e-on incorrect meter readings

Mike1946

Hi

On the 24th August 2012 I received a letter from e-on's customer operations asking me to telephone to confirm the electricity meter make and model, together with the meter serial number. They also asked for the meter reading noting any zeros and including any digits in red after the decimal point.

I collected the information they required and rang and told them the information the same day the letter arrived.

The person at customer operations told me that e-on had been misinformed by the meter company and that since 1997 when the meter was fitted that they had told us, and there meter readers, to read the first five of the six digit number on the meter. I now have to read all six digits and that I will have to pay for the extra electricity back dated to the beginning of the year.

I wrote to the customer operations department on the same day, stating that there problem with the meter readings was no fault of ours and that I would begrudgingly pay the extra from the date we received the letter on the 24th August 2012, but refused to pay the extra before this date.

I have now recieved a bill from e-on, for £2,216.55 back dated to 5th July 2011. Are they within their rights to do this or should I stand my ground and only pay the new price for electricity from the reading on the 24th August 2012?

Your comments would be appreciated.

Regards

Mike

Wywth

Mike1946 wrote: »

Hi

On the 24th August 2012 I received a letter from e-on's customer operations asking me to telephone to confirm the electricity meter make and model, together with the meter serial number. They also asked for the meter reading noting any zeros and including any digits in red after the decimal point.

I collected the information they required and rang and told them the information the same day the letter arrived.

The person at customer operations told me that e-on had been misinformed by the meter company and that since 1997 when the meter was fitted that they had told us, and there meter readers, to read the first five of the six digit number on the meter. I now have to read all six digits and that I will have to pay for the extra electricity back dated to the beginning of the year.

I wrote to the customer operations department on the same day, stating that there problem with the meter readings was no fault of ours and that I would begrudgingly pay the extra from the date we received the letter on the 24th August 2012, but refused to pay the extra before this date.

I have now recieved a bill from e-on, for £2,216.55 back dated to 5th July 2011. Are they within their rights to do this or should I stand my ground and only pay the new price for electricity from the reading on the 24th August 2012?

Your comments would be appreciated.

Regards

Mike

You will have to pay for the energy you have used.

Are you sure they have calculated your revised bill correctly now as more than £2k over and above what you have actually paid for the period since 5 July 2011 is a huge amount. How much have you already paid them over the last year?

If it is correct, speak with the supplier as to how you may reduce your consumption in future.

dogshome

Are Eon within their rights? - The answer is NO

molerat

dogshome wrote: »

Are Eon within their rights? - The answer is NO

Please enlighten us all as to why.

OP, are we talking domestic or commercial here as £2000 is several times the national average domestic consumption

E.ON_Company_Representative

Hi Mike,

I hope you don’t mind me popping on to this thread.:)

I'm really sorry this has happened to you, was it your gas or electric meter?

It does sound like the Billing code could be looked in to for your account, but this really depends on the specific details of exactly what has happened and when and would need to be investigated by a specialist.

Billing code is applied when something happens like this, we can only bill you for one year and write the rest off. But this is not a certainty and as I say many factors are taken in to consideration.

As you're not happy we need to get a complaint raised on your account if we haven't all ready, we need to keep this open and follow the escalation process until this is resolved for you. if you would like me to look in to this, then send me an email to the address in my profile and I’ll be happy to help.

Thanks

Amy

molerat

I would argue the 1 year starting point back to Aug 2011 (providing you are a domestic customer).

Can you post meter model number or pictures of meter and some readings going back the past year ?

dogshome

Sorry I had to break off - Domestic crisis - the answer is still NO
The 12 month back-bill rule start date is the date the customer got fully detailed notification, which in this case is the date on the £2,000+ bill.
Requests to the customer for meter information and customer intitiated conversations with Customer Services are not proper notification, and the July 5th 2011 12 month start date Eon are applying is way earlier than the date on the bill.

The £2000+ Bill represents appx. 16,197 Kwh which is enough for a years supply to 5 family households, and it is on top of what the OP has already paid for - all of which makes Eons cash demands highly suspect

6 Digit meter - These have come up in the past and they are usually 3PHASE meters fitted to Business premises, that cause reading problems when the premises change to Domestic - They are usually marked 3ph somewhere on the front

An administrative change from 5 digit reads of a 6 digit meter part way through a customers account is bound to be a headache, but Mike 1946 can get a good idea of his true, recent annual consumption himself
Look at the bill preceeding the £2,000 one, and say it's End Reading is 69583, record this as 69,583 and then add a 5, making it 695,835 which is a 6 digit reading accurate to +/- 4 Kwh
Then do the same to all the meter reads on the previous 3 bills - Subtracting the Start Read of the earliest bill from the End Read of the last bill gives a fair estimate of the annual consumption, which when applied to the tariff prices gives a fair estimate of what his bill for the past 12 months should be - It's a fair bet that it will be a lot less than £2,000+

When the homework is done, he should FORGET THE PHONE and write letter headed Complaint to Eon, setting out his figures and asking why they are stretching the 12 month back-billing period to 14 months.

PS - Why is the Eon rep asking if it's the gas or elec meter - The OP says it's the Elec in the 2nd line of his post

molerat

So the real answer is YES subject to some dates being corrected and calculations checked then

dogshome

Hmmm - So a fiddle by Eon on the 12 month limitation and questionable demands of £2,000+, add up to a Yes they are within their rights.
Could it be that the paid day job is in politics?

dogshome

Hi Mike1946 - This morning I re-read your post and it struck me that an instruction to "read only the first 5 digits on a 6 digit meter " is open to mis-interptetation - If the 1st 5 digits are read from the Left, it will create one sort of problem, but if read from the Right it creates an enirely different problem.

Perhaps you could post your present meter reading in full and indicate which number has been left off in the past