Official MSE Economy 7 Guide discussion

MotherOfBoys

Hi all, I'm new here and just looking for some advice...
We have been hit by a huge bill of £1000 by Eon, which is mostly my fault as I let the direct debit lapse last year (in my defence I had just had a new baby so wasn't really operating on full capacity...) and I hadn't been checking the bills since it switched to paperless, but there are a couple of things that don't seem quite right to me.
We are on economy 7 as we have storage heaters, which obviously is best in winter but not so much in summer. When I called last year to ask to change to a normal tariff I was told I couldn't as it was an economy 7 meter, so thought no more about it at the time. However now my partner has started looking into the bills and when I told him about this he said that they can't tell you that you can't switch? Also he said on all the bills it says that 'We have checked your usage and your direct debit amount and you are paying the right amount', but obviously this was not the case once the direct debit lapsed last year, but I have never been contacted by Eon to say that the £101 we were paying a month was not enough to cover charges AND pay off the debt.
As I said I know I've ballsed up by having four months from May to Aug last year not paying but do I have grounds for a complaint against them or do I just have to suck it up and pay?

footyguy

MotherOfBoys wrote: »

Hi all, I'm new here and just looking for some advice...
We have been hit by a huge bill of £1000 by Eon, which is mostly my fault as I let the direct debit lapse last year (in my defence I had just had a new baby so wasn't really operating on full capacity...) and I hadn't been checking the bills since it switched to paperless, but there are a couple of things that don't seem quite right to me.
We are on economy 7 as we have storage heaters, which obviously is best in winter but not so much in summer. When I called last year to ask to change to a normal tariff I was told I couldn't as it was an economy 7 meter, so thought no more about it at the time. However now my partner has started looking into the bills and when I told him about this he said that they can't tell you that you can't switch? Also he said on all the bills it says that 'We have checked your usage and your direct debit amount and you are paying the right amount', but obviously this was not the case once the direct debit lapsed last year, but I have never been contacted by Eon to say that the £101 we were paying a month was not enough to cover charges AND pay off the debt.
As I said I know I've ballsed up by having four months from May to Aug last year not paying but do I have grounds for a complaint against them or do I just have to suck it up and pay?

What do you mean by you "let the direct debit lapse" ? :huh:

If you are not currently paying by direct debit, you are probably now missing out on some significant savings.

If you are in debt to your supplier to the sum of £1000, the supplier can (and probably will) refuse to allow any switch to another supplier.

If you don't wish/are unable to pay the whole amount owed immediately, most suppliers will allow you the opportunity to repay the amount over a similar period it accumulated ... but they might expect you to set a a DD to do so and not "let the direct debit lapse"

Only you know if you have cause for complaint. What do you think the supplier has done wrong? And what would you like the supplier to do to put their alleged error right?

In the first instance, speak to your supplier.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

MotherOfBoys wrote: »

Hi all, I'm new here and just looking for some advice...
We have been hit by a huge bill of £1000 by Eon, which is mostly my fault as I let the direct debit lapse last year (in my defence I had just had a new baby so wasn't really operating on full capacity...) and I hadn't been checking the bills since it switched to paperless, but there are a couple of things that don't seem quite right to me.
We are on economy 7 as we have storage heaters, which obviously is best in winter but not so much in summer. When I called last year to ask to change to a normal tariff I was told I couldn't as it was an economy 7 meter, so thought no more about it at the time. However now my partner has started looking into the bills and when I told him about this he said that they can't tell you that you can't switch? Also he said on all the bills it says that 'We have checked your usage and your direct debit amount and you are paying the right amount', but obviously this was not the case once the direct debit lapsed last year, but I have never been contacted by Eon to say that the £101 we were paying a month was not enough to cover charges AND pay off the debt.
As I said I know I've ballsed up by having four months from May to Aug last year not paying but do I have grounds for a complaint against them or do I just have to suck it up and pay?

Hi MotherOfBoys and welcome to the forum,

I'm sorry you've found yourself in this position.

I'd like to ask, do you mean you stopped paying the Direct Debit altogether? So nothing was being paid to the account?

Is the account now billed up to accurate meter reads? It may be that we have been estimating for some time and now we've billed accurately it's caused a bit of a catch up bill.

This along with no payments sounds like it could have caused this balance.

We would be able to change you on to single rate tariff even with an economy 7 meter, I understand not all suppliers will do this. However, as you have storage heaters you're probably (not always) better off on an E7 tariff. Have you calculated the difference over the period of a year, it won't work just doing this over the summer months?

The Direct Debit might have been the right amount at the time. Did you provide some meter reads to bring things up to date? As it may have been based on estimates.

I really think the best thing to do is to have a look at the website and see what the best deal for you would be. Also ensure you've entered some up to date reads. It sounds like you already have an online account so this is fab and you can do all of this there.

footyguy has given some excellent advise, speak to us on the phone and see if we can spread the balance, ask about tariff's what would be best. There are advantages to having a Direct Debit, but talk to us.

I hope this helps.

Helena

MotherOfBoys

Thank you for your replies, I was paying by direct debit but cancelled it last April because we had a late payment which meant we couldn't pay the direct debit at that time, but then I had my baby and it completely slipped my mind to reinstate it until the August, which I know is completely my error. I agree that the likely reason for the huge jump in the bills was due to estimates being lower than usage - one of the reasons we wanted to switch to a normal tariff during summer. Our readings are now up to date however and have been paying by direct debit, but the amount we have been paying has obviously only ever been paying for our usage!
My only real complaint is that I was told that I wasn't allowed to change from Economy 7 at all, which I didn't realise wasn't the case until recently. We have calculated that it would have probably been cheaper for us during summer to not be on Economy 7 when we don't use the storage heaters at all.
I will speak to Eon tomorrow, and hope that we can sort something out. Thanks again.

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

MotherOfBoys wrote: »

Thank you for your replies, I was paying by direct debit but cancelled it last April because we had a late payment which meant we couldn't pay the direct debit at that time, but then I had my baby and it completely slipped my mind to reinstate it until the August, which I know is completely my error. I agree that the likely reason for the huge jump in the bills was due to estimates being lower than usage - one of the reasons we wanted to switch to a normal tariff during summer. Our readings are now up to date however and have been paying by direct debit, but the amount we have been paying has obviously only ever been paying for our usage!
My only real complaint is that I was told that I wasn't allowed to change from Economy 7 at all, which I didn't realise wasn't the case until recently. We have calculated that it would have probably been cheaper for us during summer to not be on Economy 7 when we don't use the storage heaters at all.
I will speak to Eon tomorrow, and hope that we can sort something out. Thanks again.

Thank you for the extra information.

Although you may be better off without Economy 7 in the summer months, we can't change the tariff's back and forth every 6 months or so.

Also, the calculations need to be done over the full 12 months, not just a summer period when you don't use the heating.

I think the best thing to do is to establish what would be best overall and go from there.

You can also have a word with us to see if we can spread the balance over a little bit longer for you, this will help to bring the monthly payments down a bit.

I hope this helps.

Helena:)

cassiehagger

Eon charge for a meter change if you want to swap from economy 7 to a standard meter. Therefore think I am going to switch supplier

footyguy

cassiehagger wrote: »

Eon charge for a meter change if you want to swap from economy 7 to a standard meter. Therefore think I am going to switch supplier

LOL.
Well bumped at least

If you are currently an Eon customer with an E7 meter, and you no longer wish to take advatage of the low cost electricity this provides you for 7 hours every day, then Eon will put you on a single rate tariff without a meter change if you ask them to.

Or as you say, you can move to a supplier that doesn't charge the individual customer for a non-essential meter change - instead they will spread this cost across all their customers.

:cool:

MSE_Dan_L

footyguy wrote: »

LOL.
Well bumped at least

If you are currently an Eon customer with an E7 meter, and you no longer wish to take advatage of the low cost electricity this provides you for 7 hours every day, then Eon will put you on a single rate tariff without a meter change if you ask them to.

Or as you say, you can move to a supplier that doesn't charge the individual customer for a non-essential meter change - instead they will spread this cost across all their customers.

:cool:

Or, if you don't want to change the meter, Eon have told us that it'll let you take a single rate tariff by simply adding the two readings together.

If you're thinking of switching to the MSE Collective tariff, you can do this through Cheap Energy Club - just answer 'No' to the question of whether you currently have Eco7 and Eon will honour the single rate tariff which you'd be able to apply for.

Of course the decision on whether to switch to another supplier or get your meter changed is up-to-you, but just thought this info might be useful.

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

cassiehagger wrote: »

Eon charge for a meter change if you want to swap from economy 7 to a standard meter. Therefore think I am going to switch supplier

footyguy wrote: »

LOL.
Well bumped at least

If you are currently an Eon customer with an E7 meter, and you no longer wish to take advatage of the low cost electricity this provides you for 7 hours every day, then Eon will put you on a single rate tariff without a meter change if you ask them to.

Or as you say, you can move to a supplier that doesn't charge the individual customer for a non-essential meter change - instead they will spread this cost across all their customers.

:cool:

MSE_Dan_L wrote: »

Or, if you don't want to change the meter, Eon have told us that it'll let you take a single rate tariff by simply adding the two readings together.

If you're thinking of switching to the MSE Collective tariff, you can do this through Cheap Energy Club - just answer 'No' to the question of whether you currently have Eco7 and Eon will honour the single rate tariff which you'd be able to apply for.

Of course the decision on whether to switch to another supplier or get your meter changed is up-to-you, but just thought this info might be useful.

Hi cassiehagger

Thought I'd pop on and confirm footyguy and Dan's sound advice. Thanks both.

No need to change the meter if you prefer single rate to Economy 7 prices. We add the day and night usage together and charge at the lower single rate. I've just posted a reply to a similar question on another thread at the link below that might explain more.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/69164446#Comment_69164446

If you still want to go ahead with a meter change, I can also confirm what you say. There's currently a charge of £64.76 for this work.

Hope this is of interest cassiehagger.

Malc

afmfifgh

Can I ask why some providers are unable to use a combined Day and Night reading as surely it is exactly the same as when you have just a 'normal' meter that only has one reading? I can't understand what the issue is with this.

Thanks.