MSE News: In credit on your energy bill? Millions to get automatic refunds

Hazzanet

I'd rather leave the money with the energy company towards future bills.

Stupid policy.

TennisPaul

I agree it is impossible to budget for a bill if one month it is say £30 and then when the weather gets colder it goes up to £150! Better to have the figure annualised to say £100 per month all year round. I have been hundreds in credit for several months but then it goes down to nil when the winter bills kick in.
Surely the answer is that a credit for interest is placed on your account which is counter balanced by a charge if you go into debit?As things stand it is going to be so annoying to have the bils go up and down all the time.Not a good idea!

bxboards

I dispute that Scottish Power do this: 'Scottish Power will continue to automatically refund customers who are in credit by £75 or more, or who have been in credit by any sum for more than a month.'

As I've been in credit for over 200+ for the past 10 months or so, my Direct Debit payments stay the same, adding to the credit built up each month and I've never been automatically refunded.

My account as off today:

• Dual Fuel
• Online Fixed Price Energy April 2015 (no Standing Charge)

• Account balance
• £290.20- Credit

• Next bill date
• 20 May 2014

I'm not that bothered about it...but in my experience the above doesn't happen.

Pincher

Switch to quarterly pay on bill if you mind that much.

A.Penny.Saved

This cannot work because the whole idea of DD is to spread the cost over the year with regular payments. You therefore do need to run up credit during the summer so there is credit to pay for winter energy usage.

However it can and does go too far IMO and something needed to be done but some of these new policies of the energy companies seem stupid to me. Refund if you are more than £5 in credit? £50 or £100 maybe but not so little that it can never cover winter energy usage. I'm over £200 in credit ATM and Scottish Power made no mention of refunding it when I waited for almost an hour to speak to one of their people. I'm in the process of switching so I want it repaid ASAP.

MrsWenger

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena wrote: »

Hiya MrsWenger,

This is correct, but the automatic refund would be at your annual review, for any credit over £5 so long as we’ve had up to date meter readings in the last six months.

I agree with leaving the credit for now, over the winter. It could also be the credit is from the Direct Debit payments you have made.

True credit shows after an accurate bill has been produced.

Lot's of info if you need it on the website, along with the new Direct Debit tool where you can change your Direct Debit etc.

Hope this helps.

Helena

Hi Helena, i wonder if you or Malcolm might be able to help me please. I'll summarise what has happened since i last posted on this thread but i am now anxious to ensure my DD is correct.

Last night i went into my account to change the bank the direct debit goes out of. The DD had been reduced to £5 from £90 per month. I had not been notified but a guy had done a meter check on Saturday and told me he would log the reading. I have had no feedback on that either. Account was around £430 in credit. I have now spent over an hour talking to two of your colleagues. The first one applied the meter reading and said credit is now £284. My annual review is July so in fact you owe me £7 a month. I asked for a refund and to continue paying £90 a month. Guy said i should pay less than that and it would take a couple of minutes to sort. Was on hold for 15 minutes so rang off. Second guy told me i can have credit but new monthly amount must be £99. I asked how this was possible when £90 was accruing a significant credit. I was told he could see my point but that was the system calculation and it cannot be overwritten. I then told him to go ahead but i wanted to know which bank the refund would go to. When he came back he told me the DD should be £76 per month but he needs to ring me tomorrow to get my permission to process this. I asked for it to be done whilst i was on the phone but apparently that wasn't possible.

Sorry for the long post; i was surprised i had to be on the phone for such a long time for what i thought would be a routine enquiry and i want to make sure this gets sorted properly.

Thanks very much,

Tracey

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

MrsWenger wrote: »

Hi Helena, i wonder if you or Malcolm might be able to help me please. I'll summarise what has happened since i last posted on this thread but i am now anxious to ensure my DD is correct.

Last night i went into my account to change the bank the direct debit goes out of. The DD had been reduced to £5 from £90 per month. I had not been notified but a guy had done a meter check on Saturday and told me he would log the reading. I have had no feedback on that either. Account was around £430 in credit. I have now spent over an hour talking to two of your colleagues. The first one applied the meter reading and said credit is now £284. My annual review is July so in fact you owe me £7 a month. I asked for a refund and to continue paying £90 a month. Guy said i should pay less than that and it would take a couple of minutes to sort. Was on hold for 15 minutes so rang off. Second guy told me i can have credit but new monthly amount must be £99. I asked how this was possible when £90 was accruing a significant credit. I was told he could see my point but that was the system calculation and it cannot be overwritten. I then told him to go ahead but i wanted to know which bank the refund would go to. When he came back he told me the DD should be £76 per month but he needs to ring me tomorrow to get my permission to process this. I asked for it to be done whilst i was on the phone but apparently that wasn't possible.

Sorry for the long post; i was surprised i had to be on the phone for such a long time for what i thought would be a routine enquiry and i want to make sure this gets sorted properly.

Thanks very much,

Tracey

Hiya Tracey,

It sounds like the Direct Debit was reduced to this amount due to the credit on the account, this would be to get you to a zero balance for the review date.

You should always receive notification of a Direct Debit change, we have to do this, was it on a bill? Do you have an online account?

To be honest, from the sounds of this it's been made way more complicated than it needs to be

We need to bill the account up to date, see what the true credit is, if you want the credit refunding we'd then need to re-calculate the Direct Debit to make sure it'll cover usage until the review date (you'll use more at this time of year, so may be higher).

I don't know why he had to ring you the next day? As you say the current payments were leaving you a lot in credit, so the payments might be lower. I can't say anything for sure as I can't see your account.

But, I'll be more than happy to look in to this for you and get everything cleared up email your account number, full name and address to me at [EMAIL="WebForumAdvidors@eonenergy.com"]WebForumAdvidors@eonenergy.com[/EMAIL] and I'll look today

Thank you

Helena:)

MrsWenger

Hi Helena, thank you so much for your help;i'll mail the details over shortly.

Yes, i have an online account but the DD page is down today for technical reasons. I truthfully was only aware of the change when i went to change the account we pay from and it said £5. My £90 only went out yesterday as well. I have had an email now saying the debit payments will be a credit of £7 until July! It was a frustrating couple of conversations but hopefully we can get it sorted - thanks again for looking into it

Kind regards,

Tracey

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Helena

Yes, there are some problems on the website today sorry about that.

I have a feeling that the DD change was on the bottom of one your bills maybe.

Will hang on for the email, as something isn't right with these figures, £7 ??

I'm sorry the conversations were so frustrating, we'll get there though.

Thanks again and 'speak' soon.

Helena

MrsWenger

Hi Helena,

Just sent over the details thank you. Please confirm the address in your post is correct; it looks as though it might have a letter wrong...