that be with EON or British Gas. They would never ask the supplier to clear the whole bill unless it wasnt valid. In this case youve used the energy and they would advise it needs to be paid for. If you decide to remain with EON, you would need to pay them the monies owing but a goodwill gesture in this case would seem appropriate. If you have been misold EON can arrange for your supply to be transferred back to British Gas as an Erroneous Transfer, the 1 month thing is incorrect. EON would then refund all payments you have made to them. However, British Gas would then bill you as though you had never left so you would receive a bill from them for the whole period. You said you were paying BG £80 odd pounds a month and this always covered your usage, you may want to check if you were on a special tariff with BG before you transferred to EON, if you were it would probably be worthwhile getting the Erronous Transfer organsised, as you return to BG as though youd never left you would still enjoy any cheaper tarrif you'd been on. You might also want to have a look at the last 12 months bills you received from BG and compare the actual KWH used with EON's bills to see if you are using more energy. If you are using a lot more since the switch you might want to stay where you are and arrange a payment plan with EON. The £20.00 offered is the Guaranteed Standards Payment for an Erroneous Transfer, however, as it appears you may have been missold I would definately say you could get a bit more from EON especially if you advise you may involve the Ombudsman. Hope this helps.

JimmyTheWig

Missgiggles75 wrote: »

Almost a year ago I switched from BG to EON. at the time of switching I was told by the sales rep that I would never pay more than £88 per month for the duration of the 2 year contract.

Ok, lesson one (for anyone reading) is that this was always going to be a lie.
Was he saying that if you use your tumble dryer constantly, electric heaters running 24/7, electric oven on permantly with the door open, etc, that they were only going to charge you £88 a month?

Lesson two. Compare the cost of the energy you are being sold, not the amount of the direct debit.

Lesson three. Ensure your supplier gets accurate meter readings (whether you read them yourself or the company sends someone to read them) regularly.

Lesson four. Unless you are really, really hacked off with a company, don't bite your nose off to spite your face. Find out what British Gas would charge you for what has been used (give them accurate meter readings) if you get returned to them. Find out what Eon want to charge you. Go with what is lowest. Remember that British Gas have done nothing wrong, so it would be reasonable for them to want all the money straight away if you got transfered back to them. With Eon you have more room to negotiate.

E.ON_Company_Representative

Almost a year ago I switched from BG to EON. at the time of switching I was told by the sales rep that I would never pay more than £88 per month for the duration of the 2 year contract. This was the amount I was paying BG at that time and BG had just announced a price increase, so I thought this was a great deal.

Hi Missgiggles75,

I hope you don't mind me popping on to this thread

First of all I want to apologies for the poor service you've received so far with us, I've just got a few questions to ask

What information did you give us, was it your monthly spend or your annual usage in KWH? Your Direct Debit payments are not fixed and would change if your consumption changed, or if the weather was colder, or if you changed tariff.

I was happily paying said £88 per month, when I received an email from Eon telling me they were increasing my DD to £180 per month. I rang Eon and was told that for the past 10 months I had been underpaying, dispite never being informed of this matter. In 10 months they had been working off estimates as they had never been to take an actual electricity reading (the meter is located behind the drier so needs my OH to move it! Due to me being on maternity leave I dont get out much!!:))

All the bills we send you will show if it’s based on actual or estimated readings, we only have to read customers meters once every two years, but we’re more than happy to take customers own readings or call us, and we’ll send a meter reader out to read your meter.

I strongly opposed this £100 increase, eventually agreeing to pay £110 until this whole issue was sorted. I was contacted a week later when I was asked for my electric reading for the first time. When I gave the guy it, I was told that we had used over £70 electric in a week. I then received a bill saying we had used over 540kWh in a week, when in actual fact the last 30 days total came to 251kWh! It turned out that the 'gentleman' who I spoke to the week previous had entered a completely fictional reading!

Really sorry when you gave us a reading we entered it in wrong, this can be easily fixed and a new amended bill can be sent out to you.

Last week I again was contacted by Eon who told me that by complaint had been upheld and they agreed that I had been misold. Their complaints dept offered me a very generous :eek: £20 for my troubles. I obviously refused, explaining that this wouldnt even cover the cost of the phonecalls made to them over the last 5 weeks. I was asked what my ideal resolution would be. I informed the gentleman I would like my 'debt' wiping and to released from the contract so I could return to BG.

He went away and never came back! :rotfl:

Unfortunately we wouldn't wipe the whole balance off as steph100 said, because it's the energy you've used, I’m really sorry you didn’t get a call back.

Today I was contacted by a new gentleman, who was ringing to offer me 'a fantistic offer' of a cheaper tariff and I can stick with them for another 2 years IF i drop my complaint. After I stopped laughing I politely declined this offer. I explained 'I would rather go cold in winter than stay with Eon'. This made my point very clear im sure.

We shouldn't keep offering you a tariff if it isn't the best deal for you and your complaint should be left open until you're happy.
If you stayed with us, we can spread the balance over 12months, and find the best deal for you, if you wanted to leave us then we can look at spreading the balance.

Eventually he gave me 3 options:
1. An 'Erronous Transfer' back to BG. In which I would be refunded all my payments and a £50 goodwill gesture.

2. Leave Eon and pay the debt off within 12 months.

3. Stay with Eon, accept a 2 year tied in contract and pay the debt off £16 per month. This is the 'fantastic offer' which initially was explained as cheaper but is actually £23 per month more expensive before the £16 per month extra.

I have spoken to BG who have told me that an Erronous transfer can only occur within a month of switching supplier.
BG also said that because I have been misold Eon wipe our account clean and allow me to leave.

Has anyone got any advice/experience in this, as we feel we are now a little out of our depth!!

Thanks x

I hope this helps, if you’ve got any other questions let me know.

Thanks
Amy

jalexa

Missgiggles75 wrote: »

Last week I again was contacted by Eon who told me that by complaint had been upheld and they agreed that I had been misold. Their complaints dept offered me a very generous :eek: £20 for my troubles.

In order for the £20 to be tested as "appropriate" they should have given you a comparison of what you have been charged with E.ON compared with what you would have been charged with BG had you not switched. I fear the difference could be less than you expect but in the absence of the comparison I would not consider the complaint satisfactorily addressed.

On the face of it you have a weak case, however there are some important issues not so far discussed. Over how long a period had £88/month with BG proved adequate? In that period were regular actual readings taken or provided? In particular, when you switched to E.ON do you recall being asked for and providing an actual transfer reading? Given your maternity (congrats:j) have you been spending more time at home with more heating?

Finally, and I hope E.ON Amy is still following, is the "£180 per month" reflective of ongoing consumption or our old supposedly 'reset to history' friend, "sudden excessive hike"?

undaunted

If Eon admitted mis selling in writing I wouldn't agree you have a weak case in entirety but I'd agree that it is unrealistic to think your entire debt will be wiped.

What I think you can reasonably expect is to be left in the same financial position you would have been in had British Gas still supplied you throughout plus perhaps a little compensation for inconvenience.

You could probably agree to pay whatever debt that may leave over the same period it accrued in.

slyonsden

Miss giggles75....did you ever receive or rectify your Eon dispute?

Aswe are now experiencing similar issues...

last october we set up a £70 dd with eon to go monthly...as we are in a 2 bed terrace and not here in the day this seemed reasonable so accepted... all was fine, we were paying the 70 a monthoctober till may2012 ..
£476 was the charge and so left us £150 in debt with eon...but as we hadnt had any word from eon we were now in debt we continued to pay 70 a month..

We then had another energy charge of £302 on aug 9th 2012..... seems although it had been summer as a monthly breakdown we had used more than energy than the winter/spring months....
still not made aware of this by eon they let us carry on paying 70 a month with no warning we were now £252 in debt...

we paid another £70 for our august payment on the 24th, but then got another energy charge of £392 on 31st august 2012! what was going on...we had still not been imformed by eon on this matter and finally in september they sent us a letter upping our direct debit to £97 a month, when i rang to dicuss the customer service was poor and the gentleman madeout he was doing me a favour at that price as we had used more energy than that....wot!!! it had been summer and the last charge u gave us was 3 weeks ago!!!
so concerned of this i took it upon myself to open an online account at which no point was it made clear that this would stop paper bills and we would now be billed monthly......even though the billing had been totally speratic already! i had logged on to track readings as eon seem to think we can sit in all day waiting to get readings when we work...

we were now £564 in debt...again even when i spoke to eon in september they never mentioned this....
we paid our £97 in september but then on october the 20th i rang eon as i had started a new job and now got paid at the end of the month i was concerned about making the monthly payment and so wanted to inform them payment would be late... i am glad i rand as the women now stated my next bill is "224 ounds anyway.not £97!!! as october charges of £140 had gone on and our debt was now £608! i couldnt believe it.... the lady then informed me 'she could help me out' lowering it
but then paying 110 usage and 40 to pay off debt i knew nothing about and seems totally made up.... i accepted at the time150 on the 1st...this was arranged... she tolde me to ring my bank to inform them the up and coming dd would be moved by eon, i am not sure y i had to do this, she said it was because it was below the 14 days they need to swap a date... so it was agreed...150 on 1st nov...done...
oh no it wasnt i went to my bank account 24th and eon had tried to take out £224! which wasnt in the account so this has now bounced.... i rang the custome services starght away at 8 am and was on the phone to the manager for 30 mins which i need to claim back.... he was making out i was lying about what the girl on the 20th had agreed and made up bollucks excuses for the randomnedd of charges..... he then said he would have to listen back to the phone call and get back to us... i told after 6 AS WE WORK! ... they never rang but rang the next day as we were working left a message after the £224 as i had now cancelled the direct debit till the matter got resolved..refusing to pay thier phone charges we are going to write to them letter form as a complaint.... and not pay till the matter is resolved over 12 months the total they have requested from us has been:
1409 and we have paid 1021 so thats a debt of 300 odd....where have they plucked 600 from.. i have tracked my bills and they have got that figure somehow..

i have logged names and ids of people i have spoke too and gathered as much evidence as possible...

any advise would be great....

really want to swap suppliers but this probably wont be possible with the denbt.aaaaahhhhhh help!

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Hi slyonsden

I'm sorry you're unhappy with the service you've received.

Opening a complaint is certainly the way to go. This will allow all your issues to be looked at and if, after 56 days, you're unhappy with the proposed resolution you can refer the matter to the Ombudsman for an independent review.

Has your account always been billed to actual meter readings or have some previous bills been estimated?

If estimates have been involved, it may well be you've received catch up bills once actual readings were received. This sometimes gives a false impression of when the energy was actually used.

It certainly looks as though a mistake was made when setting up the Direct Debit for £150.

If it was too late to set this up for the next payment, it should've been set for the following month. A one-off payment could then have been taken for the missing month. This could've been done through the existing Direct Debit arrangement or by debit/credit card.

What shouldn't have happened was the arrangement for £224 being left in place and then told to contact your bank. I'm really sorry this was done.

Once sorted, we'll be happy to spread the outstanding balance over a more manageable period.

Just a couple of points about online accounts.

All online accounts are paperless billing. This is highlighted on the first page when the account is initially registered with the website.

It's also in the terms and conditions box that you have to tick before being able to move on to the next stage.

Also, online accounts are billed quarterly.

Sorry again for the difficulties you've experienced. Let me know if I can help further as happy to do so.

Malc