E.On "journey" - what is that?

Crater

After our switching date, we had an unwanted follow-up call from our outgoing supplier E.On - explained immediately that we had nothing to discuss and did not want phone calls about this.

The caller said something like "It's just going through the Journey, that's all". I asked when our final bill would come, and they said they didn't deal with that. So, call of no value. They took our address and said we were taken off the calling list.

Does anyone know what this "journey" refers to in industry jargon? We are switching, don't wish to negotiate, and are just waiting for our final bill. There should be nothing for them to deal with other than that, and the caller had no information about it!

bob_bank_spanker

Shamsan wrote: »

After our switching date, we had an unwanted follow-up call from our outgoing supplier E.On - explained immediately that we had nothing to discuss and did not want phone calls about this.

The caller said something like "It's just going through the Journey, that's all". I asked when our final bill would come, and they said they didn't deal with that. So, call of no value. They took our address and said we were taken off the calling list.

Does anyone know what this "journey" refers to in industry jargon? We are switching, don't wish to negotiate, and are just waiting for our final bill. There should be nothing for them to deal with other than that, and the caller had no information about it!

They wanted to attempt to retain your custom, although the sales patter sounds awful. Some companies offer £200 [STRIKE]bribes[/STRIKE] incentives to stay with them. It may have even been worth your while to listen!

macman

'Going through the motions', 'just doing my job', etc?
Must be some new yoof-speak phrase...wotever...

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Hi Shamsan

Sorry for the unwanted call and the confusion caused.

Journey is a term used sometimes to describe the change of supplier process.

When a supply changes hands, it's the responsibility of the incoming supplier to send the meter readings they intend to use to open their account to the outgoing supplier.

The losing supplier uses these same readings to close their account. Once received, a final bill is issued.

This info is sent via electronic messages between the two suppliers. There's also a number of other messages sent to various bodies within the energy industry, including meter readers, the energy distributor, national databases etc.

The whole thing takes approx 4 to 6 weeks. I suspect this is what the advisor was talking about when he mentioned journey.

Sorry again for the jargon used but hope this explains what they were talking about.

Malc

Crater

Dear Mr Malc

Thank you for that information.

Why did she just then not say, I want to tell you how long your changeover would take? I asked her specifically, when will we get our final bill, and her reply, as I noted here was "I don't know anything about billing", yet that is what is important.

We've now received two letters and a phone call focusing on hard-sell telling us we should go back to E.on, but no written information at all from E.on about what the switching process involves and how long it will take! They only seem to care about what the other posters here mentioned.

This is undermining my formerly good impression of the company. Normally billing takes about 2 days after a meter reading. I understand that other bodies need to be "told", but our meter reading was lodged over a week ago and clearly the information is being passed on, hence the letters. 4-6 weeks is even longer than the 30 days that our new supplier advised us of ...

I hope that this will now proceed correctly!

Crater

bob_bank_spanker wrote: »

They wanted to attempt to retain your custom, although the sales patter sounds awful. Some companies offer £200 [STRIKE]bribes[/STRIKE] incentives to stay with them. It may have even been worth your while to listen!

Thanks for that. Yes I am aware that is what happens, but we want to switch. If the company had anything essential to tell us, they should have written to us - all they had to do was include it in one of their "return to us" letters. The EON representative on this forum has kindly provided some information - but I feel the phone call was just a pretext!