Eon - paying £35+ per week for electric - help!

Turquoise1975

I have been with Eon for Gas & electric for around 15 years & have always had pre payment meters for both. Gas is great with us paying around £5 - £10 a week. But the electric is another matter!
In November last year we got talking to a group of people at our local pub quiz night about energy prices & what everyone pays & my husband & i were horrified to hear them saying theirs worked out to roughly £100 - £120 a quarter, we are paying more than that a month! Some weeks we put £45 a week in the meter.
We have a small semi detached house, gas central heating - combi boiler, gas fire & gas cooker. We do have 3 children but they are hardly ever in being 13, 18 & 20.
I rang Eon in December last year to ask why we are paying so much compared to everyone else & the lady said she would send someone out to check. February this year a lady from the energy efficiency team came with a clip board & just asked what appliances we have, she said we are using 3 properties worth of electric a week! She could only come to the conclusion that it is the shower! We only had it fitted last year & we have been paying £35 a week for at least 3 years+ (funnily enough we had a new meter fitted in 2010), so we said it couldn't possibly be the shower lol. She said the only thing she could think of to do was replace the meter as it may be faulty. So an engineer came out 2 weeks later, i explained everything to him & he said if we have the meter replaced & it does prove to be faulty we would be unable to claim for all the money we have overpaid as the meter would disappear into the system. He said we should have a SLT (standard load test) done instead as this would detect ANY fault with the meter & said we must insist with EON that we get this done, he was very emphatic about it & even checked with a colleague on the phone.
So i phoned Eon & explained what happened to the girl on the phone & that we needed an SLT done, she went away for a few minutes then came back & said she had checked & that we had been using on average £4.78 of electric a day since we moved in which is correct, when i asked her how she knew when i moved in she said i moved in on 7th November 2011, i then asked if she had the right person as i have lived here for 18 years! She got very huffy & said i was "hampering her investigation & was putting me through to her line manager!", great customer service!
I then spoke to a very abrupt man (i can only assume she told him i was a difficult customer) who said he had never heard of an SLT test in all his life & we needed a check meter done instead & proceeded to argue with me over it until he could see i wouldn't back down & went to find out from someone else. Finally, he rang me back & said an engineer from an independant company would come to do the SLT but it would cost me £93! I said that was fine as long as it sorted the faulty meter out.
An EON engineer (not independant!) came out 2 weeks later, again i explained the circumstance to him & he said the test would not find "any" fault it just checks the load coming in & going out, but doesn't check for example if it is taking credit too quickly etc. So he did the test & said everything was correct no fault found.
So a few days later the manager rang me back to collect his £93 & to rub it in that no fault had been found, i said i was very angry as i had been led to believe that this SLT would detect ANY fault, he basically said - tough pay up! He said he would not waive the fee under any circumstances & would take £8 a week from each meter to recover the cost! To which i refused & was put through to their independant complaints dept. I spoke to a lovely lady who said the SLT was free & i shouldn't be charged for it anyway, it is a check meter test you pay for. :mad:
She said we should not be paying the amount we are & that something was wrong somewhere, she would investigate & get to the bottom of it for us & ring me back the following week with some answers, that was 4 weeks ago & she has not rung me back!
Sorry for such a long post & thanks for sticking with me lol (if you have).
Does anyone have any idea what we can do now or what EON should do? We want to switch providers asap as Eon have had enough money out of us & i am truly shocked at their customer lack of service :mad: but i think we need to sort this out before switching?
Thank you.

espresso

Too many words but not enough real information, not once have you mentioned how many kWh units are being used!

Read your meter daily and state how many kWh are being used each day.

Why are you using an electric shower which costs at least three times as much to run when you have gas water heating?

EdGasket

I'm averaging £21 a week for gas and £12.50 a week for electricity. We use a shower heated by the gas system so I guess its swings and roundabouts but your electricity charge does seem excessive. Though if you are all showering every day then its possibly correct; try once a week only (like when I was a boy) to save money lol.

Have you tried turning everything off in the house, note the meter reading, turn on a known 1Kw load e.g. electric heater, and see how much the meter changes after 1 hour of using 1Kw (that would be 1Kw hour of electricity)? That way you can test the meter yourself at no cost.

Alternatively phone a few electricians and find one who can measure the electric usage vs. recorded usage; its not rocket science.

macman

As above, £££'s spent tell us nothing-post your annual kWh figures.

Nada666

Although very high your usage is not impossibly large for a household with five occupants. You seem to be using about 30 kWh per day compared to the national average of 9 kWh. But your gas usage is very low - are you sure you are not not mentioning electric heaters? None of your children has an electric heater (including 3D games consoles) in their room?

Have you read the electric meter to determine background consumption? How much is used overnight? During the day when everyone is out? How much is used when you are at home over an evening? You have to take time to play with the meter before bringing in others over suspected faults. The fact that you are quoting amounts in money suggests you have not really checked that consumption in kWh is suspicious.

What about lighting? Although individual contribution is small several 60 W bulbs can quickly mount up if used without thought.

MorbidX

(Everything typed below is my own personal opinion and based on personal experience within the industry and not the opinion or voice of my employer. This should be used as general advice)

Agreed with Espresso we need Kwh figures as "cost" is a irrelevant measure unfortunately. Sadly to say comparing your usage with that of a friend isn't any real indicative guide as to what you or they use so shouldn't be used as a benchmark.

Regarding a check meter.

You may have been incorrectly advised but i cant be sure without knowing what the adviser said so i shall i explain.

I would advise this as a last resort. The check meter runs in parallell to your current meter and can be at your property for 2-4 weeks. it's job is to check that for everyone 1 Kwh recorded on your meter than 1 kwh is recorded on the check meter.

For example if you use 15 units on your meter but the check meter only records 10 then your meter is recording 50% faster than it should which would mean you were being recorded 150% of your actual usage.

In this scenario once the meter is confirmed faulty they will remove the check meter and your old meter and replace it with a new one. They will then recalculate your charges taking into account you were paying 50% more than you should have been and credit any overpayment to you.

If the meter is faulty then you aren't charged the cost of fitting the check meter. If the meter is fine then you would have to pay for the check meter. The £93 cost seems correct but it does vary on where you live

In all honesty... from experience if its a recent meter (2010) and a key meter its not very often these are faulty and incorrectly recording, this is normally a problem for mechanical meters.

Questions:

With regards to your consumption are you on a 2 rate day/night meter or a single rate?

If you are on a 2 rate meter note the readings at midnight and at about 7am for 5 days so we can see your usage over a period of time and over each rate
The general domestic 2 rate meter has the day rate from 7am -midnight and the night rate from midnight-7am although it can vary by 30mins to 1hr depending on the setup

From your bills what is your Kwh usage per day/month.

Is there any debt being collected on the meter?

Fruit_and_Nut_Case

I'm just a little puzzled by this. You wrote:

MorbidX wrote: »

The check meter runs in parallell to your current meter...

I would have thought they would be connected in series so that the (same) current flows through both. If they are in parallel the current would be split between them in some proportion.

Where have I gone wrong? Thanks.

EdGasket

Yes I would have thought so too otherwise in parallel, the current through each meter can be different depending on the resistance of each meter.

You can get a rough idea if the meter is way out though using my suggested method of a 1Kw load.

Turquoise1975

We use 30 - 35 kw per day according to EON.
I shall try the things mentioned above.
2 years ago we went on holiday, switched everything off except for the freezer, there was £35 in the meter when we came back it had run out of electric! yet no one was here & only the freezer was on! & yes we have ruled out the freezer. Also new years day we spent all day at my Parent's house & didn't return until 9pm & it had used £4 on the meter, yet nobody was here again!
There is no debt or other payments taken from the meter just what we supposedly use.
As to the shower it is used 2 times a day for 10 minutes, we do not all have long, hot showers everyday. The council installed the shower so we had no say in weather it was electric or not.
We are a family of 5 but as i have already said my 3 children are at school, college & work every day, my husband & i are at home as we work from home but there is no TV or anything else on during the day at all. My sister has 2 litle girls & has her tumble dryer on everyday no matter the weather, the TV on CBeebies all day yet her electric is only £100 a quarter!
I just don't understand it :mad:

EdGasket

Maybe someone has tacked themselves onto your wiring? Known it happen.

You need to turn everything off from time to time and actually check the meter is not advancing; if it is then a neighbour is using your elecricity.

MorbidX

Fruit_and_Nut_Case wrote: »

I'm just a little puzzled by this. You wrote:



I would have thought they would be connected in series so that the (same) current flows through both. If they are in parallel the current would be split between them in some proportion.

Where have I gone wrong? Thanks.

My apologies... didnt word it right lol! You're are right thats what i meant